f-./pr the fpundiag i>f-,a, ColUgS^^-^^MS^i^.

«'¥^ILIl«'¥]MII¥EI^Sflir¥«

Gift of

'rs. George T. Ladd
1931

THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED TO
TIIAT GREAT NUMBER OF
CnmSTIAJS" TEACHERS AND THINKERS
-«-H0 HOLD THE BIBLICAL SYSTEM OF MORAL
A^-D RELIGIOUS TRUTH BUT -WHO ARE IN DOUBT
AS TO -R'HAT THEY SHALL CONCLUDE
CONCERNING THE SACRED -WRITINGS
IN -WHICH THAT SYSTEM
IS CONTAINED
Quibus parum vel quibus nimium est mihi ignoscant
Quibus autem satis est -non mihi sed Domino mecum
gratias congratulantes arjant.
AOGUSTINB : De Civ. Dei, zxil. 30.

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON, .... HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
DUBLIN, .... GEORGE HERBERT.
NEW YORK, , , SCRIBNEB AND WELFORD.

THE DOCTRINE

OF

SACEED SCEIPTURE

CRITICAL, HISTOEICAL AND DOGMATIC INQUIRY INTO
THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE OLD
AND NEW TESTAMENTS

BY
GEORGE T. LADD, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF MENTAL AKD MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN YALE COLLEGE

VOLUME I.

EDINBUEGH:
T. & T. CLAEK, 38 GEOEGE STEEET.
1883.

PREFACE.

The particular scope and method of this book are set forth in the
introduction, and the fuller justification of its purpose and plan must
be left to the results reached by the entire course of its discussions.
All its parts, ho-wever, have been made as impersonal as possible ; for
the author has not been willing to seem to be inculcating his own
opinions rather than seriously and thoroughly investigating the truth
of a great subject. A few words of a more personal and familiar kind
will surely, then, be both suitable and welcome. I speak these words
in the preface, in order that my readers and I may enter upon this
difficult investigation, being already on good terms and disposed to
keep in right relations with each other. A certain mutual justice aud
courtesy must enter into these right relations ; for, while every author
should feel bound to render a fair equivalent for the time which he
asks of his readers, and should never rudely discredit their cherished
opinions, he may feel also that he, in turn, has certain just claims to
make upon them.
The embarrassing fear that the subject of this book would prove
interesting to only a few of the thoughtful, happily has not stood in
the way of the work necessary for its construction. It was begun
some years since, and has been continued with well-sustained ardor,
in part because the tokens of intense public interest in its subject
were frequent and unmistakable. At that time, even, I had made
rather a generous estimate of the long and laborious course of inves
tigation which lay before me. It scarcely needs to be said that this
original estimate has required over and over again to be expanded.
In the mean time my professional life has changed from that of a
preacher and pastor to that of a teacher of philosophy. But both
the work of the preacher and pastor, and that of the teacher of phi
losophy, have — it is my belief — contributed some valuable elements

vi PREFACE.
to this investigation ; for the former made me acquainted with the
questions which those who make practical use of the Bible as a guide
in matters of faith and Christian life most need to have answered, and
the latter has given me some special satisfaction (and perhaps some
courage and aptitude) in attempting the profounder philosophical
problems which are so intimately related to the origin and nature of
Sacred Scriptm-e. It is far from my intention, however, to claim any
especial skill or fitness for accomplishing this most difficult task. It
is my intention to say only this : I was led to it both by the outward
call of circumstances and by inward impulse ; and I have tried to
accomplish it with such patience, candor, and thoroughness, that I
can conscientiously ask the same qualities of all my readers.
There can be no doubt, however, that two classes of these readers
will find it especially difficult to comply with the one simple requisition
just made upon them. These two classes comprise all those who are
already firmly convinced of the unassailable truthfulness of opinions
that diverge widely, in two opposite directions, from those to which I
have been obliged to come. Of these two classes, one is convinced
that nothing can shake, or must be permitted to shake, the confi
dence of the public and of the Church in the traditional view of the
origin and nature of the Bible. In the thought of such persons, the
dearest interests, and perhaps the ultimate destiny, of Christianity
are inseparably bound up with a certain traditional view. To present
the evidence for the partially untenable nature of this view, is, in their
minds, equivalent to making an attack upon Christian truth as the
ground and source of Christian life. I can heartily sympathize with
this strong and warm interest in preserving the fundamental faiths and
the supremacy and authority of biblical religion : it is in the hope of
contributing some additional evidence to the reasonableness of these
faiths and this authority, that I have undertaken and conducted
all my investigations. With the above-mentioned fear of whatever
disturbs the tradition, I have, however, no sympathy. I may be
permitted to ask, without any sin against charity or courtesy, whether
such a fear does not in part grow out of the secret sense of weakness
and ignorance, and whether there can be any cure possible for such a
fear besides that intelligent conviction which results from the fullest
and fairest possible examination. The attention of this class of
readers is particularly called to the first and third parts of this book :
in the first part, the claims which the Bible makes for itself are con-

PREFACE. vii
sidered; in the third part, the views of the Christian Church in the past
are presented. Above all others, the advocate of biblical infallibility
should prove the sincerity of his advocacy by a candid and patient
inquiry as to what the Bible really claims for itself. Above all others,
such an advocate should be zealous to distinguish between these
claims, and those which he has himself been accustomed to make iu
behalf of the Bible.
But if, on the other hand, the uncompromising adherent of the
traditional view really places the evidence for that view in the neces
sary truthfulness of the tradition itself, he surely should be wilHng
to inquire diligently as to what the tradition has indeed been. No one
else is so bound to know the exact position of orthodoxy as he who
is firmly resolved at all hazards to remain in this position. No one
else, then, should be so eager to ascertain what the thought of the
Church has been, touching the origin and nature of her Sacred Scrip
tures. But the thought of the Church must be historically ascertained.
The candid and full statement of the history of this doctrine should,
then, be especially welcome to this class of readers. It would not be
courteous in the author to suspect that any of this class could really
be unwilling to consider either what the Bible or the Church has to
say concerning the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. Such unwillingness
would seem to be possible in the case only of those who either secretly
distrust their o-wn religion, or else have no confldence that either the
Bible or history can establish any truth which contradicts their indi
vidual and uncritical opuiion.
For establishing cordial relations with the second class of readers,
from whose views most divergence may be expected in this book, I
am not quite sure what can best be said. This class comprises those
who are already confirmed in naturalistic views of revelation and
inspiration, or who cannot bring themselves to consider the Bible as
differing at all fundamentally from the other collections of writings
upon morals and religion which might be made from the extant lit
erature of various peoples. I must at once admit that such persons
(should any of them read my book) will find the entire argument
resting upon certain fundamental assumptions which they do not them
selves admit. This argument will itself, therefore, not prove conclu
sive to such readers. It may be urged, in justice to myself, however,
that the long and careful study which I have given to the assumptions,
and the indirect justification of them through the whole course of

viii PREFACE.
historical and critical investigation in which they are involved, have
made their truth a matter of scientific verification to my own mmd.
I have the right which every investigator enjoys, to buUd my investiga
tion upon some truths taken for granted. Any controversy which I
might be expected to undertake with those who deny these assumptions
would have to be carried on in a different sphere from that in which
the discussion of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture is movmg. There is
hope, however, that some who hold firmly fixed opinions upon matters
of criticism and religious philosophy, which I am compelled to believe
destructive of the very foundations of biblical religion, will at least
make the effort to consider candidly all the evidence which I am able
to bring forward for my own view of Sacred Scripture.
There is yet another and third class of readers, — a class which I
am glad to believe is rapidly coming to constitute the majority, —
who will need no cautioning or persuading to secure their earnest and
candid consideration of this book. Many of this class have already
become convinced of the partial untenableness of the views which have
been so largely current for the past two and a half centuries ; but, as
to precisely what views can be substituted for these untenable views,
they are still in a position of doubting and waiting. They have gen
eral confidence enough in Christianity, however, to believe that its
verities and activities are not dependent upon the firm holding of tra
ditional dogma beyond the time when the unsatisfactory character of
that dogma has become obvious. To all such persons I would most
gladly bring a word of com-age and cheer ; to all such I have been
honestly desirous that this book should prove a real and abiding
helper. In brief : there is every reason to suppose that all such as
really sympathize with the spirit in which the author has tried to
undertake and execute his difficult task will remain upon terms of
amity with him to the end.
It would be quite too much, however, to expect that all my readers
should agree with me in all the statements of fact and doctrine which
this work involves. Indeed, in a work involving the discussion of
scores of intricate and disputed questions, — both critical and philo
sophical, — the reading and citing of hundreds of books, the dealing
with thousands of minute matters of fact, to escape all error would
be more than human. Upon this point of accuracy and trustworthi
ness, it can only be said, that great pains has been expended, and
the best powers at my command have been given to the task. The

PREFACE. ix
correction of any errors into which I have fallen, whether in mattera
of fact or of opinion, will be heartily welcomed. The only kind of
criticism which the book and its author deprecate is incompetent and
ignorant criticism. But my confidence in the substantial and unas
sailable truthfulness of the conclusions reached is in exact proportion
to the patient care which has been bestowed upon the collection and
weighing of the evidence.
The precise nature of the one comprehensive question which this
book discusses can be made perfectly obvious only by the progress
of the discussion itself. That the book is not merely, or chiefly, a
treatise upon inspiration as the sole inclusive quality of the biblical
writings, its title is designed to indicate. This title indicates, indeed,
that the book proposes the discussion of the much larger question,
' ' WTiat is the Bible ? " To propound some theory of the inspiration of
Scripture, technically so called, and to make a fair show of justifying
such a theory, would be a comparatively easy matter. But the attempt
to consider the whole ground, — exegetical, critical, historical, dog
matic, — upon which we must base our most comprehensive answer
to the inquiry touching the complete origin and iiature of Sacred
Scripture, requires an almost indefinite range of investigations. The
question, "What is the Bible?" is, however, the one comprehensive
question, the answer to which must carry with it all the tenable theo
ries of revelation, of inspiration, and of the nature and authority of
the Word of God. It is also the question, to the answer of which
modern critical and historical science has so largely contributed. I
hope, therefore, that this book, inasmuch as it attempts to answer
this comprehensive question, may prove of some large and permanent
value beyond that which would be possible for any mere treatise on
the so-caUed inspiration of the Bible. And, if it should introduce
its readers to fresh materials and new thoughts regarding a number
of the important questions (subordinate to its one inclusive question)
which are now before the mmds of biblical students, this result would,
perhaps, not be among the least helpful of its offices. It is my hope,
at least, that I have furnished some new light upon a number of the
problems which enter into the one comprehensive question of the origin
and nature' of Sacred Scripture.
The very nature of the work has necessitated an extensive, and,
in some of its parts, a constant use of authorities. Such authorities
have never been uncritically adhered to : I hope they have not often

X PREFACE.
been inconsiderately trusted. But, since all biblical science and all
the philosophy of religion may be made tributary to this one question,
only the large and free use of authorities could make the task of
answering it possible within an ordinary lifetime. The foot-notes
and the index will indicate sufficiently how many and what have been
the books consulted ; although many others have also been consulted,
but are not referred to, because little or no benefit has been derived
from them. I also gratefully acknowledge my personal obligation to
Professor George P. Fisher of Yale Theological Seminary, and Pro
fessor J. H. Thayer, lately of Andover Theological Seminary, for
not a few valuable suggestions ; but neither of these scholars is to be
considered as in any way committed to any of my statements, whether
as respects matters of fact or of opinion.
As to the spirit in which this work has been accomplished, I do
not feel that I am called upon to make a declaration to the reader.
If the spu-it does not breathe through the body of the book, it is of
little worth to speak of its existence within the author ; but, if it
manifest itself in this body, its own quality and inmost intent will
readily be discerned. Let others make the best possible use of this
book in the service of Christ and of his Church, if it be capable of
such a use. For myself, it is enough to call the attention of the
reader again to those words of Augustine, which I have placed at the
beginning of my book as its motto: "Quibus parum vel quibus
nimium est, mihi ignoscant; quibus autem satis est, non mihi sed
Domino mecum gratias congratulantes agant."
Np-w Haven, 1883.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

INTRODUCTION.
The right to re-examine the doctrine of Sacred Scripture .
The relation of this doctrine to the other Christian doctrines
Importance of the ideas of history and revelation
Subordinate ideas which enhance the importance of the theme
Actual demand for the re-examination 
Questions which enter into the maiu inquiry ....
Scope and method of the inquiry 
ISTecessity and nature of the true inductive method .
Necessity and nature of the postulates involved .
Course and order of the inquiry 

PAOB 1

11 131519
23

PART I.

CHAPTER I.
THE STAT-DRE OF OLD-TESTAMEST SCEH'TDEB AS DETEEMINED BY THE
TEACHING OE OHEIST.

The right dogmatic point of view involves the person of Christ .
The infaUibility of Christ's understanding of the Old Testament .
Connection of Christ's religious teaching with critical inquiries
Application of the principle of accommodation ....
Extent to which the authority of Jesus is pledged ....
General attitude of Jesus toward the Hebrew Scriptures
Definition of Christ's mission to fulfil the Old Testament .
Perpetuity of the ideal and absolute contents of Scripture .
Distinction between absolute and relative contents in the Mosaic Law
Treatment given by Christ to the ceremonial law 
Moses as the chosen medium of the legal revelation ....
The contents of the Torah in part also prophetic 
Doctrine of Christ as to the distinctively prophetic contents of the Old
Testament 
Teaching of Christ as to the prophecies of his death 
Typical view of Messianic prophecy 
Christ's view as to the nature of the prophetic consciousness .

21
2829
30
33.3436
3S
42
464850
52
5254
59

Xll

CONTENTS.

FA6B 596162

Paradisiacal vision of Abraham 
The case of Ps. ex 
The inspiration of the Messianic passages 
Christ's view of the Old-Testament Ijistorical narratives .... 64
His authentication of the Book of Jonah  65
Other references to Old-Testament history  68
Christ's ethical use of the Hebrew Scriptures  70
His treatment of the ipsissima verba  '70
Summary of Christ's teaching touching the nature and origin of Old-
Testament Scripture  "71
CHAPTER II.
THE NATUEE OF NE-W-TESTAMUNT BGEIPTUEE AS DETEEMnSTED BY THE
PEOMISES OF CHEIST.

Connection of Christ's promises with New-Testament Scripture
The authority delegated to the apostles 
The gift of the Spirit involves divine guidance .
Culminating form of the promises in the Fourth Gospel .
Primary application to the personal work of the apostles .
Eealization of the promises dependent on subjective considerations
Eealization of the promises gained by progressive approaches .
Eelation of the promises to critical questions 
The partial fulfilment of the promises 

75
75767779
7981
8386

CHAPTER m.
THE CLAIMS OF THB OLD TESTAMENT IN GENERAL, AND OF MOSAISM IN
PAETICULAE.
Certain assumptions involved in the proposal to examine .... 87
Effect of the authority of Christ  S7
Meagreness of the claims put forth by the Old-Testament writings . . 88
The claim set up in the contents of the -writings  89
The claims of the later writings for the earlier  90
Possibility of constructing the basis of a doctrine of Sacred Scripture
from the claims of the Old Testament  91
Application of the claims to the three divisions of the writings . . 92
The claim from an expressed theocratic consciousness .... 92
The claim implied in the doctrine of a divine covenant .... 95
The claim to be a record of successive acts of revelation .... 97
The more special claims made by Mosaism  98
Instances of an alleged divine commission to write  99
The case of the Decalogue and Book of the Covenant .... 100
The Song of Moses  2Q3
The Book of Deuteronomy  j04
Later notices of a written Torah  107
Summary of the claims of the writings of Mosaism .... 110
CHAPTER IV.
THE CLAIMS OF PE0PHETI8M AWD OF THE HOKHMAH.
Difference between the claims of Prophetism and those of the Torah . 114
The general conditions of prophecy among the Hebrews . . . 115
The subject of prophetic inspiration is the believing coramunity . . 117

CONTENTS.

Xlll

The law of the working of prophetic inspiration
Growth of the ethical elements of prophecy
The schools of the prophets ....
Three elements in the true conception of a prophet
Terms for the Hebrew prophet ....
Formulae for the gift of the Spirit
The basis of the prophetic consciousness .
The vocation or divine call of the prophet .
The divine commission to the prophet
The nature of the prophetic consciousness .
The divine gift of ethical insight and foresight
Intuitions of heathen diviners and prophetic foresight
Excitement of the moral emotions in prophecy
More specific claims of certain prophetic writings
Inference from the claims of the persons to their writingi
The claims of the Hokhmah in general
The claims of the Psalter in the Old Testament

PAGE 119 120
122124125127129129 132
133136137 140
142145 147
148

CHAPTER V.
THE CLAIMS FOE THE OLD TESTAMENT BY THE -WEITEES OF THE NE-^V.
Authority to be allowed to the -writers of the New Testament . . . 153
Objective conditions governing the views in the New Testament . . 154
The unity of the apostolic doctrine touching the Old Testament . . 155
Different views in the New Testament respecting the Old . . . 157
View of the Epistles of James and Jude  157
View of the Gospel of Matthew  158
Use of apocryphal writings by Jude  159
Petrine doctrine of the Old Testament  160
Pauline doctrine of the Old Testament  163
View of the writings of Luke and of the Epistle to the Hebrews . . 160
Johannean view of Mosaism  167
Quotations from the Old Testament in the New  169
Emphasis laid upon ethical correspondences  171
Alleged instances of rabbinizing  172
Formulae in citations from the Old Testament  175
New-Testament view of the nature of Hebrew prophecy ... 176
Free handling of the ipsissima verba of the Old Testament . - . . 178
Verbal inaccuracy in the New-Testament citations  179
Individual differences in the manner of citation  181
General doctrine of Sacred Scripture as taught in 2 Tim. iii. 16 . . 182

CHAPTER VI.
THE CLAIMS FOE THE NB-W- TESTAMENT BY ITS O-WN -WEITEES.
Relation of the promises of Christ to the claims of the New Testament . 185
Revelation belongs to the community of believers  185
Inspiration belongs to the community of believers  186
The donative and distributive work of the Spirit  188
New-Testament prophets and prophecy  190
Special call and commission of the apostles  191
Special endowment of the apostles  102

XIV

CONTENTS.

PAQl
Claims made for himself by the Apostle Paul  ^02
The source of apostolic authority 
Application of apostolic authority to different classes of truths . . 197
The three classes of New-Testament contents  199
Alleged mistakes of judgment and of fact  200
Misconceptions of the meaning of Old-Testament Scripture . . .205
Claims of New-Testament writers to inspiration of form ... 206
More specific claims for certain portions of the writings . . . .210
Inspiration of the apostolic ordinance  211
Particular claims of the Synoptic Gospels  211
The claims of the writings ascribed to the Apostle John ... 212
Summary of the biblical claims  213

PART II.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTOEY.
Relation of the biblical phenomena to an inductive theory .
Scope and classes of the phenomena to be examined
Eelation of certain postulates to the inquiry proposed .
CHAPTER II.

223
224226

THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCRIPTURE AS RELATED TO THE SCIENTIFIC
CONTENTS OF THE BIBLE.
No strictly scientific contents are found in the Bible  229
Necessary relations of coincidence or contradiction between scientific dis
coveries and the biblical statements  230
Assumptions of scientific infallibility unwarranted  233
Reasons for expecting scientific inexactness in the Bible .... 234
Biblical doctrine of God the Creator  236
Biblical conception of the relation of the universe to time .... 288
Doctrine of a successive creation taught in the Bible .... 239
Biblical doctrine of God the Preserver  242
God as the Author of particular events  243
God as the Creator and Lord of life  244
Unintermitting connection of God with physical phenomena ... 245
God as the ruler of events in history  246
Hebrew conceptions of man's relations to nature  247
Characteristics of the biblical descriptions of nature  248
New-Testament doctrine of God and nature  248
Attitude of Jesus toward nature  249
Crude conceptions of physical phenomena  250
Coincidences of the biblical and the scientific views  252
Characteristics of the Mosaic cosmogony  253
Elements of doctrine taught in the IVJosaic cosmogony .... 254
Coincidences and contrasts between the scientific and the Mosaic cos
mogony  258
Special scientific difiiculties in the Mosaic cosmogony .... 261

CONTENTS. XV
PAGE
The different forms of so-called reconciliation  263
The hypothesis of literalism  264
The hypothesis of restitution  265
The hypothesis of concordance  267
The hypothesis of ideal consti-uction  269
The Mosaic cosmogony as revealed and inspired  270
Extra-biblical cosmogonies contrasted with the biblical .... 271
The difficulties of the Noachian deluge  273
The origin and unity of the race  275
The antiquity of the race according to science and the Bible . . . 276
General conclusions as to the Inspiration of the scientific contents . . 283
CHAPTER III.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTimE AS EELATED TO THE MIEACULOUS
CONTENTS OF THE BIBLE.
Influence of the prepossessions upon the discussion  286
Miracles as a species of the supernatural  287
Effect of the postulate of a personal God  288
The internal and the external miracle  290
Philosophical and critical assumptions counter to miracles .... 291
The a priori possibility of the miracle  292
False and true conceptions of the miracle  293
The conception of the old orthodoxy untenable  294
Miracles not violations of the laws of nature  296
Essential elements of the true conception  299
The biblical view of the nature of miracles  300
The teleology of the miracle  305
General credibility of the biblical miracles  308
Fallacy of the reasoning of Hume  310
The evidence from the inherent nature of Christianity . . . .311
Organic connection of some miracles with the person of Christ . . 312
Physico-psychological theory of the miracles of Jesus .... 314
Necessity of miracles to a course of revelation  318
Explanation of the New-Testament idea of a miracle  320
Nature and amount of evidence from the eye-witnesses .... 323
Value of the testimony of the Apostle Paul  326
Construction of the evidence from the central point of view . . . 327
Criteria for judging the individual accounts of miracles .... 329
Evidential value of miracles  330
Growth of the idea of the miracle  331
The relative miracle in the Bible  334
Case of the alleged miracle in Josh, x  336
Relation of miracles to the doctrine of revelation  338
Characteristics of the biblical records of miracles  339
Conclusions touching the doctrine of Sacred Scripture .... 340
CHAPTER IV.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE AS EELATED TO THE HISTOEICAL
CONTENTS OP THE BIBLE.
Dignity of subject and form in the biblical histories  341
Twofold nature of the inquiry  • • 343

xvi CONTENTS. PAGE
False assumptions excluded from the examination  345
Historical character of the biblical revelation  345
The nature of the sources of the biblical historians  346
Examination of the first twelve chapters of Genesis .... 347
Narrative of the first pair  347
The temptation and the fall  350
The genealogies of the Cainites and Sethites  352
The ten antediluvian patriarchs  354
Marriage of the sons of God and the daughters of men .... 355
Ethnographic table of Gen. x., and account of Nimrod .... 356
Traditions of the Flood  357
Effect of Mosaic monotheism upon the early legends .... 358
The first material of Hebrew history  359
Traditions of the life of Abraham  861
The tradition of the Exodus  363
Narratives of Balaam and Samson  364
Alleged history in the Book of Daniel  366
The historical character of Esther  369
Position of Kuenen toward the Old-Testament histories . . . .370
Historical character of the Gospels  375
Effect of the presumption against miracles  376
Worthlessness of extra^biblical histories of the life of Jesus . . . 377
Literature impUed in the existence of the Synoptic Gospels . . .378
Historical value of the Epistles of Paul  379
Historical evidence from the existence of the Gospels . ' . . . .380
Principal elements of the evangelistic history  381
Harmony of the Synoptic Gospels  382
Harmony of the Synoptists with the Fourth Gospel .... 383
The Bible an alleged history of a course of revelation  386
Degree of accuracy attained in the bibUcal histories .... 387
Historical accuracy of Gen. xiv  ... 888
Accuracy in details of the story of Joseph . .... 389
Joseph and the Hyksos dynasties  391
The reigns of David and Solomon illustrated  392
Points of contact between the early kings and profane history . . .393
Shalmaneser and the son of Omri  394
The annals of Phul and Sargon  395
The annals of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon  397
Claim of the biblical histories to fair treatment  398
Conclusions adverse to a claim of historical infallibility .... 399
Minute verbal discrepancies of the Evangelists  400
Possible solutions for some historical discrepancies  402
Inaccuracies growing out of lapses of memory  404
Validity and accuracy of the bibUcal genealogies  406
Difficulties of the biblical chronology  4O8
Negative nature of the conclusions  ' . * . ' 410
Positive value of the criticism of the biblical histories . ... 410
Influence upon the narratives from the religious consciousness . .411
Inspiration and historical accuracy  412
Degrees of inspiration in the biblical histories . . . .'.'.' 414

CONTENTS. xvii

CHAPTER V.
THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCEIPTURE AS EELATED TO THB PEEDICTIVE
CONTENTS OF THE BIBLE. PAGE
Value attributed to the predictive contents of the Old Testament . . 415
Claim of the Hebrew prophets to foretell future events .... 416
Prediction an element of genuine prophecy  417
Mistaken views of the old orthodoxy  417
Prediction not mere calculation  419
Eelation of history and revelation to prediction  422
Certain ideas in which predictions germinate  423
The distinction between prediction and prognostication .... 424
Special difficulties of the earUer prognostications  425
Earliest germs of Messianic prophecy  426
Predictive contents of the Old Testament organic  427
The ethical and reUgious limitations of prediction  428
The historical limitations of precHction  430
Precise dates and exact names rare in prophecy  431
The theory of perspective  432
The personal limitations of prediction  434
Nature of the Messianic prophecies in the -widesfsense .... 435
In what does Messianic salvation consist^'  435
Who shall share in the expected Messianic salvation ? .... 438
Who shall introduce the Messianic salvation ?  439
The fulfilment of prediction  441
Alleged cases of unfulfilled predictions  442
New-Testament view of 01d-T«stament prediction  444
The Psalms cited as Messianic  447
Hermeneutical errors in the interpretation of prophecy .... 447
The New-Testament predictions  449
Effect of the work of criticism upon the argument from' projihecy . . 450
The historical and the ideal in projfliecy  451
The system of predictive contents . .  452
CHAPTER VT.
THE DOCTRINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE AS DEPENDENT UPON THE ETHICO.
EELIGIOUS CONTENTS OF THB BIBLE.
Impossibility of separating fheethico-religioas from the oth«r contents 454
Necessity for a change in the method of inquiry -  456
BibUcal claims for the ethico-religious contents
The ethico-reUgious contents embodied in all the others .
The imperfect and the ideal elements of ethical teaching
Revelation and inspiration apply to ethical and religious tnlMi
Relative perfection of the ethico-religiousicontents .
The moraUty of the Book of Esther 
Proverbs from the ethical point of view 
The ethical position of the Song of Solomon
Ethics of the bibUcal descriptions of personal experieHCe
Ethical condition of the writers of th© Old Testament
Ethics of the deed of Jael and of similar deeds
Ethics of the wars of extermination 
VOL. L

457458460461
463 464465

467468470

XVlll

CONTENTS.

Old-Testament estimate of its own heroes
Moral character of the imprecatory Psahns .
Ethics of the Torah 
The ethics of the jus talionis among the Hebrews
The ideal side and divine characteristics of the Torah
Historical excellences of the ethico-religious contents .
The biblical ethics refers to a divine personality
BibUcal view of the nature and function of conscience
Ethical teachings of Christ 
Ethical power of Christian faith 
Ethics of the Bible not speculative . . . •
Value and force of the principle of love
Argument from the ethical and religious truth of Scripture

PAGlf 470 471473473 475473479 480481 482483
. 484486

CHAPTER vn.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTUEE AS EELATBD TO THB AUTHOESHIP
AND COMPOSITION OF THB BIBLICAL BOOKS.
Intimate relation of the critical to the dogmatic inquiry . . . .490
VaUd conception of the modern higher criticism  491
Inadequacy of the tradition as to questions of authorship . . . .492
Effect of recent theories upon the conception of bibUcal religion . . 493
More direct relations of criticism to the doctrine of Sacred Scripture . . 496
Uncertain authorship of many of the bibUcal books .... 487
The cases of most complex growth  498
The two classes of books to be considered  500
The ancient tradition as to the authorship of the Pentateuch . . .500
Introduction of the modern era of Pentateuch criticism .... 502
The essential question debated by modern criticism  502
Tradition disproved by critical inquiry  503
Facts opposed to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch . . . .504
Strata of laws in the Pentateuch  504
Divergent historical accounts in the Pentateuch  507
Tone of speech and indirect allusions  509
Particular reference of sections to their sources  510
Evident composite structure of the Pentateuch  512
The true conception of Pentateuch criticism  513
History of the analysis of the entire Hexateuch  514
Tabular description of the various groups of writings  515
Conclusions from a review of the tables  525
Question as to the date and authorship of Deuteronomy .... 526
The legislation of Deuteronomy  527
Discovery of the written Torah in the reign of Josiah .... 528
Nature and origin of the so-called Grundschrift  530
True conception of the age of Ezra  530
Naturalistic theories of the rise of Old-Testament religion . . . 581
Necessity of an adequate conception of the personality of Moses . . 532
Most ancient elements in the so-called Grwndschrift .... 534
Nature of the fundamental law-book  535
Gradual codification of the laws  536
The origin of the feasts  588
Sanctifying of the first-born  539

CONTENTS. xix
PAGE
The laws of offerings and sacrifices  639
The day of atonement  540
The tabernacle and the priesthood  , 541
Language and style of the so-calfed Orundschrift  544
The origin of the Book of Ezra-Nehemiah  545
The problems offered by the Synoptic Gospels  547
Personal authors of the Synoptic Gospels  549
Importance of the inquiry into the authorship of the Fourth Gospel . 550
Antecedent improbability of a forgery like John's Gospel .... 552
Early pseudonymous Christian literature  552
No peculiar deficiency in the external testimonies  554
Improper use of the argumentum e silentio  555
Early citations from John's Gospel  557
The witness within the Gospel . . •  559
Modern attacks upon the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel . . . 559
The ethical consciousness of the author . ,  561
Influence of reflection upon the historical elements  562
Literary relation of the Fourth to the Synoptic Gospels .... 563
Theological position of the Gospel of John  565
The Christology of the Gospel of John  566
Discourses of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel  568
More specific historical relations to the Synoptists  570
Delicate indications of the eye-witness in John  571
Summary of the argument for the genuineness of John .... 572
Inspiration of the Fourth Gospel  573
The case of the Book of Daniel  573
General conclusions touching the origin and nature of Sacred Scripture
from the critical discussion of questions of authorship .... 575
CHAPTER vm.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE AS EELATED TO THE LANGUAGE
AND STYLE OF THE BIBLICAL BOOKS.
Certain indirect relations between the language of the Bible and the doc
trine of Sacred Scripture  581
Inspiration of the linguistic form of the Bible  583
Differences between the language of the Old Testament and that of the
New  585
The Hebrew considered as one of the Semitic languages .... 585
Origin and ancient form of -written Hebrew  586
Means for a comparative study of biblical Hebrew  587
Secular Hebrew Uterature  589
Principal characteristics of the biblical Hebrew  590
Lack of literary style in the Old Testament  595
Wealth of words found in the bibUcal Hebrew  595
Characteristics of the Hebrew prose  596
The forms of Hebrew poetry  597
Figures of speech employed in the biblical poetry  598
Nature and effect of the Hebrew parallelism  600
Peculiarities of the language of prophecy  602
The growth of Hebrew Uterature  603
Inferiority of the later Old-Testament writings  604

XX

CONTENTS.

Epoch beginmng with the rise of written prophecy
Linguistic peculiarities of the individual authors .
Power over language of the Christian ideas .
The three elements of the New-Testament language
Origin and nature of the koiv^ 
The Greek used in Hellenistic reUgious writings .
Hebraisms in the Septuagint and in the New Testament
Specific characteristics of the New-Testament Greek
The new Christian symbolism 
Certain specifically Christian words ....
Authorial peculiarities in the New Testament
Characteristic language of the Apostle Paul .
Providential preparation of a language for biblical religion
Influence of revelation and inspiration upon language .

PAGE 605
606 607
608609613614617618618
623623624626

CHAPTER IX.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE AS EELATED TO THB HISTOEY OF
THB CANON.

Relation between the growth of a Canon and Sacred Scripture .
The question of the Canon an historical question .
Effect of critical inquiries upon the question of the Canon .
Necessity for a true conception of the Canon ....
History of the word " canon " 
Meaning of the term "apocryphal" as applied to writings
Conception of canonical writings held by the ancient Church .
Nature of the doubt as to the New-Testament Antilegomena .
Difficulty of giving a precise history of the Old-Testament canon
Indications in the Old Testament of a process of collecting books
The canonization of Deuteronomy 
The canonization of the Pentateuch 
Formation of a canon of the Prophets 
Canonization of the Hagiographa 
Eedactionary revisions of the Old-Testament writings
Fixing of the limits of the Old-Testament canon .
Witness of Sirach to the Old-Testament canon ....
The testimony of Second Maccabees and of Josephus
Nature of the process of forming a New-Testament canon .
The three steps of this process 
Early use of the New-Testament writings 
The reading of uncanonical Christian writings
Argument from the silence of early writers 
Free manner of quotation among the Church Fathers .
Earliest testimonies to the existence of New-Testament books .
State of the testimony at the close of the second century
Connection of the Canon and the growth of the Church Catholic
Co-ordinating of the apostolic writings with the Old Testament
Proofs of an early unity of view 
Settlement of the question of the Antilegomena
The canon of Eusebius and its effect 
Continued vacillation of view as to the Old-Testament Apocrypha
The Canon according to Jerome and Augustine ....

629631
633635636 638640
641
64264S!644645646647
648 649
651652 653654
655656657658660 663

667 670671672673

CONTENTS.

XXl

PAGE
Possibility of early pseudonymous writings  675
Period of the traditional view of the Canon  676
Revival of an interest in questions of the Canon . • . . . 678
Luther's views concerning the Canon  678
The dogmatic view of the Canon in the post-Eeformation era . . 680
Historical and critical estimate of the Canon by Semler .... 682
Modem critical conception of the Canon  683
Summary of conclusions as to the nature of Sacred Scripture . . . 683
CHAPTER X.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTUEE AS EELATED TO THE TEXT OF THE
BIBLE.

Connection of the text of the Bible with the post-Reformation dogma
Impossibility of maintaining the diplomatic certainty of Scripture
Difference in the textual uncertainties of the two Testaments .
Nature and date of the oldest Hebrew manuscripts .
The traditional fixing of the text as Masora ...
Construction of the Masoretic text with its punctuation .
Value of the Old-Testament Keris ....
Care for the transmission of the text in the Talmudic era
Impossibility of vindicating perfectly the Masoretic text
Testimony of the Septuagint to the Hebrew text
Sources and value of the text of the Septuagint .
Origin and date of the Samaritan Pentateuch .
InabiUty to fix the details of the pre-Exilian text
Sources and classes of errors in the Hebrew text
Existence of so-called tendency changes
Conjectural emendations of the Masoretic text
Fate of the autograph copies of New-Testament writings
Nature of the early New-Testament manuscripts .
Origin and character of the divisions of the text .
Extent of the resources in New-Testament manuscripts .
Sources and nature of the corruptions of the Greek text
Limits of the variation of the New-Testament text .
Conclusions as to the nature of Sacred Scripture .

CHAPTER XL
INDUCTIVE THBOEY OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
Comparison of the biblical claims with the results of criticism
Points of coincidence and of divergence estabUshed by inquiry
Argument from the parsimony of the biblical claims .
Eeview of the nature of the historical claims ....
Perfect historical accuracy neither claimed nor proved
Difficulties growing out of mistaken views as to authorship .
Statement of the relations of the later to the earUer writers
Difficulties growing out of apparently pseudonymous writings
Confirmation of the essential claims 
Value of the claims which are confirmed 
Necessity that revelation shall have an historical record
The most direct and important of the ethico-reUgious claims .
Argument from the progressive nature of biblical revelation

691692693 694695695697698699 700
701703704 706706707 708
709711713 713717718

720721722722724725732734735736
737 738
741

Xxn

CONTENTS.

Claims arising from a relation to the person of Christ .
The three more specific elements of an inductive theory .
Certain respects in which the biblical writings are not a unity
Difference of the two Testaments with respect to unity
Unity of the biblical writings as due to the unity of revelation
The unity of the Spirit as a co-ordinating force in history .
Unity of the biblical writings as secured by the process of the Canon
Pre-eminent unity of relation to the person and work of Christ .
Unfitness of the word "infalUble" as appUed to sacred writings .
Disproof of the dogma of infaUibility as a result of the induction
Sense in which the Bible is an unfailing source of truth .
Meanings of the word "inspired" as applied to the biblical -writings
Suggestion of the differences between the biblical and other writings
Summary of the inductive conclusion concerning the Bible

PAGE 742
744
744
745
747
748
750
751
752
752756
757
760
701

THE
DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.

INTRODUCTION.
The facts and doctrines of biblical religion perpetually offer
themselves for re-examination by the human mind. Within cer
tain limits, such a general statement as this needs no defence :
when rightly explained and understood, it commends itself to all
whose opinion it is worth while to regard. The whole question
of the relation which exists between revelation and the facul
ties and activities of the human mind has received, indeed,
a variety of answers. The particular relation in which that
combination of such faculties and activities somewhat loosely
called "reason" should stand to the biblical religion has long
been a special subject of debate. Some difficulties raised in the
debate can as yet scarcely be said to be settled. Those, then,
who theoretically admit the truth of our opening statement,
win differ in their answers to such questions as the following :
How far, and with what purpose, may we perpetually re-exam
ine the facts and doctrines of this religion ? With what spirit,
and with what postulates, should we begin any such proposed
re-examination ? How far must we regard certain traditional
views as fixed, aud how far subject to modification ? And how
shall we satisfy the demands of the religious consciousness, and
promote the religious life, while at the same time we satisfy the
demands of the reason in critical, historical, and philosophical
investigations ? Right answers to these and similar questions
do, without doubt, involve many and great difficulties. Thej-
must be attempted, so far as the general purpose of our work
makes it necessary, in their proper place. We only claim, at
present, the general right, and feel the common obligation, to
VOL. I. A

2 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
accept that offer of themselves for full and searching re-exam
ination which is made by the facts and doctrines of biblical
religion. The same claim is implicitly made, the same obliga
tion professedly felt, by every inquirer ; and this is equally true
whether the inquirer propose to himself the simple defence or
the thorough testing of traditional views, and whether, as the
result of the inquiry, his o-wn views form themselves into the
so-called orthodox, or the so-called heretical.
For, indeed, he understands nothing of the spirit and tenden
cies of the age who does not see that this same human mind is
conscious of having won a right to carry its researches to the
extreme limits of possibility. It insists upon being untram
melled by conventional restrictions, and upon recognizing no
barriers this side of the insuperable. This spirit and these
tendencies have doubtless resulted in no little direct mischief
to individual minds, and in certain weaknesses and follies indi
rectly produced, wliich permeate the common understanding of
the age. But the mischief cannot be cured, the weaknesses
and follies cannot be diminished, by any attempts to force the
reason back into its ancient limitations. Nor are the spirit and
tendencies of the age by any means essentially irreverent or
pernicious. They may be seen to be themselves due, in much
of their strength and in many of their more notable character
istics, to the influences of this same biblical religion. Certain it
is that the Christian Church — whether for her ultimate injury
or benefit, we make it a matter of faith in her Divine Lord not
to doubt — is much agitated by the same spirit and tendencies.
Her devoted and trusted adherents are among the foremost in
the examination of the fundamental facts of her early history,
and in the discussion of her cardinal doctrines. That these
adherents feel, in addition to their ordinary zeal in pursuing
such stimulating and promising subjects of inquiry, a particular
eagerness to serve the cause of Christianity with their best
learning and most devout piety, it is not courteous nor just
to doubt. But it cannot be forgotten that they can claim the
right to render this service at all only by making common
ground with their opponents in emphasizing the perpetual
privilege and duty of re-examination. And already the bene
ficial effects of assuming such a position toward the truths of
biblical religion abundantly appear. They appear in the better
understanding and higher appreciation of the real nature of
historical Christianity, and in the profounder and broader faith

INTRODUCTION. 3
and comprehension of its most sacred truths. They appear in
the multitude of the offerings which have been made, at great
cost of research, thought, and solicitude, to the cause of these
truths. These effects we would by no means consent to part
with in order to secure the supposed benefits of an age when
faith should be wholly undisturbed, and reason dumb through
fear to utter the questions and doubts she cannot avoid feel
ing. No justification for an attempt to re-examine the doctrine
of Sacred Scripture is, then, needed beyond the general one
that this doctrine, like all the others, is not only properly suh-
ject to, but openly invites, the best efforts of each new inquirer.
The inquirer need desire no higher honor than to make the
attempt -with the same general purpose which has actuated a
j\Iiiller, a Ritschl, or a Dorner.
But there are special reasons why the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture should receive a re-examination at the present time.
That this statement does not proudly over-estimate the im
portance of our own particular inquiry, even a superficial
acquaintance -with the most palpable facts will make manifest.
A wide feeling of interest and expectation, touching the origin
and nature of the biblical writings, certainly exists. This in
terest and expectation appear to be in some sort peculiar, both
on account of the peculiar relation of this doctrine to other
doctrines in the system of Christian truth, and also by reason
of the nature of the history of this doctrine in the past. They
also indicate the special promise of some result in the better
understanding and statement of this doctrine through the recent
discoveries of exegetical, critical, and historical science.
The relation which the doctrine of Sacred Scripture sustains
to the other doctrines in the Christian system of fact and truth
is, of necessity, somewhat pecuhar. It is undeniably true, on
the one hand, that the knowledge of the earliest facts of bibli
cal religion is derived almost wholly, and of its doctrines very
largely, from the biblical writings. How those facts and doc
trines must be understood, cannot fail, then, to be to a consid
erable extent dependent upon what these writings are. Indeed,
all the questions which concern the origin and nature of bibli
cal religion are very intimately connected with those which
concern the origin and nature of the Bible itself. So intimate
is this connection, that certain of the latter questions, however
much emphasis may be thrown upon their purely critical and
historical character, can never sink to the level of ordinary

4 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
archseological researches : on the contrary, they must be consid
ered as in some sort essential questions of religion and religious
faith, so long as biblical religion and the faith of mankind m it
endure. But it is undeniably true, on the other hand, that the
post-Reformation dogma of inspiration greatly exaggerated the
importance, and quite completely misconceived the nature, of
this connection. It thus came about, that the whole value and
efficiency of the truths of redemption, as weU as the conduct of
the redeemed life, were made logically dependent upon a dogma
as to the origin and nature of certain writings. A theory of
so-called inspiration became guarded and worshipped as the
articulus vel stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae. Totally different sub
jects of inquiry then became confused, and really unimportant
interests were mistaken for those of capital importance. And
finally the whole fabric of Christian truth seemed in danger of
crumbling in the sight of human reason, whenever an addi
tional sign of the insecurity of the Hebrew and Greek texts,
or a new ground for calling in question the genuineness and
authenticity of some book or passage of Scripture, appeared, i
Thus did the forces of rationalism, whether so-caUed orthodox
or so-called heretical, seem to have conspired together to make
a rational faith impossible. Under the load of arguments and
facts accumulated either for the defence of the Bible or for the
attack upon it, Christianity itself seemed liable to break down.
Let it not be supposed that the last century has brought no
improvement in respect to the intelligent comprehension of that
relation which really exists between the biblical -writings and
the biblical religion. In the minds at least of thoughtful stu
dents of biblical criticism and theology, a great change has taken
place. It has been seen not only that the dogma formerly held
cannot be maintained in the face of critical and historical dis
coveries, but also that it does not, as a dogma, fit in harmoni
ously with the best dogmatic construction of Christian truths.
And yet, besides whatever salutary opinions and impressions
concerning the origin and nature of Sacred Scripture remain
as results of the post-Reformation dogma, there are also still to
be detected not a few of its sad mistakes and bitter prejudices.
And, doubtless, it will require no little time and effort on the
part of a candid and faithful scholarship to correct these
mistakes, and remove these prejudices. But, as an indispens
able preliminary to any such attempt, it should be noticed, that
a certain way of regarding the Bible involves an altogether fakg

INTRODUCTION. 5
and exaggerated notion of the importance of some definite the
ory of its inspiration in its bearing on the acceptance of the
truths, and the discipline of the life, of historical Cliristianity.
The importance of the Bible itself in relation to these truths
and this life can, indeed, scarcely be exaggerated. Any dogma
as to its origin and nature must be content to take simply the
place which fitly belongs to it as assigned by the Christian
consciousness, developing under the guidance of the Spirit who
gave the Bible to the Church. In other words, the fate of the
post-Reformation dogma, or of any other theory, of the so-called
inspiration of Sacred Scripture, can no longer claim to involve
the fate of the entire system of Christian facts and truths.
All that has been said above, however, does not change the
peculiar and in some respects peculiarly important relations
which exist between this doctrine and the other Christian
doctrines most closely allied. It is from the Bible alone that
a true historical conception of the nature and growth of the
religion of Israel, and of early Christianity, can be framed.
It alone gives the means for forming an essentially accurate
and fairly complete picture of the life of Jesus Christ. Con
sidered from the lowest and most purely historical point of
view, it is an unrivalled and exhaustless source of etliical and
religious facts and ideas, which can, with a measure of suc
cess, be so arranged and articulated as to show how the most
influential and lofty of the religions of earth passed through
the successive stages of its development. For the consistent
believer in its supernatural side, it is somewhat more : it is
the record and storehouse of the history and ideas of the self-
revelation of God in redemption. This history and these ideas
can, of course, never be treated as though they were devoid
of special importance. They are themselves of such a nature
as to endow the writings which record and contain them with
some of their o-wn characteristics.
It follows, then, that the peculiar importance of the concep
tion which is held concerning the origin and nature of the bibli
cal writings stands related to the biblical religion chiefly through
the two ideas of history and revelation. All the most important
truths of this religion have their roots in certain alleged facts
of history. The truths cannot be so idealized as to be inde
pendent of the reality of those concrete facts which embody and
present them for the human mind. This history is preserved as
contained in the biblical writings. Of a certain part of the

6 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
history contained in these writings we are forced, then, to say,
that, unless it is genuine and substantially accurate history,
the biblical religion cannot maintain the validity of some of its
ruling ideas. It is at once evident that the question of primary
importance for both the writings and the religion is this: Is
the history given in these writings so far veritable history that
it will sustain the weight of the religious ideas which are em
bodied in it ? Faith either never raises this question, or else
answers it with an assumption. But it is further evident that
the answer to this question can be scientifically established
only after the writings and their history have been subjected to
the most thorough investigation. A favorable issue to this
investigation, however, will forthwith lay in sure critical and
historical foundations the beginnings of a doctrine of Sacred
Scripture. For, to him who holds the religion most sacred, the
records of its history must also be somewhat sacred. More
over, such an one cannot fail to see that the spirit of the religion
and of the records is one. In this way it will come about that
the biblical history, although investigated with the utmost
candor and thoroughness of research, will inevitably be conse
crated in the mind that accepts the religion which has its roots
in this history. And thus the peculiar importance of that
relation which exists between the doctrine of Sacred Scripture
and the other doctrines of biblical religion, through the bibhcal
history, will be made to appear.
The other chief idea, through which tlie peculiar importance
of this doctrine as related to all the others ma}- be seen, is
the idea of revelation. Tliis idea is the one which brings the
biblical religion into connection with true conceptions of
nature, with conscience and self-consciousness, with human
experience and human motives in the ethical and religious
life. The same idea runs through all the various parts of
the development of this religion, and binds them into one by a
supernatural bond. For, if biblical religion is allied with all
other religions in so far as they partake in the idea of divine
self-revelation, it is specifically differenced from all the others
in that it alone is the self-revelation of God in redemption.
But this is the idea which must be followed in order to reach
any satisfactory conclusion regarding the origin and nature of
the Bible. It will be found upon reflection that all the separate
phases of the subsequent discussion have been directed, and to
a certain extent dominated, by this one comprehensive idea.

INTRODUCTION. 7
The special importance of the relation of this doctrine to the
others must, then, be seen in the fact that the Bible is dependent
for its existence and character upon revelation, and that revela
tion is dependent for its method and efficiency upon the exist
ence and character of Sacred Scripture.
This one capital idea, however, involves several subordinate
ideas, which may be referred to as enhancing our estimate of
the importance of our theme. The revelation of redemption
has its centre and culmination in the person of the Redeemer.
It is the doctrine of this person wliich, in modern theology, has
taken the place at various times usurped by the dogma of the
order of the divine decrees, the dogma of inspiration, or the
dogma of the Church. This person is the supreme self-revela
tion of God in redemption. It is, however, through the medium
of Sacred Scripture that we are able, first of all, to apprehend
him as such. To this objective standard of his personality, so
to speak, the Church is perpetually obliged to refer the differing
conceptions of men. This fact gives immense importance not
simply to the question whether the alleged facts concerning
Jesus, as given in the Bible, are trustworthy, but also to the
question whether the apostolic conception of this personality
is trustworthy. For we are dependent for our conception of
Christ not only upon the facts of the Evangelists, but also upon
the apostolic conception. Certain views of the nature and
origin of certain portions of the biblical writings are, then,
peculiarly important in their relations to the life of faith and
obedience, as well as to the development of Christian doctrine.
In close connection with, and yet in subordination to, the idea
of revelation, stands also that of authority. Manifestly the
chief interest and intent of the post-Reformation dogma of the
inspiration of the Bible was to secure some authority which
should bind the reason and conscience of men as did the infal
lible authority of the Church under the Roman-Catholic belief
and practice. In this the dogma met with no permanent success,
for both its method and its underlying purpose were mistaken.
, But the post-Reformation dogma is by no means to be con
founded with the Protestant principle of the Bible as giving
the only and sufficient regula fidei to all believers. The dis
cussion of the whole question of the nature and extent of
biblical authority belongs much farther on in the course of
this treatise. It is enough at present to call attention to
this thought : Only in the light of a true and complete idea

8 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
i:)f revelation can we discover the sources and limits of the
authority of Sacred Scripture.
The doctrine of the authority of the Bible is confessedly a
very important factor in determining all Christian truth, and
in directing the religious life. Protestantism has, indeed, never
fully defined its view of this doctrine in respect to many of
its differences from the view of the Roman Catholic Church,
or from that of the Church Catholic ; but it has uniformly
in theory laid great emphasis upon this doctrine. That the
emphasis has been, on the whole, too great for the sake of
truth and the best progress of the Church, we are by no means
inclined to affirm. That it has been for the most part intelh-
gently placed, and properly distributed, we do not hesitate to
deny. The fundamental principle of Protestantism, however,
compels the doctrine of Sacred Scripture to sustain a peculiar,
and a peculiarly important, relation to the other doctrines of
biblical religion, by reason of that authority (whatever its
nature and limits may be) which revelation has bestowed upon
the Bible.
Among the ideas, subordinate to that of revelation, which
confer dignity upon the examination of the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture, the idea of inspiration must also be placed. In the
post-Reformation dogma this idea dominated that of revelation.
But modern criticism and modern theology combine to assure
us that the relation of these two ideas must be reversed. They
undertake to demonstrate that the post-Reformation idea of
inspiration, as applied throughout to the biblical -writings, has
no correlative anywhere in fact. It is an idea only, in the more
unworthy sense of the word, — a fictitious object created by the
imagination. We cannot, however, dispense with inspiration
in rendering our account of the origin and nature of either the
biblical religion or the biblical -writings. For there is an idea
of inspiration which corresponds with abundant facts of human
experience, as well as with the nature of religion ; and the
influence of this idea and fact of inspiration over the origin
and nature of the Bible is unmistakable. The importance of a
true conception of inspiration with reference to our entire con
struction of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture is, then, certainly
very great. Through that conception this particular doctrine
enters into several influential relations with the religious ideas
of God, the soul, and the communion of the two. From a com
bination of these ideas of revelation, inspiration, and authority,

INTRODUCTION. 9
issues the idea of the Word of God, — a phrase which, belong
ing in its highest application to a person, and being in its earli
est biblical uses synonymous with some special communication
of the divine thought and purpose to an individual mind, was
made by the post-Reformation dogma to comprehend all the
words of the accepted canonical writings, with a like meaning
and force. It is not necessary, however, to point out other
relations which might give a special theoretic value to the im
portance of re-examining the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. It
is enough to say, that this doctrine has many vital, and certain
peculiarly sensitive, connections with the most important of
religious truths.
But why make even a brief theoretic plea for an essay which
is so plainly and pressingly demanded by the call of history ?
Who that listens to the voices in the air, or attends to the
expressions which abound upon the printed page, can for a
moment doubt the demand for a re-examination of this doc
trine? The demand is the result of one of the mighty re
actions of the history of opinion in the Christian Church. It
belongs to the historical portions of our work to trace in detail
the proofs of this statement: a few words will set forth so
much of the history as is needed for our present purpose.
The only attempt which any large section of the Christian
Church has ever made, rigidly to formulate the doctrine of
Sacred Scripture, resulted in what we have called the post-
Reformation dogma. This dogma was dominant in the Prot
estant, and especiaUy in the Reformed churches, from about
the year 1600 A.D. until the middle of the eighteenth century.
It found its extreme symbolic statement in the Formula Con
sensus Helvetica. It early began, however, to encounter certain
undoubted facts made known through critical and historical re
searches. The controversy which accompanied these researches
at first occupied itself chiefly with the text of the Old and New
Testaments. The dogma with a sure instinct seemed to feel
that its life in the future depended upon its ability to defend
successfully the diplomatic infallibility of Sacred Scripture.
This successful defence it could not achieve. Beaten here, it
retreated from one point to another farther in toward the inmost
citadel of Christian truth. But its own essential nature forbids
that it should find another defensible position after it has once
been dislodged from the one it originally fortified. It is now
beginning to be more clearly seen, that, in order to secure the

10 THE DOCTRINE OE SACRED SCRIPTURE.
true and defensible positions for resisting attacks upon the prin
ciple of Protestantism, the former lines must be wholly aban
doned. While the Bible has been gaining ground as an active
and, as it were, personal force in the advance of historical Chris
tianity, this human opinion concerning the Bible has lost almost
every inch of. territory which it once thought securely and for
ever its own. What opinion shall rule in the territory from
which this has been dislodged by modern criticism and modern
theology? Negative views concerning the Bible, and fragments of
ancient dogma, cannot continue to satisfy the demand of the
present time ; nor does it become the believer in a li-ving re
ligion to spend his strength and time in throwing stones at
what is already expiring. Moreover, a certain something re
mains over from this past history which shows no signs of
diminished strength. A particular development of view regard
ing a great Christian truth has entered all the more mightily
into the life and faith of the Christian Church. The dogma as
a dogma need no longer attract more than an unimpassioned
historical interest. But that attitude of modern thought
toward the Bible which has been in part both cause and effect
of the dogma continues, in its most important characteristics,
still unchanged. From this very attitude issues the loud and
earnest call for a re-examination of the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture. In other words, it is because the mind of Christen
dom is still turned toward the Bible as the authentic source
for the facts and truths of the Christian religion, that the
demand for a reconstructed view of its nature and origin is sol
persistently made. The diy'ecta membra of the post-Reforma-l
tion dogma are little likely again to be pieced together, and
made to constitute a body of truth vvhich can sustain the strain
of investigation ; but their presence may remind us that the
truths which gave them whatever of real life they once had
are still vital, and able to embody themselves in another,
stronger, and more comely form.
As to the real prevalence and intensity of this demand for a
re-examination of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, the his
torical explanation for which has just been hinted at, we con
tent ourselves with simply making an appeal to the current
literature. The general fact of such a demand will perhaps be
questioned by none. Some will be found, however, who -mil
doubt whether the time for attempts at a reconstruction of this

INTRODUCTION. H
doctrine has yet fully come. Some, perhaps, will unqualifiedly
deny that such an attempt would bo timely. That an abun
dance of new material regarding the origin and nature of the
Bible — exegetical, critical, historical, and even philosophical
— presents itself for consideration, every student is well aware.
But it may be claimed, that on this very account the question
of Sacred Scripture should be allowed to rest longer. It is
certain that much of this material is of at best doubtful value :
some of it is, without doubt, much worse than valueless. It
may be said truly, that many important critical and historical
questions, the consideration and conclusion of which seem
necessarily to enter into the doctrine of Sacred Scripture,
remain as yet unsolved. Who, for instance, can consider as
solved all the questions as to the origin of the Pentateuch
and the contained Mosaic Torah ; as to the authorship and first
meaning of some of the Messianic Psalms ; or even, perhaps, as
to the unity of Isaiah or Zechariah ? In what relation does Eze
kiel stand to the so-called Mosaic ritual ? More important still :
How far did not the religion of Israel, especially its ritualistic
and even its more highly developed doctrinal portions, origi
nate about or after the time of the Exile? Moreover, what
sufficient guaranty have we for the textual integrity of nearly
aU the earKer portions of the Old Testament? And — most
important question of all ! — how shall the evangelistic histories
be so treated as to give us a satisfactory biography of our Lord
with a consistent chronological arrangement, a plausible recon
ciliation of the principal discrepancies, and a clear stereoscopic
picture of one character as seen through the two media of the
Synoptists and John ? Nor are these questions more than a
few selected instances from the countless number of those still
debated in modern historical and critical researches. Yet all of
this countless number have their bearing, more or less impor
tant, upon the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. How, then, while
they remain unsettled, shall it be successfully reconstructed ?
The case might be made yet more discouraging by enumerat
ing some of the many difficult philosophical and theological
questions which are concerned with any inquiry into the origin
and nature of the Bible. Among such questions are those as
to the personality of the Holy Spirit, as to miracles, revelatior.,
inspiration, and the authority of the Word of God. The pro
posed examination will doubtless lead over a path strewn thick
with difficulties. But it is not likely that the detailed examina-

12 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tion of any of the great doctrines of Christianity will ever
cease to be attended by serious difficulties: certainly such diffi
culties are not in the present time confined to the doctrine
of Sacred Scripture. Is not the statement of that doctrine of
the supernatural and of miracles which is indispensable to a
systematic treatment of the truths of the Christian religion
made peculiarly difficult by many crude theories and unsettled
problems from the natural and physical sciences? We do not
argue, however, that all the important questions which enter
into our general conception of the relations of nature and the
supernatural must be adjusted by the physical and natural
sciences, before our re-examination and formal re-statement of
the Christian doctrine of the supernatural shall take place.
We should probably wait long, if not till the end of human
endeavor, if we waited for the settlement of all the critical
questions involved, before making an essay toward a re-state
ment of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture.
Nor does it. appear possible, that, after sufficient waiting, a
new doctrine may be constructed by some one mind, — a weU-
spun theory which, like the elaborate pages of Quenstedt (" De
Sacra Scriptura " in his ponderous " Systema Theologicum " )
shall claim to settle all these questions for all inquirers to the
end of time. Tenfold more light upon all the most obscure
critical and historical inquiries of biblical introduction would
never again make such a task possible for a single human mind.
Any workman may well bo content to bear some humble part
near the beginnings of that reconstructed theory upon which
many minds must continue to labor for a long time to come.
Nor is it, properly speaking, a new doctrine which he can hope
to announce. To attempt a new Christian doctrine, might
seem sufficiently absurd and indicative of a disordered am
bition. Nevertheless something more than merely a new
theory after the old pattern, or a new statement of the old
theory, is certainly demanded. A re-examination of the Bible
itself, its claims, its phenomena, its history in the uses of the
Christian Church, its meaning and intent in the light of Chris
tian consciousness, — nothing less than this will make so much
as a beginning toward satisfying the present demand. For
doing so much, at least, as to make a beginning, there is reason
to hope the issue will show the time to have fully comCr
Moreover, it is by no means impossible to exaggerate the
importance of the subordinate historical and critical questions

INTRODUCTION. 13
with respect to their bearing upon an essay toward a true and
complete doctrine of Sacred Scripture. To the post-Reforma
tion dogma, indeed, every jot and tittle of Scripture logically
becomes a point, to fix which with precision is of vital impor
tance. For the overthrow of this dogma, in its principle, one
instance of fallibility, when proved, is as good as a thousand.
The value of multiplying these instances is, then, of a negative
and destructive kind. The distasteful task of seeming to point
out flaws in the Bible, in a too eager and combative way, is
forced upon the investigator who must show the untenable
nature of the dogma, in order to render vacant the position
which a true theory must fill. But we no longer feel the
obligation to proceed in this negative and destructive wa)'.
When, once for all, our manner of regarding the Bible has in
principle been changed, many of these questions become rela
tively unimportant, or even insignificant. Then, to multiply
such instances becomes no longer necessary ; or, if necessary
for the sake of ampler illustration and proof of the true theory,
it can no longer be regarded as either invidious or dangerous.
It also becomes quite unnecessary that all these questions
should be settled on their own critical and historical grounds.
Enough such questions, upon which an opinion can be main
tained with a good degree of confidence, can be selected for
his purpose by the inquirer who has mastered the material at
his command. And how rich is this material, through the
labors of many scores of busy and earnest scholars during the
last hundred years ! The accumulation of credible results, in
the domains of biblical exegesis, criticism, ethics, and theology,
and in the history of the Canon and of the unfolding Christian
consciousness as related to Sacred Scripture, if not all that
could be wished, is surely (we think) all that is indispensable.
What, furthermore, are the scope and method of the pro
posed inquiry ? It has already been said that a re-statement
of the theory of the inspiration of the Bible, in any such
meaning as the post-Reformation dogma attached to the term,
although differing formally from this dogma, would not satisfy
the present demand. To frame a theory, and to support it by
appeal to proof-texts, and biblical phenomena, and cognate theo
logical propositions, and facts of Christian experience, would be
a comparatively easy task. But what if other proof-texts and
phenomena and propositions and facts — as many, valid, and
important — contravened the well-framed theory ? No beauty

14 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and compactness of framing could save it from the assaults
of these detruded factors. Moreover, the careful student of
biblical criticism and church history will discover that the
customary term — the so-called inspiration of the Bible —
does not properly cover the entire inquiry. We can no longer
claim to have learned what the Bible is, when we have once
adopted some theory of its inspiration. It is one of the mis
leading results of that particular theory to which reference has
already been made, that it has led men to cling by a term which
they can no longer define in the traditional manner, and which
they can perhaps no longer define at all. The term " inspira
tion," as applied to the biblical writings, carries with it what is
put into it. And, not infrequently, more dangerous and untrue
opinions are involved in its use, out of cautious deference to
an impliedly defunct theological nomenclature, than would be
involved in its open rejection. Yet those who would reject
the term without attempt properly to define and limit it are,
in their turn, little likely to understand the true nature and
origin of Sacred Scripture. The complete inquiry must, then,
involve an examination of all that is understood under the
customary term ; but it must be more comprehensive than can
properly be indicated by this term. Were the inquisy stated
as simply one into the inspiration of the Bible, in the proper
technical meaning of those words, it would be embarrassed by
its own narrowness, and by an accumulation of technicalities
and prejudices.
It is proposed, then, to inquire into the origin and nature of
the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as con
sidered in the totality of their phenomena and in their com
plete history. In the largest sense of the words, ivhat is the
Bible ? But this inquiry does not cover simply the ground
which belongs to Biblical Introduction, although it must avail
itself of all the material which can be gathered from this
ground. This inquiry may be distinguished from that of
Biblical Introduction in the two following respects: First,
its point of view and purpose differ from those of the above-
mentioned science. It receives and examines the phenomena
disclosed by this science, with the ulterior purpose of discover
ing the inmost essence of the Bible, its origin from God and
man, and its relations to the human consciousness and to the
process of divine self-revelation in redemption. It maintains
toward the phenomena the historical and critical points of view;

INTRODUCTION. 15
and yet from them it tries to discern the nature of that spirit,
human and di-vine, which breathes through the phenomena.
For, in the second place, this inquiry is much more compre
hensive than that of Biblical Introduction. It always carries
with it certain postulates derived from biblical religion and
from religious philosophy : it finally raises itself to the dignity
of a theological and philosopliical inquiry. Its success, then,
does not depend so completely on merely critical and historical
researches ; for, after these researches are duly taken into the
account, the way is only indicated, guarded, and limited, which
must lead on into other researches. We have, therefore, fitly
denominated this inquiry as an inquiiy into the entire doctrine
of Sacred Scripture. But its scope will be further defined when
the method it must pursue is more clearly indicated.
It is agreed on almost all sides, that a successful treatment
of the inspiration of the Bible must now be reached by the
inductive method. So loud and importunate, indeed, is the pres
ent outcry for an inductive examination of this subject, that
one might suppose induction itself to be a discovery of the
present century. Not a few new Bacons seem to have come
to sit in judgment upon our ancient Scriptures. Tlie general
legitimacy of this demand, however, cannot for a moment be
doubted. The reason why the demand is so loud and im
portunate is largely to be found in the almost utter neglect
of patent facts, which was affected by the post-Reformation
dogma. But the founders and advocates of that dogma, even
if they had been most kindly disposed toward the inductive
method, could scarcely have so used it as to satisfy the modern
demand: for numerous important classes of facts were not
then available for their consideration ; and many of the alleged
facts of which they might have made use were fabrications of
tradition, and not facts.
The true method of inquiry must by all means be inductive :
it must possess aU the qualities of a faithful and trustworthy
induction. The method of investigating the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture must, then, differ somewhat from that which may be
legitimately pursued in investigating certain other doctrines of
Christianity. It will be found that neither revelation, nor the
Christian consciousness in the form of a development of doc
trine held by the Church Catholic, will avail to fix some of
the more important phases of this doctrine. Precisely what the
Bible is, revelation has not revealed, and the Church Catholic

16 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
has nowhere pronounced. But the Bible is certainly a fact:^
nay, it is a vast congeries of facts, some of which can be ascer-j
tained with certainty, others with more or less of probability^
still others not at aU. The biblical books, whatever else they
may be or may not be, certainly have a concrete, visible, and
tangible existence. They are ink and paper ; and they arose at
certain times, under certain definite conditions of history. It
follows, that he who wishes to know the true story of the origin|
and nature of the Bible must first of aU ascertain as many as
possible of the facts : he must subsequently conclude nothing|
which contradicts these facts. Many of the more important
questions which enter into the general inquiry are questions of
fact, and one can ascertain the true answer to them only by?
means of historical and critical researches. While, then, one
can say, " My system of faith con-vinces me beyond doubt that
God created the heavens and the earth," one cannot thus settle
the question of the authorship of the Pentateuch. One cannot
fitly aver with the same breath the unity of God and the unity
of Isaiah. The believer may lay his hand upon his heart, and
pronounce the certainty of his consciousness that Jesus is his
Redeemer ; but he cannot thus reconcile a discrepancy between
two of the Synoptists, or allay the annoyance of answering the
doubts concerning the genuineness of John's Gospel.
The value of any given inquiry into the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture from the modern point of view cannot, however, be
concluded from the mere read}-- proposal to adopt the so-called
inductive method. Some of the most notable failures have
been made by those who have most boldly announced their |
adherence to this method. For in this, as in all other similar|
inquiries, the result of success can be reached only by a certain|
manner and degree of using the method. In other words, not
only the method must have the general quality of being induc
tive, but also the induction must have the qualities which |
characterize a true and sufficient induction. Such an inductioni
must, first of all, be founded upon and conducted according to
the right postulates. Every induction in matters of critical
and historical researches, as well as in those of physical science,-'
involves the use of postulates. In the case of tliis induction,!
the postulates are certain truths of ethics and reUgion. But the
question may at once fitly occur: Is it, then, intended first
to frame a theory, and afterward, under the name of an induc-s
tion, introduce the mention of only such facts as seem best to

INTRODUCTION. 17
consort with the theory ? By no means : this would be to mis
use and falsify yet once more the inductive method. But, we
repeat, certain postulates must underlie this, as well as every
other induction. , And whether the induction be genuine and
.successful, or not, will largely depend upon the character and
jise of these postulates.
> A successful induction must also be thorough and compre
hensive. Regarded as comprehensive, it must omit the con
sideration of no important class of facts. To consider all the
individual facts which, in reality, have a bearing upon the
question, would require more than a score of lifetimes. But it
would be as needless as to consider every individual case of the
use of the Greek article in order to understand the function of
the article in the Greek language. The induction will make
itself sufficiently thorough only by the utmost pains-taking in
the discovery of the facts, and by due skill in appreciating and
classifying them, and in drawing the appropriate conclusions.
Such an induction must always, of course, be candid : it must
regard such facts as are adverse to its postulates, or to the
inferences to which it seems itself to be conducting, with the
more careful consideration. It must submit to only such obscu
rations and limitations of judgment as are unavoidable ; but, on
the other hand, it must be ready to form an opinion which is
not more certain than accords with the evidence. It is the
ine-vitable fate of him who follows the leadership of this method,
that he must by turns go through all the stages of probability
from the very lowest up to an historic certainty. And, finally,
the inductive method must be furnished with all the appliances
of the best modern scholarship. Whoever ranges through the
fields of this scholarship wUl learn how wide and rich it is : he
also wUl best know what growths are food, what flowers, and
what noxious weeds. And by his experience he should have
his powers of discrimination so sharpened as to acquire a kind
of aptitude for what is noble, true, and good.
The true method of inquiry into the nature and origin of
the Sacred Scriptures must, moreover, be historical. A com
prehensive and thorough induction cannot, indeed, be attained
¦without the use of the historical method. The facts from
which the induction must be derived are 'historical facts. The
Bible itself is an historical growth, which must be traced and
understood, in large measure .at least, as are other growths of
history. The consideration of the Caaon — a most important
VOL. I. B

18 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE. .
consideration for a complete inductive doctrine of the Bible -J
is an historical inquiry. But more than even this is meant
when it is affirmed that the true method of this inquiry must be
historical. For the Bible has had, not simply a history whicli
appertains to the origin of its separate books, and to the collect
tion of these books into the so-called canons of the Old and
New Testaments : it has also had a history which appertains to
it as a totality subsequent to the times when these canons were
respectively completed. The Church CathoUc has, indeed,
never yet so set forth the contents of her common faith with
respect to the nature and origin of her Sacred Scriptures as
to fix the definite limits of her own doctrine. But the Churchi
has maintained a certain steadfast attitude toward the Bible, ¦#
an attitude which has given such shape and consistency to the
development of her dogmas and of her life as could have been
attained in no other way. Precisely what are the fundament^
relations of the Church of God to the Word of God contained
in the Old and New Testaments, and what have been the
opinions of the various eras and places of Church history, as
maintained in the writings of her leaders and in the scattered
and fragmentary notices of her symbols, it wUl be our purpose*
carefully to inquire. But such inquiry cannot be undertaken
without carrying into it one postulate which helps to fix the
value and to define the bearing of the results secured. This
postulate is that which underlies all the study of the history
of Church doctrine : viz., The Eternal Spirit is the constant
inspirer and guide of the Church in history. A study of the
development of the Christian consciousness in the important
historic relations which it has more or less intelUgently assumed
toward the Sacred Scriptures cannot faU, then, to confirm some
truths inductively derived, and to suggest certain others, con
cerning the origin and nature of those Scriptures. In other
words, the history of the thought and feeling of the Church
touching the Bible must be consulted in order fuUy to under
stand what the Bible is. It would be arrogance, and even
impiety, to assume that the Christian Church has known noth
ing essentially aright concerning the real nature of her sacred
writings. Such an assumption would also contradict the truth
of history. No doubt modern criticism has for the first time
taught us certain important classes of facts regarding the
biblical writings. It has thus made it imperative that wo
should acknowledge the falsity of many opinions held by the

INTRODUCTION. 19
learned and by the entire community of believers during all
the past history of the Church. But these facts of criticism do
liot serve to reveal the entire nature, do not tell the complete
story of the origin, of the Old and New Testaments. Facts and
truths of another kind lie hidden in the consciousness of the
community of believers. The history of the development of
this consciousness with respect to its attitude toward the Bible
'must also be studied in order to tell us what the Bible really is.
Its origin was in and through the consciousness of this com-
"munity ; its real nature is to be discerned only by an appre
ciative estimate of the fundamental relations which exist
Ijetween it and this community. This estimate involves the
work of tracing the history of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture
as that doctrine has been essentially held (though never with
common consent formally adopted) from the beginning of the
'Christian Church until now. In this sense of the word, then,
'the true method of investigating the doctrine of Sacred Scrip
ture must be historical as well as purely inductive.
Furthermore, the method must include a scientific appeal to
the contents of the Christian faith as expressed in those truths
-of religion which are most intimately concerned. Such truths
are those of the personality of God the Redeemer, revelation,
inspiration, God and man as spirits standing in personal rela
tions, and, indeed, the entire system of such kindred truths.
iWithout right views concerning these truths, the true and com-
iplete doctrine of Sacred Scripture can never be attained. This
istatement follows from the indissoluble connection which exists
ibetween the Bible as an historical product, a concrete reality,
;and the bibUcal religion. It was the biblical religion which
iproduced the Bible. How, then, can one understand what the
Bible is, as to its origin and nature, without understanding the
elements contributed to it by the ethical and religious ideas of
(this reUgion? It is also indisputably true of the Bible, that it
has been consecrated by certain uses which have respect to the
development of the religious life in the individual and in the
I race. It is simple matter of fact, that it has been a storehouse
for the contents of faith, and a means, or instrument, of grace.
We cannot neglect to inquire how this is so, and what is the
justification for these traditional uses of the Bible. And,
although some parts of this inquiry can scarcely be put into
scientific form, yet they are not for that reason devoid of real
and great value. The heart of the Church and of the race

20 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
may be heard to beat, and its warm Ufe recognized as present,
where no exact anatomical description of the mechanism can be
given. We have, therefore, to anticipate the employment of a
method of research which ranges aU the way from the minutest
trivialties of criticism to the highest of ethico-religious verities,
The investigation of the origin and nature of the Sacred Scrip.
tures of the Old and New Testaments must begin with the
inductive method. It must thus begin, because these Scrip.
tures are concrete realities, concerning which we can get cer
tain information only through the valid conclusions of criticism,!
This use of the inductive method must be carried as far as it
can go, and no subsequent conclusions can be derived by othei
methods which can contravene its assured results. And yet
this method can at best give us only very limited and for the
most part negative conclusions. It is not by such analysii
that we can reach the Ufe of the Bible. By analysis, however,
we do discover such elements as a subsequent use of the more
synthetic method may construct into a living and organic unity,
It might almost be said that the induction of criticism can tell
us what the Bible is not, but can only obscurely suggest -what
the Bible is. That many difficulties are inseparably connecte|
with the use of such a complex method, there can be no doubt,
And yet neither the inductive, nor the historical, nor the dog
matic and experimental, form of the inquiry can safely be
neglected. To neglect the most careful and comprehend
induction, would certainly vitiate any theory of Sacred Scrip-:
ture by separating it from all the evidence of indisputable con
crete facts. But to stop with this induction would leave ra
without any complete doctrine, because without the considera
tion of those truths of history and of ethics and religionlin
accordance with which the doctrine must be synthetically
constructed. Moreover, it is these ethico-religious truths and
ideas which form the postulates that underUe the induction.
Further justification of this method must be left to the testing^
which the inquiry itself will supply.
It is scarcely necessary to make a complete enumeration^of
the postulates which will shape the present inquiry into the
doctrine of Sacred Scripture. These postulates will be indi
cated with sufficient clearness during the first and inductive
part of the work, while it will belong to its second part more
definitely to present and to discuss them. They are, briefly

INTRODUCTION. 21
stated, those fundamental truths of biblical religion to which
allusion has already been made. Of these postulates the follow
ing three are, however, so influential, and recur so frequently,
as to require their definite announcement. The reality of a
self-revelation of God in redemption is postulated. This is
a postulate which touches every examination of the doctrine of
Sacred Scripture at almost every point in its course. In it
is involved the possibiUty and the actuality of miracles, and
of inspiration as prophecy, — the subjective miracle. In what
particular sense we must understand the alleged miraculous
contents of the Bible, and what we must hold to be the true
nature of prophecy, will, of course, be explained in the proper
place. But our attitude toward the Bible is, from the begin
ning to the close of the investigation, that of believers in the
reaUty of the supernatural, and in the historic fact of a super
natural process of redemption. The infallible authority of Jesus
Christ upon matters included in the doctrine of salvation is
also postulated. This postulate is not intended, nor will it be
employed, so as to restrict the freest critical and historical re
searches ; nor is it even to be understood as necessarily includ
ing in itself the claim to infallibility on the part of Christ with
respect to merely critical and historical matters. But the pos
tulate is to be as broadly understood and as cautiously applied
as is possible in consistency with a loyal attitude toward the
person of the Redeemer. The reality of those truths which
underlie the persistent and universal thoughts and feelings of
the Christian consciousness is also postulated. Certain verities
in the life and development of the Christian Church it is impos
sible for merely inductive researches in criticism either to estab
lish or to overthrow. To such verities an appeal may be made
with entire confidence.
It would be useless to attempt to conceal the fact that the
influence of these postulates will be thought by some to amount
to an invincible prejudice. With these objectors it will doubt
less give occasion to the revival of the time-worn charge of
using the circulus in arguendo. To this charge, however, only
a brief reply is necessary, in addition to that final reply which
must be left to the result of the essay. Let it be at once
frankly confessed, it is not proposed to inquire concerning the
origin and nature of the Bible as though we were heathen, or
e ven disbelievers in the fundamental verities of the Christian
religion. This inquiry is one which can fitly and logically

22 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
follow only when those verities have themselves been estab-
lished and accepted. The work of those who scientifically
estabUsh such verities is, therefore, the more fundamental,
How, indeed, can an inquiry into the true doctrine of Sacred
Scripture have any significance or value for those who do not
accept such verities? It cannot be admitted, however, that
the use of these assumptions of faith affords a superior barrier
against the convictions of the brave and independent critic;
much less, that it constitutes a real and degrading prejudice,
The title of a fearless and candid investigator is not to be -won
by denouncing supernaturalism, and rejecting the authorityof
Christ ; nor is it forfeited by announcing one's supernaturalis^
and adherence to his authority. Furthermore, it is proposed to
inquire. What is the Bible ? not, What is the Christian religion?
And, although the answer to the latter question undoubtedly
influences the answer to the former, it does so only as some
necessary postulates must always influence historical and critical!
inquiries. Postulates are not to be employed to pervert the I
facts, but to give them a rational explanation. So far as the
facts of biblical criticism are concerned, it wUl be found that, |
when once accepted as facts, they, in general, admit of two ex
planations. Of these two, the one is given from the points of
view furnished by the postulates of biblical religion, the other
from the points of view furnished by conflicting or contradic
tory postulates. In the region of these postulates, — that is, in
the fundamental inquiries of the philosophy of religion, — this
conflict must be fought out. MeanwhUe it may be permitted
to make the attempt proposed, with the conviction that for the
purposes of this attempt some things can be taken for granted,
A certain legitimate use of the circulus in arguendo (if it please;
any objector so to characterize our method) wiU secure for the
inquiry some of its most valuable results. These postulates
may themselves receive fresh proof of their truthfulness when
it is seen how well they serve the purpose both of buUders and
of foundations in all the process of construing the facts. This
is the highest and final test of all such postulates, that they are
constantly verified anew by all the facts. On the other hand,
the induction itself wiU be not only more complete, but also
more trustworthy, if its separate results arrange themselves
into a rational whole, which has obvious and even organic rela
tions with the great divine kingdom of redemption.
It remains only for the introduction to state, in tew words,

INTRODUCTION. 23
what will be the course and order of the subsequent inquiry.
The order of an inquiry into the origin and nature of the Bible
as Sacred Scripture is fitly determined by the method of the
inquiry. According to the method already announced, this
inquiry must begin with a thorough and comprehensive induc
tion. The inductive part of the work will include an investi
gation, first, into the claims of the Bible, and, second, into its
different classes of phenomena. The propriety of inquiring,
first of all. What does the Bible claim to be? will not be
questioned by any who hold that general point of view which
was indicated by the above-mentioned postulates. In this way
certain misconceptions which have falsely been attributed to
the Bible itseK wUl be removed at an early stage in the in
quiry. It should not be overlooked, however, that the infalli
bility of these claims made by the Bible for itself is nowhere
advanced or assumed as one of our postulates. To do this
would indeed be to be guilty of a vicious and misleading cir
culus in arguendo. The claims of the Bible must be critically
examined as constituting one class of those facts which must
all be taken into the account by a complete induction. The
first part of the inquiry must consist, then, of an exegetical dis
cussion of these claims. But these claims must then be tested,
and, if possible, corrected and amplified, by an examination of
all the various orders of phenomena which have entered into
the concrete reaUty of the Bible. For this purpose a somewhat
artificial classification of the different kinds of contents of the
biblical writings "wiU be found necessary ; and the discussion of
these classes of contents will be followed by chapters upon the
authorship of the biblical books, their language and style, and
upon the canon and text of the Bible. In all these discussions
the final intent and principal point of -view must be kept stead
fastly in mind ; viz., to lay in a thorough and comprehensive
induction the foundations of a doctrine of Sacred Scripture.
The second part wiU consist, then, of a critical examination of
all the principal classes of phenomena which belong to the Bible
as a concrete and historic product. These two parts will con
stitute the first volume, or entire inductive half, of the work.
But the right method of inquiry will not stop with the com
pletion of the inductive process. The history and doctrine
of the Christian Church have their right to be heard, and no
sjTithetic theory of the origin and nature of Sacred Scripture
is possible without receiving the testimony of this history and

24 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE,
doctrine. The entire second volume will therefore proceed
with the inquiry as proposed before the tribunal of the ethical
and religious consciousness. Here we shall have to ask our
selves, in the third part. What has the Church CathoUc believed
to be true concerning the Bible ? and then, in the fourth part,
What doctrine of Sacred Scripture accords with all the most
closely allied Christian doctrines, and with the common experi
ences of men in the direction and growth of the religious life?
And should it be found true that the essential claims of the
Bible for itself are not negatived, but rather confirmed, by all
the discoveries of modern historical and critical researches, so
that a certain view of the bibUcal writings may be inductively
established ; and that this view is further expanded and con
firmed by the ancient and permanent opinion of the Church
Catholic, and may be stUl further expanded into a doctrine, and
confirmed anew, by bringing it into its legitimate connections '
with other doctrines of the Christian reUgion, and may then be
found to correspond to the experimental side of this reUgion,
— should aU this be found true, then, indeed, a good degree
of confidence may be felt in the result, as setting forth the
true doctrine of Sacred Scripture. Then, also, the legitimate
demands of this essay will have been satisfied.
A shorter course than that sketched above for reaching the
desired result would almost certainly leave on one side con
siderations of great or vital importance to the inquiry. That
the course chosen is so long and intricate, does not depend upon
individual responsibUity. A reward, by the way, may perhaps|
be found in information and help upon not a few subordinate
themes of bibUcal exegesis and criticism, of the history of the
Church, or even of the philosophy of reUgion and systematic|
theology. This reward may be sufficient to persuade the
reader not to grudge the amount of time required for com
passing the whole course. And if he patiently foUow this
course, to the end of understanding more profoundly the
inmost nature and heavenly origin of the divine Word, he
may consent to believe, that, considering the importance and
difficulty of the object, little or no time can be said to have
been lost.

Paet I.
EXEGETICAL,

THE CLAIMS OE THE BIBLE.

"Eo-Tt -yap ev TOIS TWV VpacjiZv p-qiiaa-iv O KYPI02.
Athanasius : Ad Marcellinvm, 33.

CHAPTEE I.
THE NATUEE OF OLD-TESTAMENT SCRIPTURE AS DETERMINED
BY THE TEACHING OF CHRIST.
The right dogmatic point of view for considering the doctrine
of Sacred Scripture must be derived from the doctrine of the
person of Christ. It is true, on the one hand, that a certain view
of the nature and authority of that divine revelation which is
scripturaUy fixed in the Bible determines, in large measure,
the -view which must be taken of the Redeemer's person and
work. But it is also true, on the other hand, that every Chris
tian doctrine of the Bible itself must assume, as its postulate,
a certain view of his absolute authority and infallibility upon
truths of religion. It is this postulate, indeed, which furnishes
the rare interest and high importance that attach themselves to
all researches into the nature of Sacred Scripture : without
this postulate, an examination Uke the one which we purpose
would sink to the level of ordinary historical and archaeological
researches. A certain ^-wasi-ethical preparation is, therefore, an
indispensable requirement for the safe conduct of this part of
our work. We are about to inquire. What did Christ teach
as to the nature of Old-Testament Scripture? The attitude
of mind in which the inquirer finds himself, to-ward the Great
Teacher of religious truth, will necessarily influence his attitude
also toward those writings Avhich, it is claimed, are in some
sense a special testimony to him, and of the value of which he
himself testifies. A certain definite attitude of mind is, then,
secured for the examination of Sacred Scripture by accepting
the view held by the Church as to the person of Christ. We
begin our examination into the teachings of Christ with refer
ence to the writings of the Old Testament, by affirming the
conviction that these teachings, so far at least as they are in
volved in the doctrine of salvation which it was his mission to
reveal, are themselves indisputably true. 27

28 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
This conviction is not to be regarded, however, as consti
tuting a bias. For the postulate does not necessarily vitiate
or annul the critical quaUty and perfect candor of such an
examination as is proposed. The postulate itself will have, in
determining all subordinate inquiries, the force of a demon
strated truth of Christianity. But, furthermore, the examina
tion wiU itself add other proofs to the truth of the very pos
tulate which underlies its entire course. And the ability to
combine the firm tenure of this postulate with a thoroughly
critical inspection of all the facts, whether confirmatory or
apparently adverse, can be shown in no other way than by
the examination itself.
Accepting, then, this postulate, the foUowing subordinate
inquiries at once present themselves : How far must we look
upon the view of Jesus concerning the Old Testament as a
critical one ? and how far are we to be bound in critical ques
tions by his implied view upon such questions ? And, further,
how far did Jesus teach his doctrine of Sacred Scripture by
so-called accommodation ?
Upon the subject of the first inquiry, Rothe declares : ^
" The Redeemer never claimed to be an infaUible, or even a
generally precise, interpreter of the Old Testament. Indeed,
he could not have made this claim. For interpretation is
essentiaUy a scientific function, and one conditioned by the
existence of scientific means ; which, in relation to the Old
Testament, were only imperfectly at the command of Jesus,
as well as of his contemporaries." Nor does the highest kind
of insight into truth, as Rothe goes on to declare, take the
place of experience in the art of hermeneutics. And Meyer,
in commenting upon Christ's use of Ps. ex., remarks : ^ " That
Jesus did not doubt the correctness of the superscription of
the Psalm, is neither to be used as a proof of its Davidic
origin, nor groundlessly denied , since an historical and critical
question of this kind could only enter into the sphere of his
development as a man and belonging to a nation, which must
in general bear the stamp of his own time." And even Tholuck
asserts,^ after having recalled the fact that Christ came into the
world not to disclose science, even the so-caUed theological, but
to utter and exhibit religious truth to humanity: "If there
1 Zur Dogmatik, Gotha 1863, p. 176 f.
2 Kommentar iiber das Neue Testament, Matthaus, Gottingen 1864, p. 457.
8 Das Alte Testament im Neuen Testament, Gotha 1877, p. 52.

CHRIST AS AN INFALLIBLE INTERPRETER. 29
te, in the discourses of Christ before us, no formal mistake of
hermeneutics, we cannot assert, before examination, the impos
sibUity of such a mistake, any more than of a grammatical fault
or a chronological error."
We should, indeed, be slow to admit the possibility that
Christ could be mistaken in critical questions concerning the
Old Testament, provided that he should definitely attempt
the answer to such questions. It is somewhat characteristic
of Christ, however, that critical inquiries rarely appear to have
entered the horizon of his teaching, or even, so far as we have
any evidence, of his thought. His silence, or rather his
reserve, for the most part prevents him from being caught
in the snare of these inquiries. He evinces only rarely, if at
aU, the consciousness that his doctrine involves any judgment
upon matters of criticism.
Certain cases are, however, found in the teaching of Jesus,
where the truth which he proclaims upon matters of his religion
involves, with more or less rigor of conclusion, an opinion, and
perhaps even a doctrine, upon matters of criticism. So closely,
indeed, are some critical questions themselves involved in the
religious truths of the Old Testament, that such cases could
scarcely fail to occur. Some so-called critical questions are
also religious questions: some, not of themselves necessarily
religious, seem involved by the discourses of Jesus in his doc
trine of religion. It is, then, by no means all critical questions
touching the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament which can
be regarded as independent of the word of Christ ; for, while
he rarely or never evinces the consciousness of deciding a
specifically critical inquiry, he does by inference so answer
some such inquiries as to stamp them with the characteristics
of reUgious truth taught authoritatively by himself. For the
most part, however, there is manifest in the discourses of Jesus
neither conscious attempt nor unconscious inference, such as
wUl serve indissolubly to connect his religious teachings with
the results of Old-Testament criticism.
But should the further question be asked, whether such
mistakes of interpretation as seem not to affect his religious
doctrine (the so-called " formal mistakes of hermeneutics," of
which Tholuck speaks) were not perhaps admitted, through
ignorance or unstudied disregard of critical truth, into the
teachings of Jesus, we wish to waive the answer until these
teachings shall have been examined ; for, although the answer

so THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
to this question is not in our mind doubtful, the question itself
is compUcated with another. There are certainly many cases
where an inference may be made which shall imply that an
opinion upon critical questions is a part of the religious teaching
of Jesus. And some investigators are by no means cautious
enough in framing such an inference ; whUe, to frame an infer
ence as strong as possible, different investigators are influenced
by exactly opposite motives. Some seek to damage his authority
by committing it to untenable opinions on matters of criticism :
others seek to save such opinions by confirming them by his
authority. But, in each case of debate as to the possibiUty
of Jesus being mistaken upon a matter of criticism, the prior
question arises as to the cogency of the very inference by
assuming which the debate is occasioned. Surely great care
should always be given to the character of that inference which
connects any doubtful critical question with the religious doc
trine of Christ. The testing of such an inference causes us
to raise the second of the inquiries mentioned above : How far
did Jesus speak of the Old-Testament writings by so-called
accommodation ?
We can neither accept nor reject indiscriminately the prin
ciple of accommodation in its application to our subject. The
general features of Christ's position toward the Hebrew Sacred
Scriptures can be delineated with sufficient exactness. To
suppose, then, that he exhibited these features through the
years of his public ministry, in a form which was merely
assumed and retained out of deference to those by whom he
was surrounded, would render his doctrine and conduct not
only historically inexplicable, but morally indefensible. Nor
could the supposition properly cover those inferences as to criti
cal questions which are so closely connected with his religious
doctrine that they cannot be separated from it -without doing it
violence. But, on the other hand, we cannot refuse to give the prin
ciple of accommodation a considerable applicability to the
teachings of Christ. Such applicability is inseparably con
nected with his own human development, and with the char
acter of the circumstances in the midst of which he taught.
Jesus may speak as though he held a certain opinion upon a
critical question of the Old Testament, and yet the inference
may be by no means valid that he really held this opinion:
just as all teachers of religious truth necessarily teach often-

THE PRINCIPLE OF ACCOMMODATION. 31
times either in forms that seem to imply such an opinion upon
critical and historical questions as they do not hold, or even
without holding any opinion upon each question involved;
just as, also, all men are compelled to express themselves by
implied opinions in popular speech. The questions as to the
authorship of Homer, for example, are critical and historical
questions. Each critic, when speaking as a critic, may or may
not have his opinion formed upon each question. But when
speaking as a teacher of morals, or even in ordinary conversa
tion, he may speak as though he held an opinion quite the
reverse of that really held. Any one, moreover, when speak
ing of Homer, may express himself as though he were of a
certain opinion, when indeed he has no intention of raising a
critical question, nor even any knowledge of the existence of
such a question.
It is not intended to suggest that the attitude of Jesus
toward the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament corre
sponded to the attitude of the average mind toward Homer.
It is insisted, however, that we are not to force the religious
teaching of the Redeemer so as to make it cover every question
of Hebrew history and archaeology with which his discourses
show points of contact. The attempt to do this degrades his
teaching without settUng the critical questions.
Moreover, the attempt shows a complete misunderstanding
of the spirit and method of the teaching of Jesus. In his use
of accommodation there is a marked correspondence between
his method and the divine method of instruction and discipline
in nature and in providence. We discover less effort to force
the truth upon men than to stir their inquiry; little care to
guard the careless against misapprehension, much care to rouse
them to a true apprehension. His teaching is not a copy-
lesson, but a spur to industry. He puts no premium upon
sluggishness, love of ease, or unquestioning acceptance of tradi
tional views and modes of expression. The inquirer, therefore,
who is fond of arguing that Jesus could not have said this, or
have done that, because he must have known himself liable to
be misunderstood, needs to regain his lost insight by studying
the Gospels anew. The fact that there is always more beyond,
and often much which is contradictory to the popular, we
might almost say the natural, first impression, is one of the
choicest and most distinctive features of his teaching. To
the close of his life his own disciples, even the most intimate

32 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and familiar among them, did not cease to misapprehend him.
And, indeed, how could they? He was setting forth world
wide and eternal truths, in parabolic and enigmatical form:
they were often trying to test and measure him by their own
crude common-sense, or by the over-refined subtleties and tradi
tional literalism of rabbinical conceptions. He did not change
his method : he waited for his hearers to change in the spirit
of insight. He called his disciples slow of heart to believe, and
fools, not because he could not have made his own teaching
clearer, but because they did not penetrate the hull of tliis teach
ing by words, and reach the kernel of the revelation which the
words contained.^
We are not, then, prevented from a cautious use of the prin
ciple of accommodation, by the true doctrine of the person of
Christ: we are rather compelled to this use by the general
characteristics of his method in teaching. In most cases of
so-called accommodation, we cannot make a direct inference
as to the opinion of Jesus upon the critical questions which
seem to be involved. We certainly find him making use of
the Old Testament, in its history, ceremony, ethical law, types,
and allegorico-didactic writing, as testimony to himself. The
inference is direct, that he regarded the Old Testament as con
taining, at least in germinal and imperfect form, the divine
truths which it was his mission to unfold and establish. But
the further inference as to the critical views which seem to be
involved in this use is usually much more indirect and doubt
ful. In making this further inference two kinds of inquiries
must be made and answered. Inquiry must first be made into
the interpretation and evidences of each passage of the Hebrew
Scriptures to which Christ refers in his teacliing, on its own
grounds, and apart from that teaching. The verdict of fact
from the Old Testament, upon its own questions of criticism,
must be mdependently and fearlessly taken. Especial caution
must be used in making the inference that the opinion of the
1 Examples of -what -w-e may call carelessness of external misapprehension ;
-while using the divine method to stir his hearers to the apprehension of in
terior truth, are not rare iu the teaching of Christ. See John i. 52, iv. 10, ff.
34. Sometimes one puzzle is explained by adding another : John vi. 61, f.
Note also the very gradual and almost seemingly vacillating -way in which Jesus
taught his own Messiahship; of which fact the true explanation Is that given,
in refutation of the claim of Strauss, by Schmid (Theologie des Neuen Testa-
mentes, pp. 218-220). See also, especially, his declaration to his disciples, John
xvi. 25. Nor are such examples confined to the Fourth Gospel, as we shall see
farther on.

THE PRINCIPLE OF ACCOMMODATION. 33
Hebrew Scriptures upon its own critical questions was un
doubtedly also the opinion of Christ.
Another kind of inquiries, which are needed to limit our
inferences, concerns the connection of an inferred critical
opinion with the religious teaching expressly designed to be
set forth. In such cases the foUowing questions must be
raised : How far is any historical narrative which Jesus uses
to iUustrate aud enforce his religious teaching guaranteed, as
to its historical accuracy, by this use ? How far is the original
intent of the author of the prophecy which he quotes in proof
of his mission assumed in the fact that the prophecy is quoted
as proof? How far is the ethical truth which he accepts from
the Old-Testament law fully and formally accepted, or accepted
substantially with an implied rejection of some of its formal
elements ? In fine, it cannot safely be inferred that the word
of Christ authenticates any of the Old Testament without
inquiring in detaU precisely what that word authenticates.
And, moreover, his significant silence may be almost as in
structive as his speech.
We conclude, then, that our Christian estimate of the person
of Christ both assists and limits our inquiry as to his doctrine
of Old-Testament Scripture: it does both, however, only in
part. His authority is indeed pledged to a certain view of
the relation of the Old Testament to his person and work ; it
is pledged with respect to certain possible conclusions from
so-called critical inquiries ; but the nature and method of his
teaching, for the most part, leaves these questions quite com
pletely disconnected from his authority. The point of view
whicli has thus far been taken secures a survey from an im
pregnable dogmatic position : it, however, opens before us a
wide and free domain of critical inquiries. It requires, more
over, unceasing pains and trained skUl in making distinctions.
Let him, then, who wishes to escape the pain and peril of weigh
ing difficulties, or of making adjustments between the results of
criticism and the claims of Christian truth, not enter upon the
subsequent examination. He wUl surely either pass through
its entire course with the same unconquerable prejudice -with
which he begins, or else quickly turn back with weariness and
disgust. There are no softly cushioned vehicles to bear him
along the path. But if he will endure the hardship of the
journey, he may hope for the pillar of cloud always by day,
and sometimes for the pillar of fire by night. For liim who
VOL. I. G

34 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
rejects the method and results of a minute examination, as
instituted from the right point of view, there remain ^ open
only two courses : he may either, by refusing to credit the
alleged contents of revelation and the divine authority of
the Hebrew Scriptures, come to an inevitable break with the
authority also of Christ ; or, by rejecting aU attempts at the
discriminations of criticism, he may make the perUous venture
of committing the honesty and competency of Christ to every
detail of these contents.
The working principle adopted is, then, that of aUegiance to
the Redeemer as the Truth : it is proposed, however, to test
this principle by applying it to all the detaUs of his teaching
upon the origin and nature of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The general attitude of Jesus toward the canonical Hebrew
Scriptures is unmistakable. Rothe,^ indeed, denies that we
have any ground for believing Jesus to have held the view-
which attributes their origin to divine inspiration. Rothe
claims that the only two passages (Matt. v. 18 and xxu. 43)
which seem to indicate this view are not decisive. It must be
admitted that there is, as to the view of Jesus, a great meagre
ness of direct and indubitable evidence. The indirect evi
dence is, however, in certain respects, sufficiently full and
conclusive. One form of such indirect evidence is the fact that Jesus
uses the titles of Hebrew canonical writings which were in
general use among the Jews of his day, and which imply the
belief that these writings are Sacred Scripture. Among such
titles are the following: ij ypa4>ri, al ypa4>ai (John v. 39, x. 35;
Matt. xxvi. 64) ; 6 i/d/u,os for the entire Old Testament (John x.
34), and the same term for the Pentateuch (Matt. xii. 5) ; 6 vd/jos
Kai ot Trpo<j>^Taii for the entire Old Testament (Luke xvi, 16 ; Matt.
xxii. 40); at ypa^fial rS>v irpoffyrfTutv (Matt. XXvi. 56), and Ttt -yeypa/i/tera
8ta tS>v -Trpofji-rp-utv (Luke xvUi. 31). The use of these nouns im
plies a belief in the divine origin of those writings to which
the titles are applied, and the use of the preposition Sta implies
the belief that the origin of the prophetic messages was by
inspiration. Especially does the use of the title -n ypa.^'n (Joha
vii. 38, X. 35) to designate the entire Old Testament form at
least the presumption that Jesus acknowledged the substantial
unity and divine origin of its writings regarded as a whole.
The Old Testament appears in his view as Scriptura Sacra,
1 Zur DoTmatilij.n. 178 f.

CHRIST AND APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. 35
KaT efoxiiv.i That the writings quoted by Jesus as the Scripture
corresponded in extent, in a general way, with our canonical
books of the Old Testament, we have indirect and presumptive
proof, Luke xi. 51 ; where, in a review of the entire course of
Jewish scriptural history, he includes as its termini, the first
book, Genesis, and the last book. Second Chronicles, in which
(xxiv. 20 ff.) the narrative of the martyrdom of Zechariah, the
son of Jehoiada, is found.
It is also significant that our Lord apparently never makes
any reference to items of history or doctrine in Jewish books
outside of the Canon. The alleged cases of such reference
wiU not bear examination. That Christ does not quote from
an apocryphal book (John vii. 38), is proved by the form of
quotation, et-irev -q ypa<ji-q, and by the absence of any such pas
sage from all known uncanonical books. Although the words
here ascribed to Scripture are not found in the Old Testament,
the basis for the citation, as one freely adapting the thought
to a new form of expression, is laid in canonical writings like
Ezek. xlvii. 1, 12, and Zech. xiv. 8. As to Luke xi. 49, the words
?; o-o<^ta ToS Oeov el-n-ev are not to be referred, as Meyer claims, to a
former saying of Christ himself, but are rather to be regarded
as citing an epitome and also an expansion of the truth con
tained in 2 Chron. xxiv. 18-22 (Alford, Olshausen, and Stier).
In Luke xii. 18 f. the reflection upon the uncertain character
of riches does, indeed, seem to involve a recognition of the
remarkably similar thought in Sirach xi. 18, 19 : even Stier sup
poses that we have here a reference of Christ to an apocryphal
book. But the thought is one recurring in literature, and is to
be found, besides the passage in Sirach, in Ps. xlix. 16, 17, as
weU as Tobias vii. 9, and even in Plautus (Mil. Glor. 3, 1, 83).
It should be noticed also, in this connection, how full the
discourses of Jesus are of echoes, so to speak, from the Old
Testament; of words and ideas not expressly quoted from it,
but which, derived from it by familiarity with its contents,
had become the furnishing of his mind.^
In what sense, however, did Jesus regard the Old Testament
as pre-eminently Sacred Scripture ? This question can be only
indirectly answered by considering the attitude in which he
' See Grimm's Lexicon, ypantri.
2 As illustrations of this truth, compare Matt. xi. 11, with Zech. xii. 8 ; Matt.
xxiii. 39, with Ps. cxviii. 26; Matt, xx-vii. 46, with Ps. xxii. 1; Luke xii. 19, with
Ps. xlix. 17; Luke xii. 53, with Mic. vii. 6; Luke xxiii. 30, with Hos. x. 8; John
V. 29, with Dan. xii. 2; John viii. 35, with Gen. xxi. 10.

36 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
places himself toward the legal and prophetic contents of this
Scripture; for we have, as has already been said, little or no
direct teaching of any specific doctrine of such Scripture,
whether as to its nature and origin as a written record, or
as to the inspired personaUty of its authors. The doctrine
of Christ as to the Old Testament becomes dependent, then,
upon the questions: In what sense did he consider himself
to be fulfilUng its law and its prophecy? and, further, in
what sense did he teach that this law and these prophecies
were of divine nature and authority?
The answer to the above-mentioned questions requires a full
consideration of the teaching of Christ in his Sermon on the
Mount, Matt. v. 17 ff. In this passage he defines his position
with relation to certain contents of truth which he designates
as "the law and the prophets" (6 vd/tos Kal ol ?rpo^^at). The
sphere covered by these words is, according to Grimm, the doc
trine of morals delivered in the Old Testament, the ethical and
ethico-religious teachings of Moses and the prophets. It must
be admitted, as Grimm declares : " In the New Testament the
law is not rarely mentioned in such manner as that the speaker
or writer is looking at its ethical portion alone, as the portion.
which is primarily and perpetually vaUd among Christians also,
while he is not concerned -with things ritual and ci-vU, as those
which were written for Jews alone." Moreover, in this case, avS
Meyer admits: "the moral precepts of the law offered them
selves most naturally to Christ for citation." Grimm's defini
tion is, however, undoubtedly too restricted ; for the distinctioS
of the law into ethical, ritual, and civil, is entirely modern, and
not in place in this connection. We are, therefore, to regard
the phrase as a summary for the entire Old-Testament revelat
tion.i With reference to these contents of truth, Christ defines his
mission both negatively aud positively. It is his purpose not
to abrogate (KaroXIo-at) the Old-Testament Scriptures.^ To use
a figure of speech as old as Theophylact, Christ does not intend
to rub out and destroy the sketch in shadow-lines before him,
but with true and ideal art wUl fiU it in to the completion of
the picture. -
It is his mission, as positively defined, to fulfil the law and
1 For the true view, see Schmid, Theologie des Neuen Testamentes,p.222!8i)d
Cremer, Worterbuch der neutestamentlichen Gracitat. Compare Luke xvi. 16.
-- Fi sua privare (Grimm), and see the same uso of the word iu the " Memora
bilia," iv. i, 14, of abrogating the civil laws; in similar meaning, 2 Macc. ii.23,

THE FULFILLING OF THE LAW. 37
the prophets. According to Grimm, the promise to " fulfil the
law " (irArypiSo-at toi' vo'/xoi/) means, " to render perfect the doctrine
of morals handed down in the Mosaic law, — a thing which
Jesus teaches by the examples brought forward in verses 21-48,
that he will accomplish in such manner as to supply to the
precepts of the Mosaic law, accommodated as they were to
the nature of a ruder age, that meaning which is required by the
idea of true virtue, and which is especially adapted to a more
perfect order of affairs." In this case, again, the definition of
Grimm is too restricted. It is true that all the examples
chosen by Jesus to Ulustrate his own meaning are drawn from
the moral precepts of the Mosaic law, while the Plerosis of
the rest of the law and of the prophets in general is not here
dwelt upon in detaU. But this restriction of the Ulustrations
is doubtless due to the immediate purpose of Jesus to instruct
the hearers who then surrounded him. He wished to guard
against false views and practices which raight arise among his
followers to give disturbance, and against the charges which
his enemies were likely to bring forward. He wished also to
place upon record his own view of his entire relation to the
Old-Testament economy. The extent of the contents covered
by the term o vd/Aos Kal ot TrpofftrJTai is covered also by the promise
to fulfil. We know, furthermore, from his subsequent deeds
and teachings, that he claimed to fulfil this economy in a much
wider sense than is aUowed to the words by this interpretation
of Grimm. Not only the ethical ideal of the Mosaic law, but
also the ethical and predictive contents of prophecy, were,
according to his claim, fulfilled by Messiah. The ceremonies,
types, and typical ideas, the principles and larger facts, as well
as certain more minute historical events, the entire tendency
and final purpose, of the Old-Testament Scriptures, were to be
made full to completion by Christ. The irX^ptoo-ts, or fulfilling,
of the law and the prophets here spoken of is, then, rather as
Meyer — in substantial accord with a long list of trustworthy
commentators — asserts, " the fulfilling of the entire Old-
Testament revelation . . . through the establishing of their
absolute contents, so that nothing more 13 now lacking to that
which they ought to be according to the divine ideas lying at
the foundation of their commands. It is the complete develop
ment of their ideal reality out of the positive form in which
they are historically confined and limited." (In loco.')
The perfecting of the Old Testament which Christ here

38 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
undertakes has reference, then, to its essential contents and
final purpose, and is to be accomplished, not only in his teach
ing, but in his deeds as well. But the abrogating of such
essential contents is not to be expected of him either by his
teaching or by the influence of his Ufe; although a certain
cessation of the Old Testament as to its temporal form is
elsewhere distinctly taught.
Christ proceeds (verse 18) to assert, with that solemn assev
eration wliich distinguishes his estimate of his own authority
from that of the other teachers of the New Testament, the
permanent value and applicabUity of all the Old-Testament'i
Scriptures regarded in their ideal reality and absolute contetiti.
Thus regarded and applied, these Scriptures are never to pass
away: not until the end of this dispensation, he expressly*;
declares ; and not after its close, for, although he does not thus
expressly declare, liis words imply that view of the perpetuity'
of the law which is elsewhere taught in the New Testament.
The law regarded as love and righteousuess continues in force
in the world to come (1 Cor. xiu. 13; 1 Pet. i. 25; 2 Pet.
iii. 13) ; and, as Delitzsch has said, " the righteousness of the
new heaven and the new earth will be no other than that
taught here." Of this ideal realitj'-, and of these absolute con
tents, not even the most minute portion, though seemingly most
insignificant, shall be abrogated or fail of fulfilment. The jot
and the tittle are an inseparable part of an indelible page.
The Hebrew Scriptures are, then, asserted by Christ to have
certain contents of perpetual obligation, — a perpetuity and an
obligation which extend to the minute details of their contents.
Nor can we doubt that their perpetuity and obligation were
connected in his mind with a certain view of their origin and
nature, and were therefore regarded as bestowing a divine
quaUty upon the writings themselves. It is, however, the
economy of the Old-Testament revelation, regarded as fixed
and contained in the Old-Testament Scriptures, which he here
primarily authenticates. The germinal doctrine of Sacred'
Scripture given us in these words is as far as possible from
the rabbinical views of his own day. Nor does it afford a root
for a growth into any theories of verbal or mechanical inspira
tion, or of the infallibility of the Old Testament in its historical',
narratives or detaUs of doctrine, except so far as these details
of history and doctrine are themselves authenticated elsewhere
in the teaching of the Redeemer. How Uttle he himself re-

THE FULFILLING OF THE LAAV. by
garded the jot and tittle of either the law or the prophets, in
their literal construction and changing form, is made apparent
by various occasions of his instruction, and by his whole at
titude of Ufe. We find in this instruction and attitude the
fullest exemplification of the principle, " The letter killeth, but
the spirit giveth life."
The basis and germ of a doctrine of Sacred Scripture which
distinguishes between absolute contents of truth, and imperfect
form relative to the pedagogic purposes of those contents, is
given us in this primary teaching of Christ. For the illustra
tions which are used to enforce the validity and perpetuity of
the ethical contents of the Mosaic law, themselves imply the
falUbUity and transitoriness of its form. The reasoning is of a
land which works in two directions. In making the argument
which ascribes the qualities of the contents to the origin and
nature of the writings that contain them, we are also compelled
to ascribe the quaUties of the form to the origin and nature of
the same writings. Elements of ideal and absolute truth are,
then, to be found in the ethical portions of the Old Testament,
and as weU elements of imperfect and fallible form : the one
are to be attributed to the divine revelation, through chosen
media; the other, to the human imperfections in those media.
The Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament contain the in
fallible : but the form in which they contain the infallible is not
necessarUy infaUible ; at least, this teaching of Christ gives us
no warrant for saying that it is so. It would rather decidedly
discredit such a statement.
Moreover, it is plain that Jesus assumes his own authority to
distinguish between what is absolute and enduring and what is
relative and imperfect. But the difficult question with believers
— the question which has driven large numbers into the most
imtenable forms of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture — is this
one: How shall we, with safety, make in detail the same
distinction ? To this question the subsequent discussion must
furnish at least a partial and approximate answer. At the
present stage of the inquiry it will suffice to reply : To a certain
large extent, the disciple can follow the guidance of his Master.
The attitude assumed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount
is maintained throughout his subsequent discourses. It is by
this attitude that he teaches, for the most part inferentially,
his doctrine of Sacred Scripture. We must inquire, then, more
definitely : What is the doctrine of Jesus, first, so far as it is

40 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
embodied in his view of his own ¦wX-ripisxn'i of the law; and,
secondly, so far as it is embodied in his view of his own
wA7;ptocrts of the prophets?
Certain passages, however, occur which re-assert, although
in different form, the general attitude of Christ toward the
entire Old-Testament Scriptures. In the declaration of Matt.
xi. 13 the law is looked upon rather on its prophetic side, just
as in Matt. v. 17 the prophets are looked upon rather on their
ethical and legal side ; and accordingly the general designation
of the Old Testament is reversed, and 5 vo/aos ^5 "' jrpo^^Tat be
comes ot Trpo<j)rjTai kol 6 vd/ios. Moreovcr, in IMatt. v. 17 the
primary intention is to assert the endurance of the absolute I
contents of the Old Testament, while in Matt. xi. 13 it is to
assert the cessation of their faUible form. The point of view, J
however, is not essentially different: only the aspect of the
object presented has changed. In neither passage is any thing
said to depreciate confidence in the divine origin and unbroken
perpetuity of the Hebrew Scriptures, so far as the truths re
vealed in their ethical enactments, legal ceremonies, typical
rites, and prophetic utterances are concerned. It is at the
same time taught that all these Scriptures are also in some
sort of only limited and fading value. Generically above the
order of the Old Testament stands the new order which
Messiah comes to introduce ; so much higher, indeed, that,
on the logical maxim which Maldouatus has quoted in this
connection, minimum maximi majus est maxima minimi. This
declaration puts the disciple of Christ in a position to criticise
the Old-Testament Scriptures with free use of the Ught which
has come to him in Christ ; while at the same time his faith is
bound to the ideal moral and religious elements of the Old
Testament by the declaration of Matt. v. 17. '
The two declarations touching the fulfilment of the law and
the prophets, by which we may orient ourselves with respect||
to the sacred Hebrew -writings, are given in their moral and
logical connection by Luke (xvi. 16, 17). In this passage
verse 16 is to be regarded as subordinate to, and preparatorjj
of, verse 17. How Luke came to place two declarations, which,
superficially interpreted, seem contradictory, in such a firm
logical connection, is a question for criticism to determme.
But whatever the historical connection may have been, and
whether Luke designs to place them in historical connection
at all or not, it is certain that the truths of Matt. v. 17 and

THE FULFILLING OF THE LAW. 41
xi. 13 admit of being ethically aud logically connected in the
relations given them by Luke. Although the law and the
prophets, the entire economy which is scripturaUy fixed in
the writings of the Old Testament, with respect to form and
temporary relations, endure only until John Baptist; yet of
their ethical and spiritual reality, of their absolute and ideal
contents, not an item is to be lost.^
So also in Luke xvi. 29-31, Jesus does not teach simply,
as Meyer supposes, that the law and the prophets are the
appointed means to penitence, but rather a much wider truth.
He implies that the entire Old-Testament economy makes an
appeal for the same moral and religious activities of penitence
and faith for which he himself, by his resurrection, will make
an appeal ; and, further, that the attitude of heart which leads
to the rejection of the former appeal will not be changed by the
latter. Such hearts as wUl not hear the truth of Moses and
the prophets wUl not be persuaded by one risen from the
dead. The righteousness, the attitude of heart toward God
and man, demanded by both forms of divine revelation, is
essentially the same. Men are saved by repenting and being
persuaded, whether through hearkening to the essential truth
of law and prophecy or to its embodiment in the resurrection of
Messiah. With this general view of the economy of the Old Testa
ment, the words of Christ to the Samaritan woman (John
iv. 22) also correspond. Salvation is indeed " of the Jews "
(cK rZv lovSatW), but the present form of it is about to cease
(epXCTat wpa Kat vvv icTTiv).
We receive a further hint in Matt. vii. 12, as to the more
specific sense in which Jesus regarded the Mosaic law as of
divine origin and unbroken perpetuity, and as to the manner
in which his own ^rXrfpuo-ts of it was to come about. The same
conception of the ethical elements of the Old Testament is
manifest in the teaching of Matt. xxii. 34-40 ; Mark xii. 28-31 ;
Luke X. 25-27 : in these passages love is declared to be the
conditioning principle of all the contents of both the law and
the prophets regarded as concrete divine commands. The
quotations of Deut. vi. 5 and Lev. xix. 18 place the concep
tion of righteousness which Jesus held in accord with the con
sentient voice of the Hebrew prophets ; though we are scarcely
warranted in saying that he " attached himself directly to the
1 See Meyer on Luke xvi. 16 f.

42 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
prophetic conception of the law in Deuteronomy." ^ To the
teachers of both the Old Testament and the New, only one law
is known ; and no consciousness of any distinction between a
Jehovistic and an Elohistic Torah, or a priestly and a prophetic
law, anywhere emerges. Nor is such a distinction even ob
scurely referred to in any of the passages cited above: the
distinction is, however, clearly made between the fundamental
moral principles in which the special enactments dependently
inhere (/cpe/Aon-at) and the special enactments themselves. The
latter are relatively depreciated. In the same manner (Matt.
xxiii. 23) are the purely moral injunctions of Mic. vi. 8 and
Hos. xU. 6 exalted by Christ, and the punctilious keeping of
the law of tithes (Lev. xxvii. 30) is relatively depreciated.
The distinction between the absolute and the relative applies
to the entire Mosaic law, to its distinctively ethical as well as
its confessedly ceremonial parts. Especially does the attitude
in which Christ places himself to one of the ten di-vine words
of the Decalogue instruct us upon this point. His teaching
and conduct with respect to the Mosaic law of the sabbath were
a chief point of controversy between the Redeemer and the
rabbis. Although he might have based his reply to their com
plaints on the ground that their own tradition for the observ
ance of the sabbath was not plainly warranted by the Mosaic
law, and so simply have taught the inapplicabiUty of the
rabbinical tradition to himself and his disciples, he chooses to
occupy much higher ground. The ground which he chooses
to occupy covers the whole question of his attitude toward the
Mosaic law. The act of his disciples in plucking and rubbing
out the corn (Matt. xii. 1-8 ; Mark ii. 23-28 ; Luke vi. 1-5)
could only be placed in apparent contradiction with the law of
Exod. xvi. 22 f. or Lev. xxiii. 14 ; while it was, according to
Lightfoot and others, undoubtedly contrary to rabbinical tra
dition. Christ does not, however, lay emphasis upon this fact.
In placing himself, by the chaUenge of high and unequivocal
language, above the sacred place and the ethico-ceremonial
enactment of the Mosaic law concerning the sacred feast, he
confirms his former teaching as to his attitude toward the Old-
Testament Scriptures. He recognizes the truth, that, in ful
filling every jot and tittie of their law, he must allow to pass
from obligation, as a part of that law, many of its special enact
ments, observances, and established points of view. Our chief
1 Article Bible, in the lincyclop.'caia Britannica, ninth edition.

THE ABROGATION OF TIIE LAW. 43
interest, let it not be forgotten, is to observe the attitude which
Christ assumed toward the whole question involved. His alti
tude is not that of the inquirer into the applicability of the
ethical enactments in an ancient law: it is rather that of a
teacher introducing and applying a new norm or moral code
for the observance of the moral and religious truths contained
in the law. The same attitude toward the sabbatic provisions
of the Mosaic law is uniformly maintained by Christ (Matt. xii.
9-14 ; Mark in. 1-6 ; Luke vi. 6-11, xiii. 10-17, xiv. 1-6 ; John
V. 17 ff.). The absolute contents are distinguished as embodied
in their changing form ; and " doing well " is, as says Meyer,
declared to be " the moral norm for the rest and labor of the
sabbath." In his argument with the Jews concerning circumcision and
the sabbath (John vii. 19 ff.), Jesus seems to assume, in part, the
historical and critical point of view, and to base the validity
of his argument upon that point of view. He seems to imply
that the institution of circumcision is not Mosaic but patri
archal, and therefore has priority of claim over the institution
of the sabbath; and that the Jews themselves recognize this
truth whenever they — in accordance with the law of Moses,
which has, on account of this very priority and prior sanctity
of circumcision, adopted it — administer the rite of circumcision
on the sabbath day.^ Amplificatur dignitas circumcisionis re
spectu sahhati, quo ilia sit antiquior adeoque potior (Bengel).
We observe, then, that, in ascribing circumcision and the whole
Mosaic law to Moses, Jesus neither implies any distrust as to
its divine origin, nor directly pronounces upon the authorship
of the Pentateuch. As to the elements of its authorship, how
ever, two important conclusions concerning his opinion may be
gathered from this teaching. It is implied that certain ethico-
ceremonial requirements were incorporated into the Mosaic law
on the ground of their previous observance. Somewhat which
is "of the fathers" («« tu>v ¦jraripoiv') has become incorporated
into the law popularly said to be given by Moses ; and such is
1 We connect (somewhat doubtfully) Sii toSto forward with oux oti as Benfjel,
Luthardt, Meyer, and Alford have done. In case, however, a period is placed
after SiA toOto connecting it with ^aviiiCere, or if, the punctuation remaining the
same as that adopted here (so Tischendorf), we accept the interpretation of Winer
(SiaTouTo, be it known to you Moses gave, etc. — Grammar, 7th ed., § 7, sect. 3); the
clause oix on . . . TruTipiiv becomes parenthetic, and the force of our argument is
.somewhat weakened. It is not, however, by any means destroyed. Jesus then
parenthetically, and not as a basis for his argument, makes this quasi-critical
statement.

44 ¦ THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
also the conclusion of critical inquiry. It is also implied tnat
the ethico-ceremonial rite of circumcision had superior sanctity
to the legal enactment of the sabbath, and that this sanctity has
its ground in historical priority. This view, if it does not in
volve a decision as to the dependence of the narrative of Gen.
ii. 2, 3, upon the sabbatic law in the time of Moses, certainly
seems to suggest the critical view upon the question of de
pendence. And, further, the whole argument is so plainly ad
hominem, and in the direction of an effort to correct the insanity
of rabbinical traditionalism in its observance of the INIosaic law,
through what we may call a critical and rational view of the
origin and nature of that law, that the entire incident is quite
unique in the history of Jesus.
The same distinction between absolute contents of ethical
truth, diplomatically fixed in the writings of the Old Testa
ment, and the relative and imperfect form in which those con
tents are manifested, underlies another teaching of Christ (Matt.
xix. 8-12, and Mark x. 2-12). He is asked to define himself
with respect to a question in dispute between the two chief
rabbinical schools of Hillel and Shammai, and, as the form of
the question would indicate, with the expectation that he would
declare himself for the school of Shammai. But his reply places
his doctrine above that of the schools, and also above the pro
visions of the Mosaic law itself. The ethical principle of mar
riage, as it is found expressed in the very structure of male and
female, is maintained to be of divine origin ; the form of its
contract and dissolution as provided for in the Mosaic law is
abrogated. We observe, also, that the ethical principle is de
tected and called forth from its envelopment in the obscurest
regions of history ; whUe the form of the precept is abrogated,
although plainly laid down in the written law. The fact of
the original divine creation of male and female as narrated
Gen. i. 27, and the declaration of the original divine law of
marriage as given Gen. ii. 24, which is probably to be regarded
as a reflective remark of the author (I?-^;? being a customary
phrase to introduce such remarks), are spoken of as indicating
the divine will and doctrine ; while to the regulation of divorce
as provided in Deut. xxiv. 1, only the force of a temporary and
permissive decree of Moses is given. And, further, the act of
joining man and woman in marriage is ascribed to God ; while
the act of separating those thus joined, although referred to its
source in the express provision of the Mosaic law, is contrasted

THE ABROGATION OF THE LAW. 45
with this divine act, and is regarded as the faulty work of raan.
Thus does Christ again show his recognition of certain faulty
and fleeting elements in even the ethical provisions of Mosaism,
— a recognition formerly made in the case of the Mosaic law
of retaliation (Matt. v. 88 f.).
We cannot, to be sure, charge upon Moses, in the name of
Christ, a faultiness of moral judgment which would prevent us
from considering him as the inspired medium of a divine reve
lation in the form of legal enactments. The word used by
Christ with reference to the act of Moses (otc'tpei/'ev) seems
rather to place the human lawgiver in some sort at that divine
point of view from which such concessions are regarded as a
necessary part of the divine historic discipline. But we cer
tainly must recognize the fact that the doctrine of the pedagogic
and concessive nature of the Old-Testament economy is here
taught. The principle of an historic growth from the inferior
to the superior, of a passage through a region of moral obscu
rity and intellectual darkness into one of comparative light,
must be largely drawn upon in the attempt to understand
the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament. This principle
is here distinctly avowed; and having once admitted it, iu
accord -with the doctrine of Christ, we are at liberty to use it
as far as need be without contravening his other teachings.
Christ did not regard the Old-Testament economy of law as
free from even moral imperfections and blemishes. We cannot
say, before examination, that any of its entire economy is freer
than the so-caUed law of Moses. The ethical contents of the
Old Testament may possibly aU be regarded as pedagogically
accommodated to the low moral condition of the people.
In his controversy with the Sadducees (Matt. xxU. 23-33 ;
Mark xii. 18-27 ; Luke xx. 27-89), Christ, although not pro
nouncing clearly upon the morality of the Le-virate law of
marriage, seems to regard it from the point of view already
indicated. He regards it as being, even in the concessive forra
given to this ancient Oriental requirement by the Mosaic law,
a temporary expedient of imperfect morality. In this case
again does the Great Teacher slightly pass over the express
provisions of the Old-Testament Scriptures, in order that he
may make clear some hidden and only implied, but absolute
and abiding, truth which they contained. In this case again
we see the same pains-taking to break the shell of form, and
reveal the kernel of reality.

46 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
The same distinction between contents of absolute truth, and
imperfect formal elements which encompass and hold these
contents, is found in the attitude of Jesus toward the cere
monial parts of the Mosaic law. The distinction between the
ceremonial and the ethical parts, as such, is, indeed, nowhere
found in his teaching, and is decidecUy contrary to the spirit of
the legal writings. The ceremonial itself is symbolicaUy eth
ical: it has contents of absolute and eternal religious truth.
But, like the more distinctively ethical portions of the law, it
has these contents not unmixed with formal elements of imper
fect and temporary characteristics. It is on the ground of this
distinction that the Mosaic law in general is (Matt. xv. 1-20 ;
Mark vii. 1-16) at the same time contrasted with the tradition
of the elders, and also itself indirectly accused of being, in re
spect to the subject of tradition, upon the same unstable ground.
The quotation by Christ of two passages from Exod. xx. 12, and
xxi. 16, which are here (Matt. xv. 3 and Mark vii. 10) thrown
together into one sentence, is introduced by Matthew with the
words o yap 6ebi iveretXaTo Xiyiav, and by Mark with the words
IMmvct^s yap etTrev. Christ may have introduced his quotation
with words uniting both these forms. In any case, the divine
origin of the law seems assumed in his form of introducing
these quotations from the Old Testament ; for even in Mark
the ydp of verse 10 refers to the words Trjv hroX^v tov 6iov of the
preceding verse, and in both Matthew and Mark the special
command of the law securing honor to parents is declared to
be a divine word of enduring obligation (v ivToXr) tov demi. Matt.
XV. 3; and 6 Adyos toC 6eov, Mark vii. 13). As such a divine
word of enduring obligation, the moral precept of the Mosaic
law is opposed to the rabbinical tradition, which, planting itself
upon a ceremonial law touching the washing of the person
and garments (Lev. xv.), was held to be of special importance
(Lightfoot), and which, perhaps on the ground of injunctions
like those contained in Deut. iv. 14 and xvU. 10, had become
more important with the Pharisees than even a command of
the Decalogue. WhUe assuming the divine origin of the Mo
saic law, Jesus here shows that he is ready to place certain of
its precepts, as ceremonial enactments, on a level with the tra
dition of the elders. And, although the regulations of the
Mosaic canon concerning food are not expressly spoken against
(Matt. XV. 10, 11), the appUcation of Christ's teaching to them
is unmistakable (Meyer). The contrast, then, between a nioral

CHRIST AND THE CEREMONIAL LAW. 47
command or precept, an ivToXy or Xdyos toC 6tov, which is of divine
origin and abiding obligation, and a ceremonial observance of
temporary force, is applied by Christ to the contents of the
Old Testament; and this contrast does not depend upon the
distinction between the moral and the ceremonial portions in
themselves, but rather upon the distinction between elements
of one kind and elements of another kind which are found in
both moral and ceremonial portions.
Christ, indeed, bids the cleansed leper (Matt. viii. 4 ; Mark
i. 44 ; Luke v. 14) comply, either wholly or in part, with the
specifications of tho Mosaic law as found Lev. xiv. 2 f. As to
his motive in issuing this command, some doubt exists owing
to the doubtful reference of airots. The apparent motive is to
furnish a proof to the people that the leper is really healed.
The opinion of Chrysostom, that Christ designs to furnish a wit
ness of his adherence to the Mosaic law, is obviously wrong.i
He rather suffers the observance of the ceremony, and com
mands the act, not on its own account, but for the sake of its
bearing on his own ministiy.
On the contiary, Christ seems to take a hostile position to
ward the ceremonial law of fasting (Matt. ix. 14-17; Mark
ii. 18-22; Luke v. 38-89). But the ideal reality and absolute
contents of even this part of the Mosaic law are not left unful
filled. The religious thought and feeUng which appropriately
express themselves in the ceremonial observance are recognized
and provided for in the permissive attitude of Christ toward the
Mosaic law of fasting. His Ulustrations (Matt. ix. 16, 17) not
only place the ceremony of fasting where the Apostolic Church,
foUowing him, placed it ; but they also teach plainly the broader
principle that in general the ancient forms of the Mosaic law
are — as being iraperfect and faulty, and as having accompUshed
their pedagogic uses — to be abrogated. Like a single flash of
Ughtning do we see the words of Mark vii. 19 — which the
author of the Gospel understands Jesus to speak, " purging all
meats," — illumine the whole field of the ceremonial law.
Nor is the point of -view changed when Christ instructs
the people (Matt. xxUi. 23) to follow all the institutions of the
Pharisees in so far as they were the successors of Moses in the
expounding of his law. This instruction was designed for only
very brief appUcation ; since the seat of Moses, on which the
1 So Fritzsche: " Haec autem dixit ut turbae tostaretur se magni facere Moses
instituta."

48 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Pharisees had officially placed themselves, was soon to be taken
down. In the name of the eternal moral law he charges the
same people not to be guUty of the crime of the Pharisees, —
a crime essentially the same ia aU ages, and whose essence is
self-righteous hypocrisy.
By repeated quotation of Hos. vi. 6 (Matt. ix. 13, xu. 7),
that view of the law is espoused winch is frequently expressed
in the Old Testament itself (Isa. i. 11-17; Ps. xl. 6-8, 1. 8-23;
Mic. vi. 6-8), and which teaches the worthlessness of aU observ
ances of concrete enactments as compared with the principles
of righteous conduct.
We conclude, then, from a complete survey of his doctrine,
that Christ taught the existence in the Mosaic law of two sets
of elements, which possess contrasted, and in some respects
mutually exclusive, characteristics. This law has contents of
absolute truth, real and abiding words of God ; but it has also
contents of imperfect and faulty concrete enactments. And,
moreover, we must distinguish between the contents of truth,
and those formal and relative elements which serve to hold,
and even to conceal, these contents. As to the nature of the
writings in which both these sets of elements appertaining to
Mosaism are fixed, we are left almost wholly to make our own
inferences. The writings are indeed called Sacred Scripture.
The plainest inference is, that the writings are sacred because
they contain sacred contents of revealed moral and reUgious
truth. But if the qualities of divine origin and authority are
to be inferred for the writings in which these contents of truth
are fixed, the qualities of human imperfection and faultiness
must also be inferred for the same writings. In other words,
we have on the authority of Christ no warrant for declar
ing the writings of Mosaism to be sacred in any sense or to
any degree which does not foUow from the sacredness of the
law they contain. And the sacredness of this law is, on the
same authority, not such as to secure it frora the charge of
imperfection and faultiness when compared with an absolute
standard. And, further, although Moses is obviously regarded as the
chosen medium for revealing the divine words fixed in certain
sacred writings of the Hebrews, no doctrine of his inspiration
as a writer of Scripture is taught. God is indeed said to
speak in the divine words which issue as legal institutions or
enactments from Moses. Yet how little ground can here be

MOSES AT THE BUSH. 49
found for any detailed doctrine of the inspiration of the
writings of Mosaism, the most conspicuous example offers a
convincing proof. (See Matt. xxii. 23-33, and parallel pas
sages.) The quotation of the words recorded as spoken by
Jehovah to Moses at the bush is differently introduced by
each of the three Synoptists. The declaration which Matthew
makes Christ give as " the thing spoken by God saying," Luke
prefaces with the words, "but that the dead are raised, even
Moses indicated at the bush, when he saith ; " while Mark, in
this passage, as not infrequently, seems somewhat to harmonize
the two others by standing between them. " Did ye not read in
the book of Moses, at the bush how God spake to hira saying,"
are the words which introduce the quotation in Mark. That
the citation contains only "Rabbinical dialectic," as Strauss
and others have maintained, and that we can argue nothing
from it as to the doctrine of Jesus touching the Word of God
in the Hebrew Scriptures, is manifestly false. The falsehood
of this view is proved by the fact that the records of the Synop
tists, when harmonized, clearly show that Jesus, in some form
of quotation, attributed the word of Exod. Ui. 6 to Jehovah.
It is significant, however, that one of the Synoptists, and that
one Luke, should say of the doctrine of the words quoted,
"Moses indicated [ep.ijvuo-ei'] it ; " especially since the argument in
Luke seems to turn, as the particle Kat (verse 37) inforras us,
upon the view that Moses was the teacher of the doctrine.
(So also Mark, whUe Matthew lets this point entirely slip.)
Nor can this identifying of the raedium of divine truth with
the source of that truth in God, receive here its custoraary
explanation. (For example, compare Matt. xv. 4 with Mark
vii. 10.) For, from the point of view of the Old-Testaraent
narrative, the words of Exod. iii. 6 cannot be said to have been
spoken, or indicated through teaching, by Moses, in the sarae
sense in which, in general, the inspired speaker or -writer may
be said to speak the words, or indicate the teaching, of God.
The Old-Testaraent point of view seems to have been that
Jehovah addressed these words to Moses with an audible
voice, and during an actual and open vision of a bush on
fire. The form of quotation employed in Luke is not, then,
a simple identifying of the writer of revealed truth with the
source of the revelation, but a lowering of the point of view.
Moses can be said to be the author of these words only,
'¦'¦narrando se. quod dixerat Beus" (Grotius). We have here
VOL. I. D

50 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
only the statement that a divine word of truth concerning
the resurrection had come by Moses, and been recorded in the
book bearing his name ; for the popular and uncritical use
which is here made of the words " in the book of Moses "
(£1/ Tjj /3t73A<j) Ma)W£o)s) will not permit us to press them in favor
of any particular theory of the authorship of the Pentateuch.
The highest form of revelation and inspiration known to the
rabbinical view of Hebrew Sacred Scriptures, the form in which
Jehovah is said to speak directly to Moses the words recorded
as Jehovah's own, does not, so far as any thing is here taught
by Christ, escape the conditions which belong to revelation
and inspiration in general.
We are left, then, to infer even the inspiration of the medium
of revelation as an effect erf, and a preparation for, the revela
tion received by him. As to the fact and qualities of inspkar
tion, when transferred by a figure of speech from the medium
of revelation to the record of the revelations made, we have,
besides the bare titles applied to Sacred Scripture, no informa
tion from Christ applicable to the legal contents of the Mosaic
law. We have, however, to notice further that the Mosaic law
contains prophetic as well as legal contents. Indeed, its cere
monial portions are in general regarded as symboUc and pro
phetic; its more distinctively ethical portions are given in
shadow-lines anticipatory of the artist who is to fill them in
with the completed picture. What it was in the Mosaic law,
regarded upon its prophetic side, which Clu'ist undertook
especially to authenticate, we learn frora his charge against
the unbelieving Jews (John v. 45). The very Moses upon
whom they had set their hopes of JNlessianic salvation through
zealous obedience to his law, was their accuser ; for he had
written concerning Christ, not only in the seemingly prophetico-
Messianic words of Deut. xviii. 15, but in all the Messianic types
and promises of the Pentateuch, that is, in the Messianic con
tents of the books which bear his name. But in this declara
tion the prophetic inspiration of the medium of such divine
Messianic promises and predictions is clearly impUed; the
corresponding quality is also ascribed by inference to the
¦writings thus composed. It is not taught, however, that
these sacred Messianic portions of the Pentateuch were com
posed by one having a self-conscious intuition of the mean
ing of his work. Moreover, by the terms of his charge'

THE CHARGE OF BLASPHEMY. 61
against the Jews (for ipaware, verse 39, is to be considered as
indicative rather than imperative), Jesus implies the same dis
tinction with which we are now familiar. They were caught
and entangled in the form ; the contents of truth which they
should reach, but did not, were the real testimony to himself.
Christ does not find fault with them for diligent study of their
Sacred Scriptures: he does accuse them of folly and sin in
idolizing the written word while neglecting its ideal contents
of truth.
From the same point of view must we interpret the argument
of John X. 34 ff. The design of Christ is not, as is generally
supposed, to clear himself of the charge of blasphemy: it is
rather to convict his opponents of captiousness, inexcusable
and even unconsciously blasphemous, iu making the charge.
Jesus had spoken of God as his Father in such way that the
Jews correctly understood him as implying that he was in some
special sense vlo^ tov Owv, and were about to stone him. But
he reminds thera of certain premises which they would accept :
viz., that their law represented (Ps. Ixxxii. 6) the theocratic
judges, whom the divine word had constituted such with an
official call, as receiving from Jehovah the title "gods," and
that, as all admitted, the Scripture in this case, as generally,
could not be deprived of its authority. What a captious false
hood was, then, their charge of blasphemy against him, who,
although consecrated and sent into the world for a far loftier
divine mission, had only by inference called himself the Son of
God ! This argument is thus far designedly concessive : it in
volves, however, by concession, a certain view of the nature of
the Old-Testament economy and Scriptures. The argument con
cedes that the dignitaries spoken of as gods (Ps. Ixxxii. 6 , Exod.
xxi. 6,xxU. 28) were constituted such by divine authority (6 Adyos
iyei/eTo tou Oeov') : this would be true whether we refer the title to
GentUe rulers (De Wette and Ewald) or to the judges of Israel.
In either case the term Elohim is not, as Ewald supposes,
ironical. The argument further concedes that this scripture —
Christ here coinciding -with the point of view held by the Jews
— cannot be abrogated (XvOrjvat) or rendered of no authority
and effect. To what this concession refers, we learn by consult
ing Matt. V. 19. But below this arguraent, which we raay call
designedly superficial and an argumentum ad hominem, Ues yet
another. They had stickled for the letter of their law, and had
been confuted by an arguraent based on that very letter of

52 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
which they would make use to convict him. They had, how
ever, no real sympathy with the higher contents of truth in
that scripture which they raade haste to defend. Its " norma
tive and judicial authority " was to be preserved by believing
in Messiah. To these Messianic contents of the law, then, did
the divine indestructible authority especially apply.
The doctrine of Christ as to the origin and nature of the
distinctively prophetic contents of the Old-Testaraent Scriptures
may be inferred from his own discourses with considerable dis
tinctness and completeness. In what sense we are to under
stand that fulfilling of the prophets (jjrX-rjpwa-K tS>v wpoi^rfTutv), to
which he refers (Matt. v. 17), we are not left in doubt, although
the illustrations given in Matthew refer only to the contents
of the law. Christ believed in the inspiration of the Hebrew
prophets, and in the reality of their predictions ; but he adopted
the typical view of their prophecy, and placed the emphasis of
his teaching upon those Messianic ideas, utterances, and even
events of history, which left their truth only in shadow-lines
to be filled in by himself. It is, therefore, as received through
inspired servants of God, and as in part diplomatically fixed
by them, that the written contents of the prophetic portions
of the Old Testament are, on the authority of Christ, to be
called Sacred Scripture. The Ulustration and proof of the
different elements of this statement must be blended in our
examination, but they need not be confused.
The words of Christ, when he drove out the profaners of the
temple, show his accord with the moral feeling expressed in
Isa. Ivi. 7 and Jer. vii. 11. But his own death, considered as
prophetically anticipated, he regards from the first of liis min
istry as the final purpose of it aU (see Matt. ix. 15 and Meyer's
note ; John i. 29, ii. 19, iii. 14).
Toward the close of his life his teaching upon the truth that
his own death was prophetically anticipated in the Old Testa
ment becoraes raore clear and unmistakable (Luke x\iii. 31-34,
xxu. 87, xxiv. 27, 44-47). The sufferings and death of Messiah
were, as Jesus beUeved, not only implicitly taught and plainly
foreshadowed in the Old Testament ; but these were even the
more iraportant and central truths predicted of himself, -with
the fulfilment of which the prophecy of the former dispensation
should come to its complete realization in both idea and his
tory. All the things written by the prophets with reference to
the Son of raan wUl be perfected by his sufferings, death, and

THE FULFILLING OF THE PROPHETS. 53
resurrection (xviu. 81). These culminating events, looked
upon as comprehending his entire mission, comprehend also all
which was written in Sacred Scripture concerning that mission.
Furthermore, the ideal and historic connections between him
self and Hebrew prophecy cannot be a raatter of mere coinci
dence or simUarity of picturesque representation. What has
been written must be fulfiUed (see the 8«t TrXt^puiBrjvat of Luke
xxiv. 44, and the Set TtXeo-^vot of Luke xxii. 87, and comp. Matt.
xxvi. 54). It is the indestructible divine purpose, that the
things written in prophetic Hebrew Scriptures shall be brought
completely to pass in himself. This declaration is obviously
dependent upon the belief that the predictive contents of Scrip
ture were the work of the same Eternal Spirit whose mind was
also made manifest in his o-wn correlative words and deeds.
Jesus seems to have had especially before his mind that
greatest of all the Messianic prophecies, where the figure of the
suffering servant of Jehovah is introduced by the greatest of
aU the prophets of Israel ; viz., Isa. IU. 13-lUi. 12. This is clear
from the fact, that, while dwelling upon the last verse of this
prophecy, his vision sweeps in one glance so broad a field that
he can announce in general terms: The things concerning me
have reached their fulfilment (Luke xxii. 37). It was doubt
less upon this prediction of the fate of the servant of Jehovah
that he dwelt much in thought, when after his resurrection he
opened the mind of his disciples to comprehend the Scriptures
(xxiv. 44 f.). Of the reality of prophetic inspiration, and of
the existence of predictive contents in the Hebrew prophetic
writings, we cannot presume that Jesus had any doubt.
How far, however, his doctrine of prophecy involves the
belief that any, even of the most distinctively Messianic utter
ances, have their primal and historic reference solely to himself,
we are not directly informed. We have abundant indirect
proof, however, that Christ held in most instances the typical
-view of inspired prophecy. We have little proof that in more
than one or two instances at most he claimed for the prophecy
of the Hebrew Scriptures as applied to himself any other than
this secondary fulfilment. In the case of Christ and prophecy,
the ideal is the truest, most substantially real.
Considered as throwing light upon this question, the inter
pretation of Luke xxu. 37 becomes one of the most significant
pieces of minute grammatical exegesis in all the extent of the
Synoptic Gospels. With reference to Isa. liii. 12, the declara-

54 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tion is made, tovto to yefpafip-ivov Set Teksa-Orivai Iv ifioL ; and the
ground (yap) of this specific declaration is then given in the
further general declaration : Kal yap Ta irepl ifwv tcAos Ix^t. The
question at once arises, What is the contrast here suggested?
Is it between those Scriptures which have reference to Christ
and other Scriptures not having this reference ; or is it between
that fulfilment of these Messianic prophecies which he is to
accomplish (which, therefore, makes them to be concerning
himself) and that other fulfilment of the same prophecies which
makes them concern the ones to whom they had only primary
and historic reference? To this question we answer with
Meyer, although against Luther, Calvin, Bengel, Olshausen,
De Wette, Bleek, and others : The latter contrast is the one
suggested and made. This answer, although opposed to the
weight of authority, is made with considerable confidence, on
the foUowing grounds : (1) The fact that the to yeypap-p-evov of
the first sentence has no personal Umitation, whUe TcXea-B^vai is
limited by iv ip-ot, suggests the view : Jesus believed that a proph
ecy not primarily written of himself might stiU, in the highest
and completest raanner, be fulfiUed in himself. (2) The specific
form of ra TTcpt e/jiov seems to set the indefiniteness of the unlim
ited to yeypap-ixevov into yet stronger contrast. (3) And finaUy,
the connective, Kal yap — the force of which, as Meyer truly says
most commentators have neglected — shows that Jesus was
thinking of the "subject of the historic meaning of the pas
sage as being another than himself, and one of whom he himself
is the antitype."
But, if this exegesis be correct, Christ implicitly accepts and
teaches the typical view of prophecy with reference to Isa. lii.
18-liii. 12, — a passage which is generally admitted to be one of
the raost clearly Messianic. In his view, this Messianic, passage
was not necessarily such because he was liiraself alone the one
who gave it its historic and primary fulfilment. He teaches
that the prophets have predicted the sufferings, death, and
final triumph of the servant of Jehovah ; and not simply in
single passages of their books, but all these things have been
written in the law of Moses and in the Psalms, as well as in
the Prophets (Luke xxiv. 44). These all are also concerning
himself: they are so because he gives to them theu- highest,
final, and comprehensive fulfilment. In Christ, his sufferings
and death and resurrection, they are all, in their absolute mean
ing and ideal contents, to the last jot and tittle fulfilled. Who

CHRIST AS THE MARTYR PROPHET. 55
this servant of Jehovah was in the historic significance, — the
suffering, dying, and yet triumphing One of the awfully sweet
and majestic utterance of the ancient inspired writer, — Christ
does not give an opinion. The question, as says Meyer, is inde
terminate (beruht auf sich") : it may safely thus be left. Criti
cism, both ancient and modern, has been much disturbed and
thrown into confusion over it ; but by answering the question
according to his light the critic does not disturb the teaching
of Christ. There are, indeed, difficulties which accompany
any answer to this question of criticism ; but no other answer
has greater difficulties than the one which makes the passage
in Isaiah directly and solely Messianic. The view of Delitzsch,
" who thinks that Messiah stands objectively before the raind
of the -writer," is no freer from either critical or dogmatic diffi
culties than the view of Ewald,^ who derives this conception of
the suffering servant of Jehovah from the condition of the
pious Jewish people in the reign of Manasseh, as specifically
applied and illustrated in the case of sorae martyr prophet
whose person we cannot to-day accurately distinguish. Had
some questioner of the time of Jesus asked of him as did the
eunuch of Philip, "I pray thee, concerning whom speaketh
the prophet this? concerning himself or concerning some other
one?" Jesus would, it is Ukely, have answered as did Philip
(Acts viU. 34 f.).
We are not left, however, to a confessedly difficult choice in
the exegesis of one passage, for our information respecting the
view of Christ upon the nature of Hebrew prophecy and its
fulfilment in hiraself. With one or two possible exceptions, all
his references to the prophetic contents of the Old-Testament
Scriptures appear to be made from the same point of view.
The title " he that cometh," 6 «pxdp.Evos, taken probably from
Ps. xl. 6, 8 (perhaps also from Ps. cxviU. 26 with reference to
the words of Deut. x-viii. 15), and appropriated by Christ
(Matt. xi. 2 ff. and Luke vu. 18-23), must be understood as a
typical fulfilment of prophecy. So also the fulfilment which
Christ as o ipxop-evo^ gives to certain prophetic passages of the
Old Testament ; for example, Isa. xxxv. 5 f. and Ixi. 1. The
title of the rejected stone, which was made the head of the
corner (Ps. cxvUi. 22 f.), he espouses in the same manner
(Matt. xxi. 42; Luke xx. 17), while quoting Sacred Scripture
with the introductory phrase, OvSeiroTe dviyvone iv Taw ypa<paK.
1 Die Propheten, etc., III. pp. 27 f. and 89 f.

56 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Ps. cxviii. was, however, first sung either at the first cele
bration of the Feast of Tabernacles after the return of the
Jews (Ewald), or at the dedication of the completed temple
(DeUtzsch). The rejected stone refers, therefore, in its primary
and historic meaning, to the small remnant of the Jewish people,
who were to become, nevertheless, the foundation of the recon
structed theocratic kingdom. It is only in its secondary and
typical meaning that Christ can intend to refer it to himself,
who, though rejected by the Jews, should become the chief
and abiding corner of the kingdom of heaven. In Matt. xxiv.
15 he speaks of Daniel as the prophet, and sees, in the term
which that writer applies to the desolation of the temple by
Antiochus Epiphanes, a pregnancy of meaning which makes it
applicable to the other and later fulfilment of which he himself
warns his disciples.
In the sarae light are we to regard the authority which Christ
gives by his conduct to the claira of the Evangelists ; viz., that
his entry into Jerusalera was in fulfilment of Zech. ix. 9 (see
Matt. xxi. 4; John xii. 14, 15). The fulfilment of the prophecy
does not consist, however, so much in the remarkable external
correspondence of demeanor as in the real correspondence of
character thus externally symbolized.
Another instance of the view of Jesus touching Old-Testa
ment prophecy is found in his application of Mal. Ui. 1 and
iv. 5 to the case of John Baptist (see Matt. xvii. 10-13 ; Mark
ix. 11-13). This instance illustrates with especial clearness
the difference between the rabbinical interpretation of prophecy
and that of our Lord. As to the passage from Malachi, it was
originally -written, according to Ewald,^ by an author of un
known name, whose "flying leaf" its redactor ingeniously
inscribed with its present title (Angelicus), and whose period
of writing is to be placed about a half-century after Haggai
and Zechariah. The last one of his three main divisions of
prophecy sets forth the coming of Jehovah to the judgment
of the people for their sins. Again, and for the last time
within the Canon of the Old Testament, the terrible day of the
appearing of Jehovah is announced. But before that day, and
to prepare the way for his coming to judgment, Jehovah wUl
send his messenger, the messenger of his ancient covenant, —
none other than the mighty Elijah. The expectation of such
a prophet to precede the coming of Messiah was held by the
1 Die Propheten, etc., III. p. 214 fi.

JOHN THE BAPTIST AS ELIJAH. 57
rabbis at the Christian era, as the question of the disciples
implies. This expectation was doubtless originaUy founded
upon the promise of " a Prophet " as given in Deut. xviii. 15,
18, and had probably taken shape in the selection of Elijah to
return as the promised prophet, previous even to the prophecy
of Malachi. To this selection the lofty character of Elijah,
who in deeds of might and in prophetic activity surpassed
all the other prophets, and who talked with God at Horeb
(1 Kings xix. 9 ff.), led the mind of the Jews. It was also
largely aided, if we may trust the very probable view of Hitzig,^
by the belief in the translation of that prophet : he was thus
regarded as alive with God, and therefore deemed pecuUarly
suitable to send again to earth by an age in which the doctrine
was not yet developed that all the pious after their death Uve
in the blessed divine presence. Ewald, with his usual freedom
and suggestiveness in conjecture, supposes that a prophetic
book, now lost, was in existence in the time of Malachi, which
had much to say of Elijah as the messenger of the covenant ;
but of this we have no proof.
Christ denies that the prophecy of Malachi was to be ful
filled in the manner in which the Jews of that prophet's time,
the rabbis and people of his own time, and probably the
prophet himself, understood the words; but he asserts the
ideal truth taught in the tradition of the scribes. According
to the text of Mark, he asserts with the theoretic forra of the
indefinite present (Bengel and Meyer), according to the text
of Matthew, -with the prophetic future, that John Baptist is the
forerunner here prophesied. In its typical meaning the proph
ecy of Malachi is already fulfUled.^ But the coming of John
Baptist is the preparation for the fulfilment of those prophecies
which set forth his own sufferings and rejection. Those proph
ecies, then, — such is the conclusion which is with exquisite deli
cacy and tenderness of feeling left only indicated (Meyer), —
wiU soon likewise be fulfilled. In this interpretation of the
words of Malachi, Christ places himself and his principles of
the interpretation of prophecy much above not only the scribes
and disciples of his o-wn day, but also, it would appear, above
the self-conscious intent of the prophet himself.
The same view of Hebrew prophecy is indicated in the use
1 Die Zwolf Klelnen Propheten, Leipzig, 1863, p. 413.
2 Luke shows (i. 17) his recognition of the validity of this typical fulfilment, as
well as the res alts of later reflection, when he introduces the explanatory words,
iv TTvevfjiaTi nal Swa/iei 'HAi'ov.

58 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
made by Jesus of Zech. xiii. 7 (Matt. xxvi. 31). That this
prophecy contains real Messianic contents of typical and pre
dictive truth is assumed in the phrase (yeypairTat yap) with
which it is introduced. Of the passages of Zechariah from
which quotation is here made, Ewald ^ truly declares: "The
Messianic hopes and symbols are in the case of this prophet
quite as elaborate and weU formed, quite as forceful and pre
dominant, as in the case of his feUow-countryman and contem
porary Isaiah." The question of interest in the case of Zech.
xiu. 7 is, whether the shepherd against whom the sword is
bidden to arise is the prophet himself, here regarded by Jesus
as a type of Messiah, or the evil shepherd, regarded by Zechar
riah either as a representative of the false prophets in general,
or as identified with some evil Jewish (or other) ruler,— it
may be Judas Maccabaeus, Jehoiakim, or Pekah. The first
inspection of Zechariah xiii. 7 would incline us to refer the
prophet's words to the worthless shepherd of xi. 17, who is
here personified in the Jewish ruler of that time. Christ, how
ever, seems to quote the words as though their meaning re
quired much more than what we may call a proverbial appli
cation of them to himself. Of any shepherd, e-vU or good, it
is true that when he is smitten the sheep are scattered abroad.
But the connection, and the departure from the imperative
mood of' the LXX.,^ decidedly require the view that Jesus
believed this prophecy in its original application to be strictly
typical of his own case. Nor when we turn again to the con
sideration of the Hebrew do we find his beUef without grounds
there. The smitten shepherd of Zech. xiU. 7 may well enough
be the " pierced " one spoken of, xU. 10 , and he who is both
smitten and pierced, the same as the shepherd scornfully ap
praised at the value of thirty pieces of sUver by those who
rejected him, xi. 10-13. As the pierced one is identified with
Jehovah in xii. 10, being his messenger and representative,
so the smitten shepherd is caUed the man of Jehovah's union,
xiii. 7. While, then, we cannot conclude with Stier and Alford
that the words in Zechariah are " prophetico-Messianic," and
refer to no other than Messiah designated as the good shepherd'
1 See Die Propheten, etc., I. p. 248 f.
2 HaTeifaTe and iioTmxo-aTe ; although at least two manuscripts, of which the Alex
andrine is one, are said to read iraTafoi-. The Alexandrine manuscript has also
Siao-Kopirio-tJ^o-oi'Tai. The imperative is not inconsistent with the meaning of the
Hebrew words, in which the necessary consequence of the want of a shepteii
appears as a command (Hitzig).

THE VISION OF ABRAHAM. 59
smitten, we are warranted in interpreting the passage so as to
make it accord with the deeper significance given it by Christ.
" Jesus sees himself typically represented in the shepherd ;
. . . and therefore the passage Zech. xUi. 7 cannot be referred
to the evil shepherd of xi. 15 ff., but only to the shepherd
ordained of God, whose antitype he is " (Meyer on Matt. xxvi.
31). In accordance -with the same view, Jesus beholds the fulfil
ment of prophecy in the constant work of Messianic grace
which accompanied all his public ministry (Luke iv. 16-30).
In Isa. Ixi. 1 the prophet is speaking of his own divine mission
to the suffering and captive Jews ; here, as Ewald has ]pointed
out, the speaker suras up what has been said before in a long
section, and thus comes forth before the reader as a prophet,
with a bolder step and a clearer utterance of his convictions
touching his mission. The passage is Messianic only in its
secondary meaning : it is so appropriated by Christ with the
declaration, " To-day this Scripture hath been fulfiUed in your
ears." The prophetic work for which Jesus was anointed by
God was one of wider sphere and higher cogency than that of
the Old-Testament prophets : his own work was, nevertheless,
so Uke their work, that in doing it he elevates and fulfils their
conceptions of their own prophetic mission.
Two passages remain in which Christ seems to take different
ground from that thus far discovered, in respect to the nature
of prophetic inspiration and of the inspired prophetic conscious
ness. The teaching of John viii. 56 ff. respecting the prophetic and
paradisiacal vision of Abraham may afford us further informa
tion upon the points under discussion: this information is,
however, meagre and somewhat doubtfully obtained. The
so-called Socinian interpretation of this passage — viz., that
Abraham " would have enjoyed if he had seen " the day of
Messiah — may be without hesitation rejected : Meyer rightfully
pronounces it a " monstrous perversion." Meyer is, however,
himself wrong in claiming for tra its full telic force : the
particle is here used with that modified meaning which accom
panied the decUne of Greek from the old classical to the
modern form. We should, then, translate with Winer (Gram
mar, § 44, c.) : " Abraham rejoiced that he should see my day,
and he did see it, and was glad." The day of Christ is the
' day of his Messianic appearing through birth (compare Job

60 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
iii. 1), and Abraham is represented as stUl living in connec
tions of interest and hope with the people which sprang from
his loins.i He may, therefore, be spoken of as finding joy in the
realization, by Christ's coraing, of the Messianic promises made
to himself as the ancestor of Messiah and of the nation.
What, however, was the nature of that prophetic intuition to
the faith of which the promise was originaUy and historically
made ? In what sense did Jesus mean to teach that Abraham
rejoiced that he should see Messiah's day of appearing; in
flesh upon the earth? Was the vision of his faith directly
"prophetico-Messianic," — a vision in which, as Bengel and
Olshausen claim, he had a self-conscious prophetic view of
the glory of Messiah? The words of Christ in John viii.
56 ff. do not enable us with confidence to ascribe to hira either
an affirraative or a negative answer to this question. But the
analogies applicable in the case incline us rather to suppose
that Abrahara could have had no such intuition of Messiah.
The prophetico-Messianic hope, in the forra of an intuition in
which the prophet beholds the Messiah as a person of royal,
prophetic, or priestly qualities and dignity, with any clear self-
consciousness of the essential contents of this hope, is certainly
a raatter of far later development than the time of Abraham.
Only one such intuition at most — viz., that of Deut. xviii. 15 —
can be ascribed, on the authority of Scripture, to Moses ; only
one at raost — viz., that of Ps. ex. — to David. Even in these
later cases the forra of the intuition is by no means clear, or
applicable throughout to the personaUty of Messiah. Without,
then, denying the objective possibUity that Abraham may have
enjoyed sorae of the later forms of the more distinctively pro
phetico-Messianic hope, we do not find ourselves able to assert,
upon the authority of Christ, that he did have such an in
tuition. The patriarch held the hope in form suited to liis
circumstances : this form was the expectation that he should
be the ancestor of a multitudinous nation, blessing all other
nations, and honored by thera (Gen. xii., xv., xvu., xviii., xxii.).
The vision was one of essential truth, without self-conscious rec
ognition of the true forra to be afterward assumed by the truth-
The promise was one of essential blessing, conveyed in a form to
arouse hope in Abraham, and yet in a form which only served
as a temporary shell for its kernel of ideal and abiding truth.
1 For this thought, see Luke xvi. 25 ff. It is alao found in the apocryphal
Testament of Levi.

CHRIST AS THE PRIEST-KING. 61
In one instance only does Jesus seem to involve a question
of criticism in his teaching with respect to the prophetic con
tents of the Old Testament ; in one and the same instance only
does he seem to claim a more direct intuition of Messiah for any
author of these contents. (See Matt. xxii. 41-46, and parallel
passages.) It is also noteworthy, that concerning this prophecy
alone have we the fact of inspiration stated in express terms.
We appear, in this case, to be compelled to assert with DeUtzsch,
that the inference which Christ wished the Pharisees to draw
rests upon two premises taken for granted, — first, that Ps.
ex. is Davidic ; and, second, that it is " prophetico-Messianic."
In most cases of quotation from the Hebrew Scriptures, which
occur in the discourses of Jesus, the vaUdity of the Hebrew
titles does not enter into the substance of the truth taught;
in the other cases in the New Testament where this very psalm
is quoted as Messianic (as, e.g., in Acts U. 34, 1 Cor. xv. 25,
and in Hebrews), the stricter view of its prophetic quality is
not implied.
In this case, however, we can scarcely regard the use made
of the Davidic title of the psalm as a mere accommodation
or argumentum ad hominem ; and as to the proof of its Da-vid-
ic authorship, we remark as follows : It was -without doubt
the general opinion of Christ's time, that Ps. ex. was written
by David. Some raodern critics, who do not assign the author
ship of the psalra directly to the Jewish king, ascribe it to his
time as a hymn addressed like an oracle to that king.i There
is, indeed, considerable in the psalm, in its form of address
(•jixS), and its local and temporal coloring, — which even
DeUtzsch admits, — to favor the opinion that it was addressed
to David rather than by him to Messiah. On the other hand,
the forra of address is far frora decisive ; while the use of the
word " oracle " (D?P), as applied to the contents of the psalra,
is regarded by Delitzsch, apparently with weighty reasons, as
decisive against the view of Ewald. In this equipoise of critical
considerations — and as to the fact of this equipoise the frequent
shifting of view by Von Hofmann, for instance, may testify —
the weight of dogmatic considerations is sure to be conclusive.
In close connection with the question of the Davidic author
ship of this psalm is the question as to its Messianic character.
It is, says Delitzsch,^ " prophetico-Messianic ;" i.e., in it "the
1 Ewald, Die Psalmen und die Klaglieder. Gottingen, 1866.
a Commentary on the Psalms (Ps. ex.).

62 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
future Messiah stands objectively before the mind of David."
This view, although not without great difficulties, seems on the
whole justifiable. The rabbinical interpretation of the time of
Christ accepted it; whUe the later rabbis attempted, with ill
success, to escape the conclusions frora this view by introdu
cing other and forced interpretations. The address of the first
verse, though " without any perfectly analogous example " in
its use of the word o^i , which is placed generaUy at the close,
and more rarely at the beginning, of a sentence, is nevertheless
after the manner of the prophets.^ The general description of
the psalm corresponds in many particulars to the opinion that
the writer is contemplating the one to whom the oracle of
Jehovah is spoken, as an ideal priest-king of the future. We
have, however, to admit with Delitzsch, that "there -is no
other psalm in which David distinguishes between himself and
Messiah ; " and that " the other Messianic psalms of Da-vid are
reflected images of Ms own typical history." And, to a cer
tain large extent, this latter remark is true of Ps. ex. The
form, then, lay in the mind of David, even when prophesying
iv irve-ip.aTi, as temporary, faulty, and limited by the conceptions
of his own kingly rule. He had brought the ark after bloody
victories to Zion ; he had ended the contest with the Ammon
ites and their allies by the conquest of Rabbah. A greater
king than he, though after the pattern of a conquering hero
like David himself, should come in the future ; a greater priest
than he had been in the partial and fitful exercise of the sacer
dotal functions should appear in the one who should be a priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek.
For the questions of Christ's doctrine as to the prophetic
contents and prophetic inspiration of the Old Testament, the
foregoing conclusions are hnportant; but they are not con
firmatory of the view often based upon them. Chi-ist here
asserts, at most, that David (airds Aaret'S, Mark xU. 37) was
prophetically inspired (ivTrve.vp.aTL, Matt. xxU. 43; ci/TcpTn/eu/tan
TO) dyi'o), Mark xii. 36), -with a certain consciousness of his
prophetic intent (t<3 Kvptto p.ov'), to set forth in the psalm the
superhuman as well as the human side of the Messiahship to
which Christ hiraself laid claiin. But beyond the authenti
cating, by the opinion of Christ, of the title of Ps. ex., and the
declaration of its special character as "prophetico-Messianic,'
the strictest interpretation of this passage can contribute to the
1 See Gesenius, Lexicon.

NATURE OF THE PREDICTIVE WORD. 63
doctrine of Sacred Scripture nothing in addition to the in
formation already received. We cannot conclude that all the
Hebrew titles are authentic ; or that all passages of the Old
Testament, quoted in the New as Messianic, are " prophetico-
Messianic ; " or that, because the Davidic origin of Ps. ex. is
involved in the fairness of the argument in which its citation
stands, therefore the origin of all the Scriptures cited is accord
ing to the title by which they are cited ; or that, on the authority
of Christ, the kind of inspiration attributed to David in this
case always belonged to his writing ; or that David's inspira
tion, or the inspiration of any other prophetic raediura of
revelation, is a guaranty against such faulty, but nevertheless
grand, uplifting, and typicaUy true, views of Messiah as we
actually see to have been Iield by the writer of this psalra.
Moreover, the firmness with which the teaching of Jesus up
holds a few central truths regarding the nature of Old-Testa
ment prophetic writings, whUe giving over to the researches
of criticism the entire domain lying outside of these truths, is
especially e-vinced in this raost decisive utterance.
We notice a certain advance in the claims made by Christ
for the distinctively prophetic, and especially the Messianic
and " prophetico-Messianic," contents of the Old Testament, as
compared with its more distinctively legal contents. The latter
are indeed regarded as concrete divine enactraents or institu
tions which came to the people through a divinely chosen
medium ; but through a medium concerning whose inspiration
in utterance we have no information. The contents of the
law, when regarded as containing legal words of Jehovah,
are brought into prominence: the inspired personality of the
medium is kept out of view. Prophetic contents are not,
however, wanting in the law ; and Moses is a prophet as well
as a lawgiver. The writings of the law are, then, to be regarded
as Sacred Scripture in that they hold, scripturaUy fixed, certain
divine contents. But in the case of the distinctively prophetic
contents of the Old Testament, the inspired personality of the
medium is brought more prominently into view. The predic
tive word of Sacred Scripture is regarded as corresponding to
the phrase to p-rj&kv inro Kvpiov Sta TOV Trpo(j>-qTOV AeyovTOS. (See Matt.
i. 22, ii. 15.) The divine source of the word, its objective verity,
and the inspired consciousness of the messenger, are all thus
brought before our rainds. The prophetic writings, then, are
more distinctly presented to us as laying claira to the honor of

64 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the titie Sacred Scripture : this claim they lay not only in the
nature of their contents, which are regarded as words of the
Lord, but also in the raanner of their utterance, which comes by
selected and inspired media. Yet it is as testifying of Messiah,
and as fulfiUed by hira, that the writings of the prophets have
their chief claira to be considered as of divine origin, as inspired
and sacred. This very testiraony is, moreover, given for the
most part in symbols and typical forras. The consciousness of
the prophet, even when most elevated, as in the case of David
in Ps. ex. (even, that is, when it becoraes a "prophetico-
Messianic " consciousness), is not cleared of all obscurity, or
faultiness and error in its conceptions. On the other hand,
the loftiest and raost undoubtedly Messianic prophecies of the
Old Testament — as, e.g., that of Isa. lii. 13-liU. 12 — maybe
regarded as having only their secondary and typical fulfilment
in Christ. Indeed, the typical view of Old-Testament prophecy
is as indispensable to any reasonable view of Sacred Scripture
as it is plainly indicated by the teaching of the Redeemer.'
But most emphatically must we insist upon the very wide and
impassable chasm between the rabbinical view of inspiratioii i;
and that of our Lord. In his utterances there is no trace of
what has been fitly described as " typological concupiscence."
The dictum of the rabbis, and of many Christian -writers who
follow Jewish rabbis rather than Christ, has been, "Omnes
prophetae in universum non prophetarunt nisi de diebus Mes
siae." The teaching of Christ, while unfolding the latentes
rerum Messiae figuras of Old-Testaraent Sacred Scripture, is
content simply to avow, toutm iravTes oi TrpotjirJTat papTvpova-iv.
We consider, in the next place, certain passages which have
to do more especially with the historical narratives of the
Hebrew Scriptures. In this consideration also our conclusions
must be reached, for the most part, by indirect and somewhat
doubtful inference. The point of view which Jesus takes
toward the history of the Old Testament is uncritical : the
use which he raakes of this history is neither designed, nor
for the most part adapted, to authenticate it, but rather to
enforce and illustrate his own ethical and religious teachings;'
I Jesus declares (John xiii. 18) that the choice of Judas as a disciple was made
in order that the Scripture of Ps. xli. 9 might be fulfilled. In this case, again,
the supposition that the unknown sufferer of this psalm was regarded as constilut-
ing an experience, not only similar to, but also typical of, Messiah's, will alone
reconcile the results of criticism with the declaration ot Christ. So also in tlis
case of John xv. 25, quoted trom Ps. xxxv. 19.

THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH. 65
It cannot be denied, however, that the general impression made
by his teachings is this : Jesus regarded the history of the Old
Testament as containing supernatural elements, as being the
narrative of self-revelations of Jehovah to his people, and as
being typical, in its single events and entire course, of the
Messianic history which he was himself to inaugurate. We
inquire more specificaUy, How far do certain references which
Jesus makes to alleged facts of Old-Testament history, as though
they were facts, constitute a proof of his acceptance of the
detaUs of the history in which the narrative of these alleged
facts is set?
An example of the above-mentioned kind of inquiry which has
been much debated, although perhaps least worthy of debate, is
given us by the words of Matt. xii. 39-41. In the first place,
it must be noticed that Luke (xi. 29 f., compare Matt. xvi. 4)
by omitting the explanation given by Jesus for the sign of the
prophet Jonah, although thus apparently missing what Matthew
regards as the effective point in the comparison, nevertheless
escapes, so far as his own text is concerned, the difficulties of
the inquUy: we do not have to ask in Luke's case whether
Jesus is to be understood as expressing a belief in the historical
reality of the Old-Testaraent narrative. Some excellent critics
have gone so far as to hold that the allusion to the three days
in the grave did not originate -with Jesus, but arose from a
misunderstanding of the disciples. (So Ewald, Neander, and
Bleek.) In the view of De Wette, Neander, Bleek, and many
others, the application of this comparison of Christ the sign,
-with Jonah the sign, must be limited to the preaching and min
istry in general of Jesus. The application of the comparison
to his resurrection in the passage fit)m Matthew is as definite,
and perhaps as weU calculated to impress itself upon the mem
ory, as any application well could be.
With respect to the particular points of the comparison be
tween Christ and Jonah, as given in the First Gospel, we have to
note the foUo-wing two : first, the similarity of |)bsition between
the prophet in the belly of the sea-monster (iv Tig KooXta tov ki^tovs)
and our Lord in the heart of the earth (iv tjj KapSioi t^s y^s) ;
and, second, the identity of time, which was in each 'case three
days and three nights (Tpets -ripepa's xai Tpet? vuxTas.). Yet the
very points which are insisted upon in the comparison corapel
us to interpret the correspondence between Jonah the sign, and
Christ the sign, in very loose as well as typical fashion. The
VOL. I. E

66 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
second point of the comparison is, indeed, assumed to be justi
fied by the popular coraputation of time, which counts frag
ments of days as whole days ; but in justifying the first point
of the comparison we are met by the somewhat difficult ques
tion, whether Jesus referred to his lying in the grave between
death and resurrection, or to his descent into Hades. The
phrase iv Ty KapSta T^s y^s (see LXX., Jon. ii. 4) cannot be held,
on account of its reference to some great depth, necessarily to
imply his descent into Hades. The view that this point of the
coraparison refers to Jesus lying in the grave, as held by most
commentators, is probably the correct one. If, however, we
press this point of the comparison, we are involved in difficulty,
whichever meaning for the phrase iv Tfj KapSta t^s yrji be adopted.
For, if we interpret it of the grave, we have to suppose that
the Son of man was there during the time between his death
and resurrection ; and if we interpret it of the descent into
Hades, we must take the words figurativelj', or else concede
that Jesus adopted the ancient superstition which places the
dwelUng of the departed actually and locally in the bowels of
the earth. Moreover, the design of this entire sign was in the
type and the antitype very unlike ; its design in the case of
Jonah being to chasten and reform the prophet, and in the case
of Christ to bear witness to him as Son of God and conquering
Redeemer. Even if, then, we accept the interpretation given
to the words of Jesus by Matthew, we cannot plead these wor4
in favor of the historical accuracy of the account in Jonah.
And, indeed, the entirely uncritical manner in which Jesus
institutes this comparison, or the entire disregard which he
shows as to minute points of an historical kind, may induce us
to hesitate before we rashly commit his authority to any critical
view of the Book of Jonah. And to a doubtful critical view of
this book his authority is coraraitted, if we insist upon maintain
ing that his words authenticate as actual history the story of
the prophet and the sea-monster.
On grounds independent of the use which Christ makes of
the narrative of Jonah, the following conclusions are apparently
to be accepted. The historical character of the prophet Jonah
is well established, although we cannot admit that the designan
tion given him by Jesus (toS ttpoc^t/tow) is intended to be decj^ve
upon this point. It is established by the reference to Jonah
iu 2 Kings xiv. 25, from which arose doubtless the m^ititioii
of liim in the apocryphal Book of Tobit (xiv. 4, 8), a^d by

THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH. 67
Josephus (Ant. IX. 10, 2). According to Ewald,i his name
appears to have occurred frequently in Northern Palestine :
according to the same authority ,2 he was of great account in
the reign of Jeroboam II. A critical examination of the Book
of Jonah seems to show that it is a composition designed by its
author as allegorical and didactic upon a certain basis of historic
facts. A poetical invention of incidents is attached for didactic
purposes to a basis of history, and to a narae derived from
ancient and trustworthy tradition. Especially does that part
of the book to which Jesus refers bear the marks of designed
allegorical and poetic invention. The hymn of the prophet
iv rg kolXCo. TOV KT^Tovi — where, however, he conceives of himself
as surrounded with water, his head bound with seaweed, and
himself drifting with marine currents, or sinking into marine
caverns — is surely a peculiar style of historical composition.
When, moreover, we consider more minutely the language of
Jesus (even as reported by Matthew), with respect to this Old-
Testament -writing, we find in it no objection to the above-
mentioned critical -view. We may regard hira as making use of
a riddle of Hebrew Scripture to teach obscurely a truth, which
afterward lay as a riddle upon the minds of his own disciples,
without even implying an opinion upon the critical questions
involved. If Jesus spoke of Jonah as a (rqpeiov,^ this did not
represent his being iv t^ Kot\ta toS kt^ovs as a fact. " The sign
of J^ah " could not have meant " the type of my resurrection
furnished in the actual and miraculous existence of the prophet
for three days and three nights in the monster : " it must have
meant rather "that actual and miraculous sign which is my
resurrection, and of which the narrative of Jonah (so well
known) furnishes the type, in that the prophet was, according
to that narrative, in position similar to that in which I shall be,
and for a time equal to that of my stay in the grave." It is
perhaps worth noticing, that the part of the narrative of Jonah
which may belong to the historic basis of his book is assumed
in categorical statement (see Luke xi. 29-32); while a certain
part which plainly belongs to the allegorical and poetic attach
ments of the book is given by Matthew as alluded to merely in
a figure of comparison.
We conclude, then, that the reference of Jesus to Jonah does
1 Die Propheten, etc., III. p. 230.
2 History of Israel. (London.) Vol. IV. pp. 123, 128.
8 Compare the use of the word in the phrase ri irrmela tUv KaipCtv, Matt. xvi. 3.

68 THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCRIPTURE.
not cover the question whether the prophet's alleged sojourn In'
the sea-monster is an historical verity ; and that it is no less un
critical than invidious to make the holding of any particular
theory of the Book of Jonah a test of allegiance to the teaching
of the Master. ShaU it be claimed that Jesus could not quote
from an allegorical book of the Old Testament, provided it be
proved by criticism that such a book exists ? Or that, if he
knew it to be allegorical, he must cUstinctly aver it to be so,
when speaking amidst a people whose daUy speech dealt m
allegory ? Or that, if not for the sake of hearers of his own
time, at any rate for the sake of readers in this Occidental
and unfigurative age, he must have given full notice of his
opinion as to the Book of Jonah? We prefer to believe that
Jesus spoke in perfect freedom from these ties of mere criti
cism, and also in large indifference whether his enemies or his
disciples were guarded frora the possibUity of misunderstand
ing him. His teaching in this instance is not to be made
responsible for this or that critic's view respecting the nature
of Hebrew allegorical -writing in general, and in particular
as illustrated by the Book of Jonah. The coraraentator may
not help out his dulness by the support of Christ's infallible
authority. The sarae uncritical use of the Old-Testament narrative— a
use which places all the emphasis upon the ethical and religious
truths involved in each narrative — characterizes all of the
discourses of Jesus.
In answer, for example, to the question. How far does our
Lord authenticate the accounts of Gen. vi. 5 ff. and xviu. 20 ff.
by the use which he makes of them, Luke xvii. 22-35, — only
a cautious avoidance of the extremes of both destructive and
apologetic criticism can prove satisfactory. We can scarcely
suppose that Jesus could have made such use of the narratives
of the Flood and of the destruction of Sodom, if he had considered
them as wholly mythical. That he should use an alleged his
torical narrative, without raising the question of its historical
nature and trustworthiness, is, indeed, not in itself impossible.
That Gen. vi. 5 ff. and xviii. 20 ff. are designed by the original
author to be understood as history, there is, unlike the case of
Jonah, little ground in the Scripture itself for doubt. But more
important is the apparent fact, that the fairness and substantial
truth of the argument of Jesus seem to involve his opinion
upon the historicval verity of these narratives, at least so far

CHRIST AND OLD-TESTAMENT HISTORY. 69
as the points of similarity emphasized in the argument are
concerned. This case is, then, thus far different from that of
Matt. xii. 39-41. Jesus believed that in the days of Noah
and Lot certain sinners who were given over to pleasure-
seeking were met with sudden and annihilating divine retri
bution, — in the days of Noah by flood, and in the days of
Lot by fire. Yet even in this case he seems to be following a
tradition of the Flood which differed in sorae particulars from
that of the Hebrew Scriptures.^ How little stress, then, does
he lay upon the detaUs of the account which he employs !
The import of the teaching of Jesus, John vi. 31 ff., in so far
as it may be supposed to authenticate the miracle recorded
Exod. xvi. 4, must be understood in like manner. This miracle
of the manna was accounted by the Jews the greatest miracle
of Moses : its fruit is extolled by Josephus as Oelov Kal irapc&o^ov
I3pu)p.a. It even appears that Messiah was expected to make the
manna descend for the Jews of his own tirae after the example
of Moses.^ Jesus assumes that the manna, like the true bread
from heaven, of which it is in this and other regards the type,
was a divine gift. With this assumption, which authenticates
so much of the narrative as is involved in the assumption, and
no more, he, according to his custom, applies the ethical truth
to himself as the universal antitype.^
Thus also do the references of Jesus (Luke iv. 25-27) to
the well-known occurrences of Old-Testament history recorded
in 1 Kings xvu. 9 ff. and 2 Kings v. 14 ff. afford ground for
acceptance of these narratives as in his opinion substantially
true. Yet in the use of the former narrative he seems to incor
porate that divergent Jewish tradition which extended the
duration of the drought to three years and a half, and which
James also accepts, and employs the popular hyperbole, which
spoke of the drought as extending over the whole earth.* He
thus manifests his entirely uncritical attitude toward the de
taUs of the narrative. In John iii. 14 he is represented as mak
ing reference to the narrative of Num. xxi. 8, 9, so far as to
use the serpent erected by Moses as an historical figure and type
1 Notice the features added (Matt. xxiv. 37 f., and Luke xvii. 27) to the narra
tive of Genesis; especially the word jrivovTe^ in apparent contradiction of the
narrative of Gen. ix. 20.
2 Schoettgen, Hor. II. p. 475.
^ In both cases of its occurrence the phrase ex to5 oipavod is probably to be con
nected with the verb (SiSaiciv and iiSiaaiv), after the analogy of the Hebrew of Exod.
xvi. 4, rather than of Ps. Ixxviii. 24. (See Meyer.)
¦* Comp. 1 Kings xviii. 1 -with Dan. xii. 7 aud Jas. v. 17.

70 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of himself. His thought impUes these points of simUarity be-
tween the historical type and its antitype ; the being raised,
Jesus on the cross and the serpent on the pole, and the final
purpose of the raising as a divine rescue. Thus far only, then,
does he obviously authenticate this historical narrative.
We conclude, from the attitude which Jesus assumes toward
the historical contents of the Old Testament, that although
he obviously accepts the supernatural elements in these con- ,
tents, and regards them as divinely ordered by their symbolic
import so as to bear testimony to Messiah, he does not commit
his opinion to their entire historical accuracy, or, even, always
prefer the tradition which the Old Testament embodies above
other and sometimes conflicting traditions.
Jesus furthermore bears witness to his regard for the writ
ings of the Old Testament, by the ethical uses which he makes
of them to express his own religious ideas and eraotions. He
guards himself in temptation by recognition of their authority
(see Matt. iv. 4 ff.). He holds himself bound to that same
patient acceptance of severe discipline, that same subordination
of the temporal and earthly to the spiritual and eternal, to
which the ancient Jews were exhorted (Deut. viii. 3). He
relies upon the sarae willingness of God, on appropriate occa
sion, to sustain life in an extraordinary and supernatural way,
of which his nation had proof when they were sustained in the
wilderness by manna. He recognizes these Sacred Scriptures
as a source of moral maxims by quotations from them of such
precepts as are given in Deut. vi. 13, 16. At the close of his
ministry, as at its beginning, he consecrates the Old Testament
by using it for the expression of his own spiritual Ufe : the suf
fering saint of all saints cries out with his last breath in the
words of a suffering saint of the Hebrew Scriptures.
We now notice, more particularly, how little stress Jesus
lays upon that exactness which is required of the modern criti
cism, with its minute attention to the ipsissima verba and to
all the details of history and archseology. We cannot, indeed,
speak of verbal mistakes, properly so called, in his discourses.
The mistake of Matt, xxiii. 35 is due, as is indicated by the
omission of the words vlov Bapaxlov from Luke xi. 51, to the
writer of the Gospel. The introduction into the quotation of
the LXX. for Isa. Ixi. 1, of the words a-n-oa-TelXat TeOpava-iievmfi
t> a<f>ea-ei from Isa. Iviii. 6, is by the Evangelist (see Luke iv. 19))
and not by our Lord, who was reading from a manuscript-roll

SUMMARY OF THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 71
of the prophet. But there is no proof that in quoting Hebrew
prophecy Jesus thought it necessary to confine himself to the
exact words, or exclusively to either the Hebrew text or that
of the LXX. : sometimes he departs from all known texts, with
no assignable reason for his departure. In no case, however,
can we be sure how much of the exact wording belongs to
Jesus, how much to his biographer. The quotation from Isa.
xxix. 13 is, for example, made (Matt. xv. 8 f.) with slight
variations frora the LXX. ; but it follows thera in introducing
the important word p,aTriv, which has no correlative in the He
brew text. This is done apparently to justify his application
of the prophecy as -n-epl iplov, and upon the principle which Gro
tius defines as follows : " One and the same prophecy can be
more than once fulfiUed, so as to be appropriate to both this
tirae and that, not only by the event, but also by divine guid
ance of the words." The design to increase the strenuousness
of the appUcation to himself will perhaps account also for his
departure frora the wording of both the LXX. and the Hebrew
text (Matt. xxvi. 31). An instructive instance of the great
freedom -with which Jesus apprehended by unerring insight the
real contents of truth in the Old-Testaraent prophecy, and nev
ertheless adjusted the form in which the truth was given to
the needs of his doctrine, is found in John vii. 88. Several
examples of the same free adjustment of the historical traditions
of the Old Testament have been preserved in other connections.
In general, the teaching of Jesus devotes little attention to the
letter and the detaUs, as such, of the history, law, prophetic
imagery, and entire characteristic modality, of the Old Testa
ment : at the same time it expressly and minutely discriminates
and appropriates all the ideal contents of truth.
This detailed discussion of the doctrine of Jesus as to the
nature of Old-Testament Scripture may be summarily concluded
by the following statement of particulars : —
1. The doctrine of Jesus is almost entirely to be discerned
by indirect inference from his discourses and deeds . and, except
so far as can be inferred from his use of the customary formulae
of citation, we must draw our conclusions wholly from the atti
tude in which he places himself to the entire Old-Testaraent
economy. 2. The position assumed by Jesus toward the Hebrew Scrip
tures is for the most part uncritical. Only in two instances, at
most (viz., the authorship of Ps. ex., and the historical priority

72 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of circumcision to the sabbatic law), does hc even appear to pro
nounce upon any of the minuter questions of biblical criticism.
3. The great reserve of Jesus respecting the debated ques
tions of biblical criticism cannot be held to be wholly due to
ignorance. It is significant : it favors the conclusion, that his
view of the Hebrew Scriptures differed from all those forms of
the rabbinical view, which, whether held by Jewish or Christian'
authorities, are constantly coming into plain conflict with the
spirit and the results of criticism. As one result of the pre
ceding exegetical inquiry, we may agree with Tholuck ^ in affirm
ing : The Redeemer cannot be convicted of either rabbinical
artificiality or of hermeneutical error.
4. This attitude of Jesus, so manifestly uncritical and yet
so guarded by reserve, toward the conclusions of critical inqui
ry, is distinctly unfavorable to all rabbinical theories of Sacred
Scripture. Such theories have no right to commit his authority
to points regarding which he gives no information. Indeed,
his reserve upon matters touched by criticism, when taken in
connection with his positive teaching upon ethical and rehgious
matters, indicates that his view of the Hebrew Scriptures, if
more fully expressed, might have definitely contradicted those
theories. 5. Jesus believed the Old Testament to contain, scripturaUy
fixed, certain important and divinely revealed truths. Such
contents may be designated as of two classes, the ethical and
the prophetic ; the law, however, contains elements predictive
of Messiah ; and prophecy is, of course, ethical in its own great
predictive elements. Moreover, the historical narrative of the
Old Testament is to be regarded as containing both classes of
contents. 6. Jesus teaches that the writings of Mosaism are Sacred
Scriptures, because they contain these divinely revealed con
tents of truth, both ethical and prophetic. But except so far
as the writings were produced by prophetic impulse, — and of
this there is no proof in the discourses of Jesus, — no infer
ence can be made as to the inspiration of their authors. So
far, however, as the writings were by the hand of Moses, — and
the extent of this origin is a question for criticism to decide, —
they have an additional claim to their title of Sacred Scripture,
in that their contents carae through a recognized inspired
medium of divine self-revelations.
1 Das Alte Testament im Neuen Testament, pp 29 and 51.

SUMMARY OF THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 73
7. The writings of Prophetism record contents of predictive
truth revealed from God through his servants ; and, as the
chosen and prepared media of such truth, the prophets speak
in the Holy Spirit, — a fact which is expressly affirmed of
Da-vid's prophetic message in Ps. ex.
8. These prophetic words which are recorded in the Hebrew
Scriptures were not given with a fuU consciousness of their
meaning on the part of the prophets themselves : they are also,
for the most part, to be regarded as having only their secondary
and typical fulfilment in Messiah. Even the few prophecies
which must be regarded as " prophetico-Messianic " contain ele
ments of obscurity and imperfection.
9. These contents of truth in the Old Testament were given
in a form relative to their tirae of revelation : the law is peda
gogically adapted to the progressive history of ancient Israel ;
the prophets differ in the degree of certainty and clearness
with which they seize and convey their great truths.
10. Elements of imperfection and falUbility co-exist -with
these contents of absolute truth, and are likewise scripturaUy
fixed in the Hebrew canonical -writings. This truth is definitely
taught regarding the Mosaic law, and is implied regarding
Hebrew prophecy. Jesus held the revelation of the Old Tes
tament to be "imperfect, teraporary, pedagogically accoramo-
dated to the people to whom it was given," and not free from
human weaknesses.^
11. Jesus taught that two cognate but apparently contra
dictory elements everywhere appear in his relations to the Old-
Testament economy ; viz., the perfecting of the Old Testament
according to its essential contents, and, on the other hand, its
cessation according to its temporal form.^
12. The contents which give the Old Testament its claim to
be regarded as Sacred Scripture are pre-eminently its Messianic
contents : its great final purpose has reference to the prepara
tion and fulfilment of these Messianic contents. Jesus regards
the Old Testament as divinely inspired, because, as a whole, it
prepares the way for that perfect revelation of which it is
the mediator as well as forerunner. He, however, distinctly
espouses that view which sees, in respect even to its Messianic
contents, the truths of the new growing in the old, and there
fore sees the old as containing the truths of the new. The
1 Compare Joh. Delitzsch. De Inspiratione Scripturae Sacrae, etc., p- C-.
2 See Schmid, Theologie des Neuen Testamentes, pp. 218 ffi.

74 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Old Testament contains the truth of Christ in that same ger
minal and typical but expanding form in which the higher
developments of every organism are, so to speak, contained in
the lower stages.
13. And, finally, the advocate of a more strictly rabbinical
view of the inspiration of the Old Testament raust find his
sources of proof elsewhere than in the teachings of Christ.
For the verbal inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures ; for their
accuracy and infallibility in all respects, or even in respect to
any one of their forraal elements ; for the equality of value of
all parts, or for the equal derivation by inspiration of all the
parts ; for the view that all portions of them were written by
inspired raen, or were given by the Holy Spirit in any other
than the general providential sense, — the inquirer must search
the discourses of other masters than Christ. And the fact that
these views are not expressed in those discourses is a fact which
he raust above all take into account. He raust so do this, how
ever, as not himself to contravene, but rather gladly accept, on
the authority of Christ, the sacredness and autliority of tliese
same Scriptures.

CHAPTER II.
THE NATUEE OP NE-W-TESTAMENT SCEIPTURE AS DETERMINED
BY THE PROMISES OF CHRIST.
The central Ught of revelation from the teachings of Christ
sheds itself in two directions upon the doctrine of Sacred Scrip
ture. It Ulumines the past by the interpretations which Jesus
gave to the contents of the Old Testaraent ; it illumines also
the future by the promises which he raade to his disciples. By
means of this light we secure a position to discern the nature of
the earUer di-vine revelation, and of those writings in which
tins revelation remains forever scripturaUy fixed ; and by the
same means also we look forward to a further revelation, which
shaU take form in sacred -writings that possess such qualities as
are promised to the authors of those writings. And as, in our
researches into the Old Testament, when we approach it with
the help of the authority of Christ, we expect to find true what
ever has the witness of this authority ; so may we prepare our
selves for a critical study of the New Testaraent by inquiring.
What witness concerning it is given by this same authority ?
The -witness of Jesus to the New Testaraent consists in his
proraises; it is a prevenient witness. But this prevenient wit
ness must be received as both a pledge of truth and a guard
against error.
In the case of the New Testament, however, as in the case of
the Old, we do not hold ourselves absolved from obligations to
the most candid and thorough criticism. The very proraises
which form a basis for the doctrine of its Sacred Scriptures
must be made the subjects of critical inquirj'- ; only when thus
treated will they teach us exactly what Jesus intended.
In Matt. X. 14 ff., the severest penalties are threatened against
those who wUl not receive the words of the Twelve on their
trial journey. We have here an intimation in answer to the
question. To what in his apostles did Christ attach the authority
which he delegated to them? This intimation enables us to
76

76 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
affirm that the authority was attached to the words they spoke
(tov? Xoyovi avTuiv), i.e., in preaching Messiah, and especially to
the message which announced his kingdom (^lkcv -q ^aa-iXek
Tmv ovpavSiv, verse 7). Divine inspiration also is here promised
to the apostles (verse 19), in makmg their defence before the
tribunals to which they should be brought (compare Isa. 1. 4;
Luke xxi. 15; Eph. vi. 19). In the declaration of the foUow
ing verse (20), " the theopneustic relation by means of which
his disciples shall become m/eu/iaTt/cots TrvevpaTiKO. crvyKpivovrei (1
Cor. ii. 13) is construed by Jesus decisively and in no half-way
fashion " (Meyer).
SimUar proraises are found in other connections in the dis
courses of Jesus (Mark xiii. 11, aud Luke xii. 11, 12). From
no other declarations of the Bible can the claims of its authors
to even verbal and infallible inspiration be inferred with more
of apparent fairness and cogency than from such as these:
" For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that
speaketh in you ; " " The Holy Spirit shall teach you in that
very hour what ye ought to say" (ov yap v/xcts tore ot AoXowtes,
dAAa TO ¦TTvevpa toC TraTpos vpwv to XaXcniv iv vplv, to -yap aywiv in/eviia
BiSd^et v/iSs iv avT-rj rrj wpa a Set ctTretv). And yet WC havc to Con
sider at least three important limitations of these claims : (1) as
to precise occasion ; (2) as to limited purpose ; (8) as to Umited
time. All these promises, though given in unconditional form,
are in fact and application conditional, liraited, and liable to
imperfect realization. The form of the promises points forward
to the perfection of that which the fact only imperfectly repre
sents. We cannot lay a satisfactory basis for the general doc
trine of the inspiration of New-Testament Scriptures in those
proraises of Jesus which were made to his disciples when sum
moned before the tribunals of their own time.
Of much wider application is the promise of Matt, xxvni. 20,
in which the intimation of Matt. x. 7, 14, is explained and
expanded. The gift of the Spirit here involves his divine
guidance in the apostolic work of discipUng the nations, and
instructing thera in the commandments of Christ ; it involves
also the imparting of divine spiritual force in this work. In
case the disciples should commit to writing these command
ments, whether as embocUed in words or in deeds, and whether
for the purpose of discipUng the nations or of instructing their
converts, the promise of Christ would surely not be withdrawn.
The promise applies especially to that work of evangelizing

THE PROMISE TO PETER. 77
which the apostles were to undertake as commissioners of Jesus
in the gospel. It is primarily made to them as preachers and
teachers orally of his truth ; it cannot, therefore, be made to
serve as a guaranty for any inspiration pecuUar to the work of
writing. But, whether writing or speaking, the apostles can
claim the spiritual presence of Christ as a guaranty for the moral
and spiritual truths of his gospel, and — as we may infer — for
the main historic facts in which these truths are embodied, and
on which they are founded.
In connection -with these promises must we interpret the dec
larations made by Jesus concerning the authority delegated to
his apostles (Matt. xvi. 13-20 ; compare Mark viii. 27-30 ; Luke
xi. 18-21). To Peter personaUy, and yet to him regarded as
embodying the great primal verity of the kingdom of God, and
as being its first pronounced confessor, the Redeemer declares :
" Flesh and blood did not reveal it to thee, but my Father who
is in heaven." Upon Peter, as embodying this verity and as
its first confessor, he promises perpetually to build his Church.
To Peter he also promises — a promise which he afterwards
(Matt. xviU. 18) repeats, and extends to all the apostles — the
power of the keys which open and close the gates of the king
dom of heaven. This apostolic power prohibitum aut licitum
declarare necessarily involves the promise of the absolute and
infalUble guidance of the Holy Spirit, but only in the matters
pertaining to such power. In the case of the apostles, whether
regarded as founders and leaders of churches or as probable
authors of sacred writings, the promise of infallible inspira
tion cannot be extended beyond the sphere of this promised
power. What was the extent of this sphere we have already
been informed : this sphere covered the apostolic announce
ment of redemption, its central doctrines, facts, and condi
tions. The doctrine of the New Testament as Sacred Scripture, so
far as that doctrine can be taught upon the authority of Jesus
Christ, comes to its culminating expression in the fourteenth
and following chapters of John. These chapters furnish a
transition from the doctrine of the inspiration of the Old
Testament to that of the New. Their most important contents
are not to be extracted by mere grammatical and lexical exe
gesis : they contain, however, nothing in contravention of any
truth established or even lawfully indicated by critical studies
of the New Testament. From this locus classicus we derive the

78 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
following view of the inspiration of the apostles, so far as their
inspired work lies at the foundation of Sacred Scripture.
1. The source of the inspiration promised to the apostles is
the Divine Spirit, who is the SpUit of Christ himself.^ While,
then, the gift of revelation and inspiration to the apostles has
its primary source in the eternal Divine Spirit, from whom came
also the revelations and inspiration given to the writers of the
Old Testament ; the former surpass the latter in that Christ's
Spirit, in the new dispensation, is to be the source of their life
and work. This Spirit, which is represented both as Christ's
own visitation, self-disclosure, or indwelling, and as the fruit of
his sending, is as much fuller in the dispensation of spiritual
gifts as the revelation of God in Christ is fuller than his reve
lation. in the Old-Testaraent economy. We may not place the
writings of the Old Testaraent, as respects their inspiration,
upon a level with those of the New.
2. The Divine Spirit, who is the source of the revelations and
inspiration given to the apostles, is also called Paraclete and
the Spirit of the truth. It will be the work of the Spirit as
Paraclete (auxiliator ; adjutor), to make them know the truth
of the gospel, raore deeply and intimately, and to strengthen
thera for sustaining the toils and trials which would come upon
them in propagating the knowledge of Christ. This Spirit is
the Spirit of the truth, because he is the divine principle of
truth : he is the power through whose work the truth of God
revealed in Jesus Christ is brought to the knowledge and
acceptance of men, and so comes to exercise its divine energy
as truth.
3. The truth which is thus to be revealed is the truth kut'
'e|ox^v; viz., the truth which Christ came to bring, and which
he, in his historical appearing, really and fully is, — compre
hended and clothed, as it were, in personal form (xiv. 6).
This truth it is, and no other, which the Spirit of the truth
shall teach to them with more fulness and completeness than
Jesus had himself attained in his teaching (xvi. 13). What
ever, then, belongs to the essentials of this truth (Kar 'eloxijv),
it is promised that the Spirit shall reveal to them. He wUl be
their guide into this truth in its totality (iratrav). As a species
comprised under its genus, so the knowledge of the future (to
1 See chapter xiv. verses 18 (epxo>">i n-po? viuit) ; 19, in which their lite in the
Spirit is made dependent upon his own being as the source of all spiritual life;
21, in which the impartation of the Spirit is represented as a self-disclosure; and
compare Matt, xxviii. 20; Eom. viii. 9 f.; Gal. iv; G.

THE APOSTLES AS INSPIRED TEACHERS. 79
ipxopeva), in a Certain way and to a certain extent, shall be a
part of their induction into the total truth of Christ. The
simUarity and the superiority of the apostolic as compared with
the prophetic inspiration are thus brought to mind.
4. This teaching by the Spirit necessarily involves the in
spiration of those taught, of the apostles as the bearers of the
truth of Jesus to the world. The teaching could not in this
case be real teaching without an inward divine work. Their
memories shoidd be quickened and guided to recall whatever
of the truth Jesus had spoken to them (xiv. 26) ; while, at the
sarae time, their faculties of insight should be enabled, as never
during the life of Jesus, to take in the full meaning of this
truth (compare xvi. 13).
5. These promises apply, primarily, to the personal work of
the apostles in founding the Church of Christ ; but they have
a secondary and subordinate application to the construction of
the New Testament. The matter of immediate and primary
importance was this : that they should reraeraber, coraprehend
in its interior raeaning, and faithfuUy communicate by word of
mouth, the tiuth of Christ. But in case they should resort to
writing, -with the same great ends in view, the promises can
not be restrained from appUcation to their work in writing.
The promises belong to them as persons in personal relations
with the Redeemer, and yet as persons chosen and fitted for
the distinctive and official work of promulgating the truth of
redemption. The promises are applicable to all the activity of
the apostles in giving coherence and concrete form to the truth
of Christ, the truth KaT 'e^oxyv. But to give these promises
primary and superior cogency of application to the apostles as
authors, rather than as preachers, is to reverse the right order
of reasoning, the undoubted course of history, and the place
of emphasis in their commission from our Lord.
6. The realization of these promises is made dependent upon
certain subjective conditions. Prominent among these are the
inclusive and determining conditions of obedience and love.^
The subjective conditions of the promised inspiration are, then,
moral and religious. And, as we have already seen, the work
for which they were to be inspired was the apprehending and
imparting of that truth which is primarily moral and religious
I See especially xiv. 21,23, and note how the connective icayul makes the promise
to ask the Father, and to have the Paraclete sent, dependent upon their affection
toward Christ, and upon their keeping his commandments.

80 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
truth, although embodied in historical forms. The nature of
the inspiration is to prepare their moral and religious faculties
for this distinctively moral and religious work. In other words,
love and obedience are indispensable forms of moral and reli
gious receptiveness, — in apostles as well as in all other men.
Whatever, then, may be thought as to the inspiration of un
believing men, who, like Caiaphas for example, are conceived
of as employed to declare divine truth without moral fitness
or sympathy, the thought cannot enter into the doctrine of
the New-Testament Scriptures. The promises upon which the
Christian doctrine of New-Testament Scripture founds itself
have their own realization conditioned upon the moral and
religious life of those who receive thera. The inspiration prom
ised must come through the spirit receptive of such life into a
greater fulness of life. These promises cannot be urged in sup
port of the sacred character of any products, oral or -written,
which do not bear the marks of genuine ethical quaUty, of
obedience and love in their authors, or which have arisen by
resort to immoral means, such as conscious fraud on the part
of the author, or the introduction of material known to be
false and morally unworthy. The pledge of these promises is,
then, limited by the possibUity that those to whora it is made
may not always fulfil the conditions of its reaUzation. The
apostles were, like other raen, subject to imperfections of obe
dience and love. But that they should be kept in substantial
completeness of purpose to love and obey, these very promises
imply (xiv. 17-19 ; so also the prayer of Jesus, xvii. 11, 12).
The possibility of occasional and temporary departure from the
subjective conditions necessary to realize these promises still
remains. Whether or not this antecedent possibility became
an actuality in such manner as to affect New-Testament Scrip
ture, we are at liberty to inquire by researches into history and
into the contents of the New Testament itself.
For example, Paul was in the full enjoyment of these promises
of the Spirit when he made his defence before Ananias (Acts
xxiii.) ; he could also claira the special promise of Jesus to his
disciples when brought before earthly tribunals (Matt. x. 19.)
Yet he acknowledges that he had unwittingly spoken against
the high priest in a manner which was contrary to the Mosaic
law (Exod. xxii. 27) ; as he must also have remembered, it was
unlike the example of Jesus. Peter, at least in the judgment
of Paul (Gal. ii. 11 ff.), even when iu the direct exercise of his

PROGRESSIVE REALIZATION OF THE PROMISES. 81
apostolic office at Antioch, took a course not morally faultless ;
and yet his very conduct must be considered in this instance as
a form of propagating error regarding the nature of the gospel.
Indeed, this instance introduces us to the facts which Baur
and his school have so greatly exaggerated, but which must be
taken into the account in estiraating the nature of apostolic
inspiration. This inspiration did not always prevent consider
able and sharp differences of doctrine, even respecting truths
quite closely connected, in their minds and in reality, with
the central doctrine of Christianity. From these limitations
to the complete realization of Christ's. pJbmises in the case of
the oral instruction of the apostles, we cannot exempt, previous
to examination, their written instruction ; at least, we cannot
do this on the ground of any thing stated or implied in the
promises themselves. But by our conclusions thus far derived,
•we are led to give due weight to the following consideration.
7. The realization of these promises of Christ was one of
progressive approaches in the history of tho apostles. The
outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost did not lead them at once
into all the promised truth; nor, indeed, did any subsequent
gift of that Spirit. These proraises do not exclude the apos
tles from development in the knowledge of the truth, or in the
knowledge used to promulgate this truth by oral and written
instruction. The Spirit is promised to be with them through
out their historical development , not in thera so as to exclude
them from having any real historical development. More and
more were these promises to be realized, just as all the divine
promises are ever left still imperfectly realized. The present
tenses yivwa-KeTe and p-evet (xiv. 17) " designate' the characteristic
relation of the disciples to the Spirit, tvithout respect to a defi
nite time " (Meyer) , and o8i^o-et (xvi. 13) is to be interpreted :
" He will be when he comes, and ever after, your leader into all
the truth." Beginning- under the leadership of the Spirit, with
a new and fuller apprehension of the truth, they were to be
progressively conducted, step by step and stage beyond stage,
into the fullest apprehension of the same truth, for their
Teacher and Guide should be always -with thera (xiv. 16).
This growing apprehension of the truth of Christ ftiust, then,
be manifest in their promulgation of it h-j preaching. And
if by preaching, why not also hj writing, in case they should
resort to this means?
Indeed, this view of an abiding and progressive guidance into
VOL. I. !•

82 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the truth by the divine Spirit is only a corollary from the entire
scriptural view of history. The Sacred Scriptures everywhere
recognize the perpetual indwelling of the Spirit in human
history. The history of the nation Israel and the inspiration
of the Old Testament are inseparably linked together. To a
certain large extent, the history is penetrated and filled with
the Spirit ; the inspUation of the canonical writers, to a certam
large extent, is historic inspiration. It is inspiration which
conforms to the laws of the moveraent of the Holy Ghost in
history, by successive stages of discipline and by successive
degrees of potency in the inbreathing of moral and spiritual
life. The facts and laws of historical development are not
abrogated, but more highly manifested, in the new epoch of
the Spirit in apostolic days. Pre-eminently did the promised
Paraclete come to the apostles, in fulfilment of these declara
tions of Jesus, soon after the resurrection. In a certain sense,
he then assumed his leadersloip of them into all the truth of
Christ , but he ever after led them still more and more into the
sarae truth. And the latter fact could not be without effect
both upon their preachmg and upon their writings.
It might seem an indisputable inference from the foregoing
statement, that the later preaching and -writing of the apostles,
on account of its obvious connection with the fuller revelation
of the truth, must be worthy of superior regard. And, to a
certain extent, the inference is true ; it would be also impor
tant for our purpose if it could be raade clearly apphcable
to the questions touching Sacred Scripture which are to come
before us. "We. are providentially kept, however, from making
any use of this inference which shall be destructive of the
essential integrity and trustworthiness of the apostoUc teach
ing as found in the books of the New Testament. In order fully
to show what is the nature of this safeguard, a detailed study
of these books in their unity, and of that process by which they
became accepted as New-Testament Scripture, is indispensable.
But the following considerations are in place at this point.
There is, indeed, a ^progress of doctrine to be traced in the
New Testament. This progress of doctrine is, however, for
the most part indicated ; the points of divergence in the later
from the earlier doctrine, and the differences of view amongst
different apostolic teachers, are rather delineated as historically
true than enforced as binding the judgment and conscience of
the Church. The work of their divine Leader into the whole

THE PROMISES AND THE WRITTEN GOSPEL. 83
truth is seen not so much in the authority of all the details of
their beUef and impression as in the consentient and final con
clusions which are reached and expressed through these details.^
Historical indications of those erroneous impressions which in
termingled with the apostoUc progress in knowing the whole
truth under the guidance of the Spirit neither authenticate the
impressions nor discredit the truths with which the impressions
are intermingled.
It is, moreover, a sign of the providential safeguard which was
given to the -writings of the New Testaraent in the promises of
Jesus, that these writings so largely arose at the right time to
receive the fullest fruition of the promises. They arose so late
as to bear the stamp of the most mature apostolic teaching, and
so early as not to be essentially corrupted through remoteness
from this teaching. The written gospel, the treasure-house of
manuscripts, contains, thus divinely secured within it, the coins
raost clearly marked with the image and superscription of our
Lord himself. The New Testament thus presents a unity amid
variety of doctrine which it could scarcely otherwise have en
joyed. It is, perhaps, a boon to the Church, that the chrono
logical relations existing amongst the books of the New Testa
raent, and, in the case of the Synoptic Gospels, araongst the
various parts of the same book, are so difficult of accurate
adjustment. In the form of express teaching, we can have
comparatively little to say about the earlier and later doctrine
of the New-Testament books. To us the truth is given as
essentially one,
8. It is only by critical researches that we can connect these
jpromises of Christ to his apostles with any existing New-Testa
ment writings. For it is only by such researches that we can
infer the authorship, direct or indirect, of an apostle. That
these promises apply as cogently to the written as to the oral
teaching of the apostles, may be received as an indisputable
inference. Indeed, as we have already seen, the written prod
ucts of their teaching may be held, in some particulars, to
enjoy the fuller fruition of these promises. The unity and
maturity of the apostolic teachings in the New Testament are
doubtless greater than they could have been if it contained a
more complete aiid chronologically continuous record of their
1 For example, we see (Acts ii. 39) the germ of that ferment which was made
by the subsequent revelation of x, 33 to work a change in the view of Peter; we
learn of a yet subsequent decline from this view (Gal. ii. 11 ff.), only to flnd it still
later regained (1 Pet. ii. 10 f.).

84 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
oral work. But in applying these promises to any -writings
which may have come down to us, two important questions
have to be asked and answered: viz.. Are these writings apos
tolic, or not ? and. Have they been preserved for us in essential
integrity, or not ? Questions of the canon and diplomatics of
the New Testament intervene between the promises of Jesus
and the books which have reached us. And these questions
limit the application of the promises to the books. To agree
with the writer who says that the doubt whether the original
revelation is transmitted to us in its primitive purity by the
Holy Scriptures " at once disappears if we firmly establish the
inspiration of the writers, and show how such inspiration is
reflected by and preserved in the pages of Scripture," ^ involves
an amazing reversal of the conditions of our problem. It will
concern us, at the right point, to discuss more at length the
relation of critical questions of the New-Testament canon and
text to the general question of inspiration. We note now the
simple fact of this relation.
Upon asking the first of the above questions, we can claun
direct apostolic authorship for only a portion of the New Testa
ment ; and to this portion only do the promises of inspiration
made to the apostles primarily apply. Anticipating, however,
the conclusions, without anticipating the arguments, of a fair
and cautious criticism, we have grounds for applying (either
directly or indirectly) the warrant of these promises to far the
greater part of the New Testament. To the Gospel of John,
regarded as of apostolic origin, these promises most emphatic
ally apply. They apply also to the main contents of the Gospel
of Matthew ; because these contents, although in their present
form not from an apostolic hand, are essentially of apostolic
origin. They have a secondary though valid application to
Mark and Luke, if regarded as composed under direct or in
direct apostolic influence. To all the Synoptic Gospels they
have a further undoubted application, because these Gospels
are so largely composed of the fragments of that oral teaching
which was given by the apostles in the enjoyment of the spirit
ual guidance and assistance promised by Christ. Accepting
the apostolic calling and authority of their author, these prom
ises apply to the Pauline epistles ; and their appUcation to all
other epistles which have an apostolic origin — as, e.g., we will
assume, to the First of Peter, and the First and Second of John
1 Lee; The Inspiration of Holy Scripture. New .York, 1SG6, p. 32.

CHRIST INSPIRES THE APOSTLES. 85
— is immediate and indisputable. And, finally, these promises
may be claimed to have a secondary application to whatever
other books of the New Testaraent bear the starap of having
been written by men of apostolic spirit under more indirect
apostolic influence.
In answering the second of the above-mentioned questions,
— viz., whether the -writings of the New Testament have been
preserved in their essential integrity, — we must have recourse
to the science of biblical diplomatics. The answer, as we shall
subsequently prove, is unequivocal: They have been so pre
served. . The foregoing view of the promises of John xiv. ff., in their
appUcation to the doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures of the New
Testament, is confirmed by the partial fulfilment of these prora
ises made in person by Christ after his resurrection (John xx.
22 f.). His breathing upon the disciples is not merely syra-
boUcal of the future, but accorapanied by a real and immediate
imparting of the Holy Ghost. (The mood, tense, and connec
tion of Xd/3eTe require this interpretation.) In preparation for the
mission upon which he sends them, the Risen One imparts the
Spirit to them as a kind of Arrha^Pentecostes (Bengel). This
Spirit is the same one who was sent in fuller manifestation at
Pentecost.^ The power here delegated by Christ is an exten
sion of the declaration previously made (Matt. xvi. 19, xviii.
18) ; for, as Meyer has pointed out, the power of the keys in
the strictest meaning is immediately included in this passage,
whUe in Matt. xvi. 19 it is only included by inference. We
note, then, these particulars of inference frora this passage :
(1) The Spirit is given to the disciples in order to enter their
personality, is given to them as persons ; and yet to them as
persons with an official commission for an official work. The
men are inspired apostles, and only in a secondary and figura
tive sense can their work in oral teaching or -writing be said to
be inspired. (2) They are inspired, however, as a preparation
for their mission ; they are inspired as apostles. The gift of
the Holy Ghost is upon them for the executing of their com
mission. It is in view of having said, "I send you," that the
Risen One breathes on them, and says further, "Receive ye
the Holy Ghost." (3) The effect of this inspiration is a special
1 That the absence of the article with mcvij-a iyt-ov proves nothing against thia
view, see John i. 33 and vii. 39; moreover, as Meyer has said, the New Testament
knows nothing of a Holy Spirit which is not tlie Holy Spirit.

86 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and supernatural fitness for their work of receiving men, and
training them in the Church of Christ.
Once more do we behold Christ setting forth the nature and
certainty of his promise of the Paraclete (Luke xxiv. 48 ff.). It
is to the disciples as witnesses of his own death and resurrec
tion which have been accomplished in fulfilment of Old-Testor
ment Scriptures, and as heralds of repentance and of the
remission of sins, that Jesus declares he will send the good
promised (i-n-ayyeXta) by those same Scriptures.
We conclude, then, that the Scriptures of the New Testa
ment (Uke those of the Old) have a certain firm and indestruct
ible, though limited, basis for their claims, which is laid in the
word of the Redeemer himself. This word consists of certain
promises of divine enUghtening and assistance from the Spirit
of Christ, which were made to certain selected believers. These
believers were to have the main facts of the history of Jesus,
accurately recalled and set in their true significance by this
Spirit; and, ha-vuig been personally instructed by the Re
deemer, they were to have the fuU meaning of these instruc
tions, and, indeed, of all his truth, revealed by the same
Spirit.

CHAPTER III.
THE CLAIJIS OF THB OLD TESTAJIENT IN GENERAL, AND OP
MOSAISM IN PARTICULAR.
The mere proposal to examine the claims of the Old Testa
ment as to its o-wn origin and nature involves the intention,
either unconditionally to accept or to reject those claims, or
else to raake them the subjects of a thorough criticism. In
these days few critics are found willing to avow the intention
of either an unconditional acceptance, or an unconditional
rejection ; but the work of not a few critics is vitiated by the
concealment of just such an intention. To decide before exam
ination touching the value of the Old-Testament views of the
Hebrew writings involves a raost glaring form of the petitio
principii. But the general instruction of Christ regarding the
Old-Testament religion should have disposed us to regard these
views favorably.
We have already shown, however, that an appeal cannot be
taken to the authority of Jesus which shall bind the investi
gator to accept precisely that form of the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture which was held by the Hebrew teachers and writers.
Jesus, indeed, unequivocally taught that the ancient Hebrew
writings are sacred, and that certain of their contents are of
divine origin. But in what sense these contents are divine,
and by what processes they came to be divine, he has largely
left us to deterraine by historical and critical researches. More
over, his own method of instruction forces upon us such ques
tions as the following : May we not have to distinguish between
imperfect forra and absolute contents in the case of the Old-
Testament doctrine of Sacred Scripture, in the same way in
which we have to make the sarae distinction when exaraining
other doctrines? If we are left free to criticise the other
teachings of the Old Testament, by the light of Christian truth,
why not its teaching -with respect to its own origin and nature ?
Numerous difficulties and great risks may accompany the
87

88 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
passage from, the undeveloped Jewish to the developed Chris
tian point of view for regarding revelation, inspiration, and
Sacred Scripture. But the early Christian Church, under the
immediate teaching of the apostles, was not withheld from
making many such a difficult and dangerous passage. Surely
we cannot a priori assume that we are excused from the same
kind of difficulties and risks. A critical examination of the
Christian doctrine of Sacred Scripture cannot, therefore, begin
its inquiry into the claims of the Old Testament by insisting
upon unconditional acceptance of those claims. To do this
might be more than iUogical : it might be re-actionary from the
advanced point of view held by Christ and the apostles.
It must not be forgotten, however, that the authority of
Jesus does not permit us to thrust aside any claims found in
the Old Testaraent, with either levity or indifference. It rather
pre-disposes us seriously and favorably to consider them all,
The Hebrew canonical writings — as being Sacred Scripture, as
having contents of divine truth, and as having their supreme
value in the preparatory work and testimony they rendered to
his mission — raay be expected to contain, at least in germinal
and imperfect form, the true view of their own origin and
nature. Moreover, the claims of the Old Testament as to its
own origin and nature have often been rejected with as crude
and uncritical presumption as any which has characterized
their unconditional acceptance.
Those claims found in the sacred Hebrew writings which
directly apply to the inspiration of any part of them are
exceedingly meagre ; nor, indeed, are the indirect claims made
for the writings, as distinguished from the writers, much more
numerous. This fact arises, in part, from the very nature of
Sacred Scripture. It arises also from the characteristics of
that historical process by which a Canon of the Old Testament
was estabUshed. In both the Old Testament and the New,
tokens of the consciousness of writing under inspiration are
comparatively rare. Instances of divine coraraission to commit
to writing the contents of revelations formerly received by
inspiration are somewhat more nuraerous , they constitute the
most direct claim made by the authors themselves to the title
of Sacred Scripture for their writings. Both these above-
mentioned claims cover only a relatively small portion of the
contents of the Old Testament. This fact accords with the
truth that all inspiration primarily belongs to the authors and

DIRECT AND INDIRECT CLAIMS. 89
writers as persons, and that the term " inspired scripture " can
only be used by a figure of speech which transfers the condition
of the workman to the nature of his product.
Of writings by men claiming to be inspired, and which, as
writings, profess upon their face to record faithfully the revela
tions received through inspiration by their authors, we have a
considerably larger class. To this class belong the authentic
works of the prophets. These works lay claim to inspiration,
and to a place in Sacred Scripture, because they are written by
men who claimed to have the word of the Lord, and to transmit
that word in fidelity to their contemporaries. In these cases
the inference from the claims of the writer to the claims of his
record is as direct as any inference in the case can well be ;
and yet it is an inference from a claira, rather than a direct
claim. After admitting this inference, we can succeed in cover
ing by it only a portion of the ground occupied by the Old-
Testament writings.
A further inference, looking toward the establishment of
their place in Sacred Scripture, may be drawn frora the indu
bitable claims set up in the contents of certain writings. These
contents, as contents in theraselves, and by whomsoever written,
implicitly claim to be the faithful record of divine revelations.
These contents implicitly claim, then, to have been given to
raen through the inspiration of those whose coramission it was
to receive and communicate the revelations. This kind of
inference brings the record of the Mosaic law, on its own claim,
within the pale of Sacred Scripture. So far as it can be proved
to have been written by Moses, or to have been composed and
enlarged and redacted by inspired men, it has an inferred claim
to inspiration, on the ground of the nature of its authorship.
But beyond this it has another, stronger, and more pervasive
claim. The record of the law, by whomsoever made, manifestly
and upon its own face sets forth the claim to be a faithful pre
sentation of divinely revealed contents. The contents of the
Mosaic law everywhere claim for theraselves divine origin and
authority : the record, then, which holds these contents, raakes,
by an immediate and binding inference, a claim to peculiar
sanctity as being impliedly a faithful record of alleged divine
contents. To claira to record the word of the Lord to Israel,
the moral and ceremonial precepts embodying the will of Jeho
vah to his people, is, by inference, to lay claira to a position in
Sacred Scripture. And this claim is as much higher in the

90 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
case of the Hebrew Scriptures than in the case of any other
national records of alleged divine revelations, as the revelation
of God in Israel is a higher form of revelation than these other
forms. By an inference essentially the same, the theocratic history
of the Old Testament asserts its claim to a place in Sacred
Scripture. It is avowedly the history of successive revelations
of Jehovah to Israel, of his covenant relations and dealings
with Israel. We find much of the Mosaic law, and many of
the prophetic utterances, in this kind of historic setting, —a
setting which is often fitted to receive the precious stones com
mitted to it, by being so polished as to reflect the same light
which flashes forth frora them. The history of the Old Testa
raent is in general avowedly pragraatic and theocratic : it is by
the avowal of this claim that it institutes its own claim to be
Sacred Scripture. And in the case of those more subjective
writings where the relations of the individual soul to Jehovah,
rather than those of the nation, occupy the writer's attention,
it is largely in the avowed contents of the writings that the
inferred claim of the writer consists. The claim is thus only
involved in what he writes. This is the case with many of the
psalms, especially with those which deal most with the subjec
tive experiences of their author. This is also the case with
certain parts of the so-caUed Hokhmah. It is the theocratic
consciousness, taking a more intensely subjective and indi-yidual
form of expression, in which is laid the basis of the claim made
by even these writings.
In the later Hebrew writings we find, moreover, certain
notices of earlier writings which show the friuts of reflection to
be already matured or maturing. We meet with occasional,
though fleeting and unsatisfying, historical notices of the regard
in which these earlier writings carae to be held by the people of
Israel ; and finally there appear certain ascriptions of praise to
these writings for their divine origin and characteristics. These
notices and ascriptions indicate the nature of the claim which
came to be set up in later Hebrew writings for the earlier ones.
They are confirmatory of whatever claims we find those earlier
writings making for themselves. They apply for the most part
to the Pentateuch; or rather to the written Torah, which;
even in its broadest interpretation, can include only a part of
the Pentateuch; Numerous rather indirect recognitions of the
word of the Lord, which had come to the earlier prophets, are

DIRECT AND INDIRECT CLAIMS. 91
also found in the later prophetic writings. These indications
point the way, however, to that silent claira which all the
books of the Old-Testament Canon make by virtue of the fact
that they are in and of the Canon. This claim does not lie
developed -within the Scriptures of the Old Testaraent, but can
only be seen there in gerrainal and formative condition.
It is obvious that none of these claims singly, either direct
or inferred, nor all of them combined, can be applied to certain
portions of the canonical Hebrew writings. And, indeed,
certain portions of these writings do not present any claim,
found within the Old Testament itself, to be considered as Sacred
Scripture. The bare fact that they are found in the Canon of
the Old Testament constitutes chronologically their first claim
of this character. The Song of Songs, considerable portions
of Proverbs and of Ecolesiastes, and the Book of Esther — un
less we emphasize an aUeged but spurious theocratic eleraent
in its narrative — are instances of this kind. Nor do any entire
books present a uniforra self-conscious claim for all their con
tents; if we except perhaps those prophetic books about the
unity of which in respect to quality, motive, and authorship,
there is no reasonable doubt. In sorae portions of the same
book, the internal claims may be direct, in others indirect ; and,
of the indirect claims, some are to be placed upon one basis,
others upon a different basis. A comparison of different books,
and of both larger and smaller portions of the Hebrew sacred
writings, -will alone enable us to make an induction as to the
extent and cogency of these internal clairas. We cannot, on the
authority of their authors and teachers, construct one rigid the
ory of Sacred Scripture which shall apply to all these sacred writ
ings as such, and to all with like cogency and in Uke degree.
And yet a firra and rational basis for an estimate of the nature
of its Sacred Scriptures raay be constructed out of the scattered
fragments of claims set up within the Old Testament itself.
To the attempt at constructing this basis we now apply our
selves, — considering the Hebrew Scriptures as they now
appear before us, and postponing, as far as possible, all consid
eration of the effect of disputed critical questions touching the
authorship and composition of the separate books. And for
the purposes of the attempt we adopt the common threefold
di-vision of the Old Testament : we examine, then, the claims
of the writings of Mosaism, the claims of the writings of
Prophetism, and the claims of the Hokhmah. These three

92 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
main divisions of the Old Testament lay the bases of their
respective claims in ways which are to a large extent unlike.
The claims of the writings of Mosaism are laid, for the most
part, in the nature of its historical contents and of those sep
arate acts of divine revelation of which these writings are. the
alleged record. The writings of Prophetism, however, besides
the implied claim which comes from the theocratic nature of
their contents, put forth the additional claim that they are rec
ords of such prophetic utterances and actions as are of them
selves results of divine inspiration. The claim of Hebrew
prophecy to inspiration is direct, consistent, and unmistakable;
it is transferred by a natural inference to such writings as can
be shown to be results of this prophetic inspiration. As to the
writings of the Hokhmah, they stand, so far as their own
claims are concerned, upon an entirely different basis. Indeed,
little can be said of any clairas to be found in the Old Testa
raent which are applicable to these -writings.
These three divisions, however, are not altogether exelusive
of one another. Elements of prophecy are found in the Torah;
while the Torah, to a considerable extent, penetrates and under
lies the writings of Prophetism. Both the Torah and Proph-
etisra contribute elements of their distinctive claims to the
Aviitings of the Hokhmah.
There are, moreover, certain claims which are general and per
vasive of the Old-Testament writings, and which furnish by infer
ence a basis for a certain doctrine of the sacredness and inspira
tion of all the Hebrew Scriptures. All such claims also apply
with varying cogency of inference, when they apply at all, to dif
ferent portions of these Scriptures. To three of those claims
which are thus more generally applicable, we now direct attention.
And first of all, as prevading the canonical Hebrew writings,
we notice their intense and frequently outspoken theocratic
consciousness. The conviction seems to penetrate all these
writings, that God is in Israel, her history, her laws, her cere;
raonial, her dominant national ideas. History, laws, ceremonial,
and ideas are all represented by the writers not only as having
a divine origin, but also as embodying a constant presence of
Jehovah with the nation. It is true, as has been declared, that
" for a long time supernaturalism did comparatively Uttle for
Old-Testament theology." It is, however, also true, that no
consistent theological view of the Old Testament can be con
structed which does not acknowledge its persistent supernat-

THREE GENERAL CLAIMS. 93
uralism. At the root of the Old-Testament conceptions of the
law and of prophecy, there lies the great theological tenet that
Jehovah is the living God of the nation. Its conceptions of
inspiration and of Sacred Scripture are derived from doctrines
concerning the relation of God to the world, concerning the
nature of the divine self-disclosure, and the special theocratic
and revealed relationship between Jehovah and Israel. In
brief, the Old-Testament idea of inspiration and of sacred -writ
ings is rooted in the Mosaic and prophetic idea of God.
The above-mentioned truth may be verified without entering
in detaU upon the phUological disputes which accompany the
investigation of the meaning of each Hebrew form for the
di-vine name. The metaphysical attribute of the divine will
(power) seems to be embodied in the oldest Semitic name for
deity (Vs). The later name, rii'7K (probably etyraologically dis
tinct from Sn), represents that feeling of fear which the natural
man has before Deity ; and the plural D'riSj*, which is peculiar to
the Old Testament, advances the forraer idea by setting forth
the fulness of might which lies in the divine nature. This latter
name reveals the connecting link between the Hebrew concep
tion and the conceptions of surrounding nations ; at the sarae
time it shows the point of departure from these conceptions
toward a higher development of itself. The first step in tliis
development appears in the introduction of the name '!!?' Vx,
which as a title of Deitj^ belongs especially to the patriarchal
stage of Judaism ("I appeared unto Abraham as God Almighty,"
Exod. vi. 3, translated by the LXX. TravTOKpdrwp in most passages
of Job). By tliis title God is known as the One who reveals
himself in great raight by making Abraham the father of many
nations (Gen. xx-vUi. 3), and who enters into a covenant with
him for his protection and blessing (Gen. xvii. 1, 2). But that
title of Deity which is distinctive with the revelation of the
Old Testaraent is given in the tetragrammaton nirr, the name
characterized by the Jews — in the consciousness of its impor
tant relations to the whole doctrine of revelation — as nomen
unicum. The passage in Exod. iii. 13-15 (which is decisive for
the grammatical explanation of this title) speaks of the divine
Being, not as eternally existing in himself, but as absolute
ly persistent in his purpose to manifest himself historically to
the chUdren of Israel.^ This divine purpose of self-disclosure
1 See Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, I. p. 139 ; and Keil and Delitzsch,
Commentary on Gen. ii. 4 f. and Exod. iii. 13-lD.

94 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
through the medium of a chosen servant is the basis of all the
inspired contents of both Mosaism and Prophetism. It forms,
therefore, the doctrinal ground for all the claims of inspired
speech and inspired writing. By this title the fidelity of God
is in various passages of the Old Testament so expressed as to
awaken confidence, — as, for example, Hos. xii. 5, 6 ; Isa. xxvi.
4, xli. 4, xliv. 6 ; Mal. Ui. 6.
Another appellation, added to the nomen unicum, marks more
particularly the second stage of the developraent as it was
reached by Prophetism. By adding nixax to Elohim or Jeho
vah, there arises a threefold title for Deity : this title is most
frequently given as Jehovah Zebaoth; or, in some passages of
the Psalms, Elohim Zebaoth ; or, in the full expression of the
name, Jehovah Elohim Zebaoth. This narae belongs distinctively
to Prophetism as a development of that idea of God in his rela
tion to the world which is contained in Mosaism. The word
Zebaoth, as used in this title, probably includes both the
heavenly bodies regarded as the host of heaven, and the angels
regarded as the host of heavenly spirits. God is, then, probably
called Jehovah Zebaoth in opposition to the ancient Sabianism
by which the Israelites were surrounded. But Hebrew Proph
etism particularly uses the title Jehovah Zebaoth to represent
God as at the head of a great number of heavenly spirits, who
adore hira in his heavenly sanctuary, execute his wUl in mercy
and judgraent upon earth, and act as attendant witnesses and
instruments of his royal and judicial glory.^ Thus by the title
Jehovah Zebaoth the conception of God is advanced to that of
the omnipotent and holy Ruler of the universe (see Isa. vi. 8
and li. 15; Amos ix. 5). According to Jer. x., the customs of
the heathen who tremble before the signs of heaven are vanity,
but Jehovah is the true God, the Creator of all things, whose
inheritance is Israel : Jehovah Zebaoth is his name (verse 10).
Those ideas of God and of revelation which permeate the
Old Testament, which give character to its contents, and furnish
the basis for its clairas to be regarded as Sacred Scripture, are
rooted in the very words of Israel for the divine name. And
what is true of the titles of Deity is also true of the attributes
and activities ascribed to hira. God as the eternal living One
and as the Lord of the Universe is, according to the Hebrew
1 This name of Deity is variously treated by the LXX. : sometimes as a proper
name, and transposed in the Greek word aa^na^ ; sometimes replaced by TTcmnKpi-
Tiop or Kupio? or by the plirase ijebt rSiv Svfd/i.taiv. That it cannot mean simply tUe
Lord as Israel's God of battles, compare 1 Sam. xvii. 45, and Ps. xxiv. 8, 10.

THREE GENERAL CLAIMS. 95
Scriptures, manifested in all that they contain of history, laws,
and prophecy. The writings of the Old Testament in the two
di-visions of Mosaism and Prophetism are pervaded with the
consciousness of the living God as manifested in the contents
which they set forth.
We examine in the second place another general but subor
dinate claira of the Hebrew writings. The same intense and
pervasive theocratic consciousness shows itself in the following
more specific form. A claim pervades many of the writings of
the Old Testament to the effect that they contain the history
of a compact — in its making, breaking, renewal, and historic
progress toward final fulfilment — a compact of Jehovah with
his people Israel. By this fact these writings seem to consti
tute themselves, in sorae sense, into a body of Sacred Scripture
as the record of a divine covenant. This claira also applies to
the two divisions of Mosaisra and Prophetism as it does not to
the writings of the Hokhmah. In setting forth this claim we
waive for the present aU discussion of the date of the separate
writings. The narrative of the creation contains "in simple childlike
form " the idea of a divine promise which guarantees the final
triumph of man, although at first sorely wounded m his conflict
with the principle of evil. The gerra of a Messianic covenant
appears in Gen. Ui. 15 ; and Lamecli is raade to give expression
to his presentiment of future redemption in the son whom he
names Noah (Gen. v. 29). The tradition of the Flood ushers
in the second age of the world, now purified by water, with a
covenant which not only pledges its preservation (Gen. viii.
21 f.), but also becomes the type of divine fidelity in the work
of salvation (see Isa. liv. 9). The father of the Hebrew people
is made the medium of revealing a more express divine cove
nant with them; and he receives, as he supposes, the divine
promise of innumerable posterity who shall hold the land of
Canaan iu perpetual possession (Gen. xxii. 18, xii. 2 f., xv.).
In this covenant with Abraham the distinctive attitude in which
God wiU stand toward the nation Israel is substantially ex
pressed. Given to the patriarch Jacob in the theophany of
Bethel (Gen. xxviU. 10 ff.), and confirmed on his return to the
same place (Gen. xxxv. 9 ff.), the promise of the covenant
is embodied in the new name Israel. This conception of a
covenant, with its promises and obligations, is afterwards rep
resented as wrought into the fundamental law of the nation,

9G THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
formally accepted by them, ratified by the covenant offering,
and preserved in an official record (Exod. xix.-xxiv.).
Thus it coraes about, that henceforward all the affairs of
Israel are interpreted by its teachers and writers as havmg to
do with an original compact between the nation and Jehovah.
The national conduct of Israel is not considered as having only
an ordinary political significance, but is interpreted as either a
keeping or a breaking of the covenant with Jehovah. The
same conception is further seen illustrated in the designation of
God as the Holy One (^'^y), — a predicate which is also given
to the nation when received into covenant with him (Exod.
xix. 6). For the regulations of the covenant the fundamental
ethical principle is : "I am holy, and ye must also be holy "
(Lev. xi. 44).i This ethical principle, through the divine effort
and historic course necessary to its remote realization in the
perfected kingdom of God, lays the basis of the Sacred Scrip
tures of the Old Testament. The sins of the people, regarded
as a breach of the covenant, lead to a self-disclosure of God
as raerciful, gracious, long-suffering (Exod. xxxiv. 6). The
ground of the election of Israel to be the people of the cove
nant is the love of Jehovah graciously bestowed upon them
(Deut. vii. 6-8) ; and the ground of all legislation for the
nation, the source of executive power, the explanation of the
cultus, is this gracious divine choice to raake the people sub
jects of the covenant. The national rite of circumcision is
called H'.na nix, as the symbol of the obligations of this cove
nant. The chest in which the tables of law were thought to
be preserved is called the ark of the covenant ; and the terri
tory proraised to the people by this covenant is caUed the
covenant-land (Exod. xxx. 5).
The claim to be a record of the contents of a holy covenant
underlies the Scriptures of Mosaism. The prophets also con
tinually exhibit the sarae underlying conception by representing
the sins of the people as a virtual breaking of their covenant
with Jehovah. But all the noblest promises of the prophets
convey also the thought, that the divine grace will not permit
the failure of redemption ; this grace will make a new covenant
with the redeemed nation (Jer. xxxi. 32), and cause its sure
and abiding symbol to be the new heart (Exod. xxxvi. 25-27)
which even" Mosaism had promised to them (Deut. xxx. 6),
1 See Miiller, Lehre von der Siinde, Breslau, 16G7, 1, p. 321, and note.

THREE GENERAL CLAIMS. 97
Such sacred contents, at least in the thought of the Hebrew
writers, sanctify the vessel which contains thera. The writings
of Mosaism and Prophetism thus become, in a certain sense,
what the official record of the covenant-words of Jehovah was
designated, viz., books of the covenant.
Yet once more raay we speak of an inferred claira whicli
is applicable to considerable portions of the Old Testament.
This third claim is founded in another form of that general
manifestation which we have called the pervading theocratic
consciousness of the Hebrew writings. The authors of the
books of Mosaism and Prophetism plainly suppose themselves
to be giving the record of successive divine self-disclosures,
which were made to Israel through selected persons who act
as the media of revelation. The manner of revelation may
change in its detaUs, and may be conceived of -with raany
indeterrainate and even erroneous eleraents ; but the idea of a
divine self-disclosure, as the special pri-vilege and birthright
of the nation in its coraraunion with God, remains constant
throughout the writings of Mosaism and Prophetism.
Thus do large portions of the Old Testaraent claira, either
directly or indirectly, the right to be considered as books of
revelation, because they are writings whose authors claira to
give the record of actual revelations. The central figure of
Mosaism, Moses hiraself, is regarded as pre-eminently the organ
of revelation; and as such he is classed among the prophets
(Deut. xviii. 18 and Hos. xii. 13). His pre-eminence as such
an organ is placed upon the ground of a higher forra of
divine self-disclosure, which was vouchsafed to him, and which
constituted a more immediate intercourse with Deity, and is
called speaking mouth to mouth with Jehovah, or beholding
the forra of Jehovah (Num. xu. 6-8 ; Exod. xxxiii. 11). How
the thought that the Torah is an expression of the revealed
will of Jehovah penetrates most of the writings of Mosaisra,
needs no argument, or citation of passages, to show. How all
Hebrew prophecy is founded in the conception of divine reve
lation to the nation through selected raedia of revelation,
the detailed study of Prophetism will evince. But surely the
claim to record revelations of Jehovah is a claim transferable
in sorae sort to the nature of the records theraselves. The
aUeged nature of the contents in this case also sanctifies, in
the raind which thus regards these contents, the very vessel
which holds them.
VOL. L ^ .

98 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
There is, then, no other basis so firm and comprehensive, upon
which to place the claims made by the writers and teachers of
the Old Testament for the title of Sacred Scripture, as that
laid in the nature of its contents. To one who does not admit
the three general claims just examined, there can be presented
no special and direct claim of these writings in proof of their
own divine origin or authority. Sacred to the men who received
thera by revelation, and who expressed them in oral and scrip
tural forms, the contents of the reUgion of Israel certainly >
were. And sacred they may justly be called by all men to the
end of time. It is, indeed, the work of criticism to test the
claims of the ancient Hebrew writings, and to consider upon
what valid grounds this estimate of the religion of Israel by its
own writers and teachers rested ; but, the divine origin of the
chief elements of the religion being accepted, it is only a fan'
and logical inference by which we pass from direct claims for
the contents to inferred claims for the records of the contents.
There is given, to be sure, in the presentation of these gen
eral claims, only the germ- of a definite doctrine of Sacred
Scripture. But the irapression is placed upon a critical basis,
that the writers of the Scriptures regarded the sanctity and
authority of the contents of truth which they recorded as im
parting some distinctive sanctity and authority to the records
theraselves. Further inquiries are needed, however, in order to
deterraine more precisely in what sense these Scriptures were
considered sacred by the biblical authors and teachers. The
claims thus far examined lead us only to infer : the Scriptures
of the Old Testament are deeraed sacred because they hold,
scripturaUy fixed, certain contents of law, cultus, history, and
prophecy, which were given to the nation by divine revelation
on the basis of a divine covenant.
We now inquire into the more particular claims of dirine
origin and authority which are set up within the Old Testa
ment itself. And, first, we consider those writings which have
been grouped together under the general name of Mosaism.
The truth has already been indicated, that Mosaism and
Prophetism differ in some points, and agree in others, with
regard to the basis which they lay in their own claims for the
doctrine of their respective scriptures. Both exhibit instances--^
of an alleged divine command to record certain contents of the
revelations committed to them. Both receive, from sources in
the Old Testaraent lying outside of theraselves, a measure of

THE COMMISSION TO WRITE. 99
express recognition for the divine nature and authority of their
contents, and for the inspiration of the men through whom the
contents came. This recognition is most abundant for the
Torah ; since it is considered as the older form of revelation, as
itself laying the basis for prophecy, and, therefore, as receiving
a certain recognition of its claims from the later form of reve
lation. The direct and self-contained claims of Mosaism are,
however, almost entirely built upon the basis of the alleged
nature of its contents. " The proclamation of the divine word
does not appear as an essential part of the divine cultus"
(Oehler). Mosaism regards itself as a system of laws and
ordinances which are revealed to the theocratic nation on the
basis of the divine covenant with them. But the whole soul of
Prophetism is in the proclamation — by speech primarily, and
subsequently by writing — of the divine word which has fallen
upon the messenger of Jehovah. Prophetism regards itself,
then, as a series of messages, enjoining, promising, or threaten
ing, what Jehovah has to say to the theocratic nation concern
ing their treatment of his law and of his covenant with them.
The law appears to provide in a measure for its own per
petuation and interpretation by constituting the priest as its
teacher and interpreter (Lev. x. 11 ; Deut. xxxUi. 10) ; an
office, however, which was for centuries very imperfectly dis
charged by the priesthood, and yet was especially recognized
in an age as late as Ezekiel (xliv. 23), Haggai (ii. 11 ff.), and
Malachi, — the latter of whom (ii. 7) calls the priest for this rea
son a messenger of Jehovah. These later recognitions belong
to the period when the priestly fervor of devotion, and strength
of prestige, were pecuUarly great. It is also provided (Deut.
xxxi. 11) that this Torah shaU be read to the people at the end
of every seven years, at the Feast of Tabernacles.
The most direct possible claim to divine origin as Sacred
Scripture is given, of course, in the form of an alleged divine
commission to commit the sacred contents of revelation to
writing. Of claims to such a coraraission, Mosaisra presents us
with a number of instances. In Exod. x-vii. 14, Moses is said
to have been divinely instructed to write an account of the
battle of Rephidim for a meraento in a book, and to tell it to
Joshua; presumably that he might remember to execute the
threat against the Amalekites, which elsewhere (Deut. xxv.
19) takes the form of a command to exterminate thera. This
instance is significant, chiefly as showing the disposition of the

100 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
entire Old Testament to regard the history of Israel from the
theocratic point of view ; at the same time, the ethical and
other difficulties prevent us from laying stress upon the claun
involved. Another similar coramission to record a portion of
the history of Israel is found. Num. xxxUi. 2, where Moses is
said to have made a list of the stations in the desert by order
of Jehovah. This list is probably deemed of such importance
because it was considered as a memorial of the grace and fidel
ity with which Jehovah had led the people. Its historical diffi
culties remain unsolved, whUe the ethical value (for us) of its
detaUs seems quite gone. Indeed, the indirect claims from the
contents of these two historical notices may be said to be ui
the inverse order of their direct claims to inspired origin.
Quite otherwise is the case, however, with the record de
scribed as the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xxiv. 7). This is
declared to be the fundamental theocratic law of the nation.
It contains the words spoken by Jehovah to Moses (xx. 22 ff.),
rehearsed to the people, and accepted by them as the basis of
the covenant (xxiv. 3), and afterwards recorded by Moses m
writing, and read in the hearing of the people at the celebration
of the covenant offering (xxiv. 7). This Book of the Cove
nant coraprises the Decalogue with its ten covenant words, and
the covenant constitution (xx. 22-xxiU. 33) with its ordi
nances relating to divine worship, to the rights and duties of
Israel in their civil and theocratic relations, and to the attitude
of Jehovah toward thera.^ Concerning the covenant constitu
tion, we are told (xx. 22) that the Lord said unto Moses, " Thus
shalt thou say unto the children of Israel." Subsequently'
(Exod. xxxiv. 10-26) the promise and injunction of xxiii. 22 ff.,
and the instructions as to worship, are greatly expanded ; and
Moses receives the divine command to record these words as
the basis of the covenant of Jehovah with himself and with
Israel. Concerning the Decalogue in particular, we are, how
ever, told, with that interchange of points of view as to human
and divine authorship which is not infrequent in the Old Testa
ment, that Jehovah wrote it (Deut. x. 1-4), or that it was
written with the finger of God (Exod. xxxi. 18, xxxu. 15 f.;
Deut. ix. 10) : at its first deUvery, on tables of stone furnished
by Jehovah himself; at its second, on two stones hewed out by
1 As to the disputed question, whether the Decalogue was comprised in tie
Book of the Covenant, see, in proof of the affirmative, Exod. xxxiv. 28, Deut.
iv. 13.

TIIE CASE OF TIIE DECALOGUE. 101
Moses. Exod. xxxiv. 28 appears, moreover, to state that the
second tables of the Decalogue were written by Jloses at dicta
tion of Jehovah.
Now, no claim could be more distmct and unequivocal than
this ; not only as to divine origin and authority in general for
the -writings covered by the claim, but also as to their exactest
verbal dictation to the human organ of revelation, and their
absolutely infallible transmission at first hand. In one of the
above instances, we have given an imperishable record of such
words as are declared to have been written by the finger of God
himself : in the other we have the declaration, at divine com
mand, of words said to have been spoken by God to the very
one, who, being an undoubtedly inspired servant and medium
for the communications of Jehovah, records the words as he
heard them. Yet any rising confidence in the opinion, that we
possess in the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament (at least
in this instance) a perfectly infallible record of divine words,
is at once overthrown by a critical examination of the very
writings whose claims caU for the confidence. We do not
now speak of objections which may lie outside of these docu
ments themselves ; but, supposing them to have their origin in
substantiaUy their present form as early as Moses, they thera
selves, in the form in which we have received them, quite nega
tive any attempt to found a doctrine of Sacred Scripture upon
such claims. Even the Decalogue, as we have it, cannot be
regarded as the exact transcript of words once divinely graven
upon tables of stone. For we have two editions of the Deca
logue in Sacred Scripture ; and these two editions, although not
disproving the substantial unity of their originals, exhibit, be
sides a number of slight variations, noteworthy differences as to
the reason for the sabbath law, and as to the command against
coveting. And, should criticism assign the honor of priority
to the text of Exodus, it could not do this on the ground
of any lowering of those claims to verbal and infallible inspira
tion which are actually preferred by the record in Deuter
onomy; for this record particularly insists upon the doctrine
that the version of the Decalogue which it alone knows and
gives was written by the very finger of God himself. If the
Decalogue originated as the claims of Sacred Scripture assert,
it could have had, of course, only one original form : when re
ported in two variant and somewhat conflicting forms, it could
not constitute a basis for its own record, according to the theory

102 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
which looks upon that record as verbally dictated and abso
lutely infallible in all details. Here, then, we have to raise the
questions : Which of these two written editions lies nearest to
the original form ? and. Does either of them exactly represent
this original ? We may, indeed, then fall back upon the sub
stantial agreement of the two forms, and upon the verdict of
criticism as to the original form. But, in making this retreat,
we fall back to stand upon two concessions. One of these
concessions is this : An appeal raust be taken to criticism, even
when we are regarding the clairas of Sacred Scripture as to its
own origin ; and these clairas may be modified or corrected in
the course of this appeal. The other concession is this: The
most lofty and definite assertions which are contained in the
Old-Testament Scriptures do not serve to lay such a basis for
any portion of thera as necessarily excludes discrepancies in
details. And, furtherraore, even in exaraining the validity of such
very special clairas as the foregoing, we have to open the gates
to all the inquiries of bibUcal criticism. Questions innumerable
— e.g., as to the origin and nature of the Book of Deuteron
omy ; as to the development of the Mosaic law ; as to numerous
alleged additions, emendations, corrections, showing an historic
process in the formation of its Scripture ; as to the meaning
in the Hebrew raind of such phrases as " the Lord spake unto
Moses," " God spake all these words," " Jehovah wrote " it,
and it was "graven with the finger of God; " indeed, as to all
the real facts which underlie the raarvellous statements of the
Hebrew canonical writings — come pouring in upon the investi
gator for an answer. And according to his answer to these and
to other similar inquiries, must be the interpretation wliich he
will put upon such bibUcal claims.
As to that other portion of the Book of the Covenant, which
contains the covenant constitution apart from the Decalogue,
viz., Exod. XX. 22-xxiii. 33, we find ourselves not without dtf-
ficulties in atterapting to accept its clairas. The words of this
portion of the book, Moses is represented as recording in the
form in which they were dictated to him by Jehovah. Their
origin is assigned, by their own record, to the command of the
Lord to Moses that he should speak these words to the children
of Israel, — a command which is afterwards made to cover the
writing of an expanded account of a portion of them (Exod. i
xxxiv. 27). But, upon examining them critically and histori- j

THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT. 103
cally, we seem to discover that these tUvine judgments include
certain customs and laws previously estabUshed among the
Israelites, and certain others established subsequently to Moses.
Upon examining them ethically, we find certain comparatively
tri-vial arrangements, such as belong to the habits of a pastoral
people (xxi. 33-36), incorporated with the raost important and
fundamental religious requirements (xxiii. 25) ; concessive
enactments which show the low social and moral condition of
the people, and operate rather to hold them in the same condi
tion (xxi. 24, 25), combined with others designed to elevate
them (xxui. 8). And yet the entire contents of this Book of
the Covenant, although of such various historical origin and
divergent ethical value, are said to have been recorded by
Moses at divine dictation, as the words of Jehovah. We are
able fairly to assert that laws and customs of ordinary historical
genesis might be incorporated, either by the first or by a later
hand, into the revealed law of the theocratic nation , and that,
in our ethical estimate, we are to take into account the process
of pedagogic discipline to which it was the divine intent to
subject the nation. But the raaking of even the above asser
tions involves a lowering of the special claims of this ancient
writing as seen from its own point of view. It is, however,
essentially the same modification of view which is made by
Christ hiraself when (Luke xx. 37) he ascribes to Moses the
words of Jehovah at the bush ; that is to say, the writer records
what he supposes Jehovah to have said, and makes God speak
in his record " scilicet narrando."
We conclude, then, that the highest form of asserting its
own immediate divine origin and infaUible accuracy would not
secure the Old-Testament Scripture from a verdict unfavorable
to the precise forra in which the assertion is raade. We cannot
infer, in general, that the clairas of the Old Testament secure
it from any of the elements of human imperfection which criti
cism discovers therein. We cannot lay in any special claims
a basis for the doctrine of the verbal dictation and infallible
accuracy of even those portions of such Scripture which are
aUeged to be the most divine.
The noble ode of Deut. xxxU. 1-43, which contains an epit
ome of the history of Israel, with the application to this history
of the threats and promises of Jehovah's covenant, is said to
have been written by Moses at divine command (xxxi. 19), in
order to serve as a witness to the people ; and then taught to

104 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
them verbally by both Moses and Joshua (xxxii. 44). The cus
tom of teaching religious truth by embodying it in songs is
indeed very ancient, and corresponds to the efforts said to have
been made by David for commemorating iraportant events (see
2 Sam. i. 18 and Ps. Ix. title). The question of the origin of
this Song of Moses is one which must necessarUy be largely
merged in the general question of the origin of the Book of
Deuteronomy. Internal considerations of language are not suf
ficient to decide either for or against its Mosaic authorship;
for, while it is said by one critic that not a single word in the
entire ode can be adduced in proof of a later composition, all
the circurastances assuraed in it are declared by other critics to
determine for it a date rauch later than Moses. If, on the one
hand, the figure of the eagle (xxxii. 11) points back to Exod.
xix. 4 , the expression " to raove to jealousy " (verses 16 and 21)
recalls the " jealous God " of Exod. xx. 5 ; and the epithet ^V
(verse 3) for the divine greatness is confined to the Pentateuch:
on the other hand, the use of the word on in the moral sense
(verse 5) is elsewhere unknown to the Pentateuch ; the term
" thy Father " (verse 6) recalls Isa. Ixiii. 16, liv. 8, and Mal. ii.
10 ; the rams of Bashan, and the figure of speech coraparing the
people to an ox, fat and intractable, have an appearance of
decidedly later times (see Isa. x. 27 and Hos. iv. 16) ; while the
strange gods of verses 16-18 — called lords (onu^), a word signi
fying demons in Syriac, and suggesting Ps. evi. 37 — point unmis
takably to a period much in advance of the Mosaic era. So,
also, if the title "Rock," as applied to Jehovah, suggests the
surnames Pedahzur, Elizur, Zuriel, and Zurishaddai, which
perhaps belong to Mosaic times, it also and equaUy suggests
the sarae use raade of itself in Ps. xviii. 2, 31, xix. 14, xxxi. 2,
3, and Ixxi. 3. In brief, critical considerations raust decide
the manner in which these special claims to a divine origm
shall be understood.
Claims to be a record of the contents of divine revelation,
made at first hand and by the medium of such revelation, with
out, however, the express claim to a divine commission for
writing these contents, cover nearly the entire Book of Deut
eronomy. In this book, that silence as to its own authorship,
which is maintained for the most part throughout the other
portions of the Pentateuch, is definitely broken. The notice
of i. 5 does not claim Mosaic authorship for the book, but
simply avers that Moses expounded (IK?) this Torah: this

THE CLAIMS OF DEUTERONOMY. 105
statement might, then, be made, although another than Moses
were reporting his words. But the main contents of Deuter
onomy — corresponding to the title given it iv. 44 f., with its
testimonies, statutes, and rights, and designated further by a
subscription (xxix. 1) as the words of the covenant which
Jehovah commanded Moses — are not only within its own lim
its referred to as written (xxvui. 58, 61), but are also (xxxi.
9, 24) definitely asserted to have been written by Moses. We
are also told (xxvu. 1-8) that the people were to inscribe this
law upon plastered stones, as was the custom in Egypt, to
serve as a public acknowledgment of the basis upon which their
national covenant -with Jehovah rested. The law thus to be
inscribed is the same as that here (xxxi. 9) alleged to have
been written by Moses: viz., the testimonies, statutes, and
rights of these chapters in Deuteronoray. The claims of Deut
eronomy, that all the words of this Torah were written by
Moses in a book include, then, at least, the law as it is given
in chapters iv. 45-xxvi. 15: they are, therefore, involved in
the questions of criticism as to the origin and nature of that
book. Although, then, certain express claims to divine authority
for undertaking their composition, and for the written form
which they assumed at first hand, are not wanting in the writ
ings of Mosaism, those claims do not of themselves serve to
define the general claims previously considered as to the nature
of the Old Testament. For, in the first place, the express
claims, even when adraitted without critical exaraination, do
not apply to more than a small portion of the writings : the
direct claim to -write under divine commission applying only
to the historical notices of the battle of Rephidim and of the
camping-places in the wilderness, to the Book of the Covenant
with its contents of the Decalogue and the ancient covenant
constitution, and to the prophetic Song of Moses; and the
indirect claims, made by asserting a Mosaic authorship, apply
ing also to some twenty-two chapters of Deuteronomy. In the
second place, when we test the express clairas critically, we
do not find that the portions of Sacred Scripture covered by
them have any peculiar freedom frora the iraperfections which
belong to all the other -writings of the Old Testament.
The express claims do, however, re-enforce those general
claims of Mosaisra, to a divine origin and a divine authority,
which are derived from its contents of .revelation. That the

106 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Mosaic law was divinely given to the theocratic nation, and
that the history of the nation, in which the law has its setting,
is itself theocratic, the contents of the writings uniformly
imply. But touching the special raanner in which the writ
ings had their origin, and as to what are their more precise
characteristics, the most definite claims do not furnish us with
the desired information.
So far, however, as any portions of the Pentateuch can be
proved to have been written by Moses, or, indeed, by any other
acknowledged medium of divine revelation, they present a
claim additional to that derived from the nature of their con
tents. This additional claim corresponds to that set up in all
prophetic writing at first hand. The writings of Mosaism are
then regarded as sacred (aytos), in accordance with their fre
quently recurring formula, " The word of Jehovah came unto
Moses saying." As to the nature of the contents of the writ
ings, we have at hand the surer means for distinguishing
between their absolute and ideal elements, and their imperfect
and huraan eleraents ; but as to the naraes of the writers
through whom the divine elements were scripturaUy fixed, we
have no so sure means for distinguishing them, whether in any
case it be Moses, or sorae other prophetic or non-prophetic men.
Even the record itself fails, for the most part, to name the -writer.
Tliis general view of the claims which are primarUy made
by the writings of the Torah for the title of Sacred Scripture
is confirmed by the sporadic and rather obscure notices of them
which occur subsequently in the Old Testaraent. These no
tices belong raore particularly to the history of the Old-Testa
ment Canon and to the doctrine of the canonical -writings as
dependent upon that history. They are also connected with
critical questions of the date and authorship of the boob.
They appear to indicate that a collection of writings known as
the " Book of the Law " was in existence, and also in process
of growth and expansion, from the time of Moses onward.
The writings do not appear as themselves primarUy objects
of veneration, but as drawing attention to themselves for two
reasons. The law of the Lord — the words of Jehovah to the
people — is thought to be preserved in them ; and, furthermore,
the law and the words are supposed to have been spoken by
Moses, the pre-eminent medium of divine revelation. The con
crete Torah, the word of the Lord to Israel through the great
lawgiver Moses, is the primary object of. regard. The memo-

LATER NOTICES OF A WRITTEN TORAH. 107
rials of this Torah naturally draw to themselves a similar regard.
Among the memorials, as a matter of course, all the written
records of the Torah are pre-erainent, especiaUy such writings
as can by any possibility be ascribed to Moses. Originally
the manuscript record stands, with respect to its claims, pre
cisely upon the same footing as the other forms of record.
Supposing that the command of Deut. xxvii. 2 ff. were carried
out, the plastered stones would be originally as much au m-
spired record, and as truly sacred, as the manuscript book ot
the law ; they contained all the words of the law, written very
plainly (see Deut. xxvii. 8 and Josh. viii. 30-35).
The Book of Joshua acknowledges the obligation, divinely
imposed upon its hero, to keep the commandraents given by
Moses (see i. 7), and refers to thera as contained in the Book
of the Law. Language is here used which at once reminds us
of Deut. vi. 7 and xi. 18, 19. Again (Josh. vUi. 30-35), the
sanctity and authority of the words which Moses commanded,
and which were -written in the Book of the Law, are acknowl
edged by executing the injunction of Deut. xxvii. 1-8 ; and
again we find even more unmistakable reference to the fifth
book of the Pentateuch as containing, with its blessings (xxviii.
1-14) and curses (xxvii. 15-26, xxviii. 15-68), the divine
words read in the hearing of the people. Later in Joshua
(xxiv 26-28) we receive notice of an expansion of this Book
of the Law of God by recording in it the divine promises made
and the ceremonies performed at the renewal of the covenant
of Israel with Jehovah. In this case we are once more re
minded of Deuteronomy, especially of vi. 6 and xxix. 1. In
all these instances attention is directed to the words of the law,
regarded as divine statutes and ordinances of blessing and
threatening, and also to the fact that these words of Jehovah
to Israel were given by Moses. The words are found written,
however, in the Book of the Law, which therefore receives at
tention on account of its contents of divine statutes and ordi
nances commanded by Moses.
- Nor are notices wanting in the Book of Joshua to the effect
that other writings than the Book of the Law, which are in their
turn to be deemed sacred, are accumulating ; such as the de
scription of the survey of the proraised land (xviii. 10 ff.), and
the war-song which coramemorated the battle of Beth-horon,
and which was, according to the notice of a later hand, preserved
in the ancient Book of Jasher (x. 13).

108 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
But from the Book of Joshua to the record of the reign of
King Josiah, only scanty and obscure references to any written
forra of the Mosaic law occur in the history of Israel. Such
a -written Torah is not expressly mentioned where we should
most expect to find it ; viz., in the Books of Samuel. We are
told, however, that Sarauel wrote out the rights and preroga
tives of the kingdora, and laid up the docuraent before Jehovah,
presuraably in the tabernacle with the Book of the Law (1 Sam.
X. 25). Moreover, in the charge of David to Solomon, the
now famiUar formula for the contents of the divine revelations
raade through Moses and written in his law is again employed
(see 1 Kings ii. 3). A book containing an indeterminate por
tion of the Mosaic law, and called the precepts (nn;r collec
tively), is said (2 Kings xi. 12) to have been put, according to
the injunction of Deut. xvii. 18 f., into the hands of Joash at
his coronation.
It is not surprising, then, that the remarkable narrative of
the re-discovery of the written Torah in the time of Josiah (see
2 Kings xxii. 8 ff. and 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14 ff.) should still leave
unanswered the question. How rauch of the Pentateuch is here
referred to as the Book of the Law, or the Book of the Cove
nant? The preceding historical notices of the written Torah, as
well as the references made in this narrative to the contents of
the docuraent discovered, favor the view that the legal substance
of Deuteronomy constituted the main portion of this document.
We cannot, however, absolutely exclude other indeterminate
portions of the Pentateuch. We can assert that the point of
view from which the claims of the written law to the title
of Sacred Scripture are regarded, remains thus far unchanged
throughout. Besides those more indirect references to the Mosaic hvf
which Hengstenberg ^ has so industriously coUected, little re
mains to be adduced from the earlier prophetical books. The
earlier prophetical writings show a surprising meagreness of
direct reference to a written Torah.
But the books, both historical and prophetical, whose date
lies nearer the close of the Old-Testament Canon, espouse the
claims of the written Mosaic Torah in a manner much more
clear, express, and consentient. In the historical accounts of
Chronicles, the phrase " the law of Jehovah " repeatedly occurs
1 In his Authentic des Pentateuchs, Berlin, 1836-1839, I. pp. 48-180. See,
especially, Hos. viii. 12.

LATER NOTICES OF A WRITTEN TORAH. 109
(1 Chron. xvi. 40, xxii. 12, 13; 2 Chron. xU. 1). Hezekiah's
regiUations are especially declared to have been copied after
the law of Jehovah (2 Chron. xxxi. 3, 4, 21) ; so all the life
of Josiah (xxxv. 26). In Ezra and Nehemiah, both the divine
origin of the Mosaic law, and its deUvery through the medium
of the inspired Moses, are repeatedly acknowledged. Phrases
occur like the foUo-wing : " As it is written in the law of Moses
the man of God " (Ezra iU. 2) ; " As it is written in the book of
Moses " (vi. 18) ; " The commandraents, statutes, judgments,
which thou commandedst thy servant Moses" (Neh. i. 7) ; " The
law of God which was given by Moses the servant of God "
(x. 29). Ezra is styled " a scribe skiUed in the law of Moses "
(Ezra vii. 6), or "a scribe of the words of the statutes of
Jehovah" (-vii. 11), or "a scribe of the law of the God of
heaven " (vii. 12). The command of the Mosaic law inter
dicting marriages -with foreigners is described as the words of
the God of Israel (Ezra ix. 4), and also as the commandment
by God's servants the prophets. Accounts are also given in
Neh. -viu. 1 ff., ix. 3, and xiii. 1 ff., of the public reading of the
-written Torah for the instruction and rebuke of the people.
Reference is also made in Dan. ix. 11, 13, to the divine author
ity and practical vaUdity of the predictive curses which the
Mosaic law provides for its transgressors, regarded as those
who sin against God hiraself; and with this reference to the
law are coupled sirailar ascriptions of authority to the precepts
declared by the prophets. In Zech. vii. 12, the law is spoken
of in such a way as to connect it with the fuller doctrine of
Sacred Scripture in the three raain elements of that doctrine ;
viz., (1) the divine origin of the contents of Scripture, (2)
the inspiration of the prophetic media through whora the con
tents are given, and (3) the ethical final purpose which the
contents are given to fulfil.
In the Psalras, besides certain more obscure references to the
existence of a written Torah, and besides the simple raention
of it under some of its titles as having a divine origin, we have
to observe certain notices, which, without ascribing its origin
to Moses, occupy theraselves with paying a lofty tribute to
its divine characteristics as being of great ethical value and
power. (See Ps. i. 2, 3, xix. 7-14, xl. 7, 8, cxix.) The kind
and amount of recognition given to the -written law by the
author of Ps. xl. 7 cannot be precisely stated, owing to the un
certainty of its date and authorship. Delitzsch, who, " though

110 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
not without some hesitation," regards David as the author,
considers the " roU of the book " as referring especially to
Deuteronomy, which was to be the vade-mecum of the king
of Israel. (See Deut. xvU. 14-20.) Ewald, however, while
thinking it not incredible that the Pentateuch is referred to,
places the date of the psalm after the reformation of Josiah, ni
" the golden age of the written Torah, whUe as yet misunder
standings and misuses had not attached themselves to it, as
they afterwards did."
The full significance of this later and more express authenti
cating of the claims of the written Torah can be made manifest
only in connection with a critical investigation of the date of
the Old-Testament writings. Considering the whole circuit
of the Old-Testament writings, and without raising the question
of their chronological order, we find an essential agreement
in the nature of the claims which they raake for the written
Torah. Although the clairas of the later writers appear to
have extended themselves so as to cover under the term, "the
law of the Lord by Moses," substantially aU the present writings
of the Pentateuch, and although they put forth these claims
with an increased intensity of zeal frora which the earlier
prophets refrain, the Old-Testament view of the -written Torah
is essentially one and consistent throughout. We now present
this view in the following brief statement of particulars.
1. The writings of Mosaism make a claim to be considered
Sacred Scripture from the nature of their contents, which are
regarded throughout the Old Testament as consisting of divine
precepts and ordinances given to the nation as a basis for its
covenant with Jehovah, and as themselves giving conditions to
the entire nature of the national history and Ufe.
2. The contents of the written Torah are regarded as coming
through Jehovah's chosen and inspired serv.ant Moses. They
are therefore spoken of as given by the hand of Moses, or as
the words or precepts which Jehovah commanded by Moses.
These contents are for this reason designated as the law of
Moses. But it is not asserted (even if the alleged fact of his
tory that such was the general impression among the Jews after
the Pentateuch came into its present form, and after the com
pletion of the Canon of the Old Testament, may pass as un
doubted) that the writings which record these contents were
by the hand of Moses; with the exception of the few minor
portions before pointed out, and the larger section of Deut. iv.

n E LL

SUMMARY OF THE CLAIMS OF MOSAISM. Ill
45-xxvi. 15. The express claims of a Mosaic authorship for
the -written Torah, which are found within the Pentateuch itself,
as weU as aU the impressions of the later writers of the Old
Testament upon the question of authorship, must be tested by
criticism. 3. The divine origin aud qualities ascribed to the contents
of the -written Torah, so far as we have express designation of
the amount of writing which they are designed to cover, apply
only to those principal ordinances of the Pentateuch, together
with their accorapanj'ing threats and proraises, which are found
in its fundamental sections. Such sections are more particu
larly the Decalogue, the Book of the Covenant, and the dis
courses of Moses on the law as recorded in Deuteronomy.
Even when the description, "as it is written in the law of
Moses," or " in the book of Moses," came to cover substantially
the same ground as the writings of the Pentateuch, it is those
distinctive features of the written Torah which are regarded as
giving character to aU the rest.
4. There is no basis to be laid in the claims of the Old Testa
ment for declaring the writings of Mosaism to be inspired or
sacred, other than that which consists of the frequent and un
mistakable declarations as to the nature of their essential con
tents; if we except, however, those portions which are directly
ascribed to the authorship of Moses, or are said to have been
other-wise composed by divine command. Such portions pre
sent the additional claim of coming as Scripture directly from
a confessedly inspired prophet of Jehovah.
5. All the express claims, while confirming our impression
as to the divine origin and authority of the writings, so far as
this impression rests upon the nature of certain of their con
tents, leave large roora outside of themselves for further criti
cal inquiry. Accepting the clairas as substantially tenable,
we are still left free to raise our critical inquiries : e.g., as to
the authorship of most of the Pentateuch; as to the degree
of historical and ethical perfection reached by its narrative and
its laws; as to the more precise nature of its revelation and
inspiration. 6. It is the ethico-reUgious nature and uses of the contents
of the -writings in which lies the valid claim they make to
divine origin and authority, and by virtue of which they lead
us to speak of the writings which hold suc'h contents, as being
manifestly Sacred Scripture.

112 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
7. When we compare the estimate which Jesus makes of
Mosaism with the clairas made for it in the Old Testament, we
observe certain points of coincidence and also certain points of
contrast. That the Mosaic law contained a revelation of the
divine truth and the divine will ; that it therefore brought to
all men elements of absolute ethical and religious verity m
successive self-disclosures of God; and that it was especially
the means of divine pedagogy to Israel, through which the
theocratic nation became possessed of those great Messianic
ideas that underlie the kingdora of God on earth, — these truths
Jesus teaches in no equivocal fashion. But that he was capa
ble of distinguishing between the elements of genuine divine
revelation and the elements of human weakness and error with
which they were mingled, in a manner altogether impossible for
the writers and teachers of the Old Testament, we are also not
permitted to doubt. And, in fact (as we have already seen),
he made this important distinction. We can scarcely fail to be
lieve that he might have carried the sarae distinction into many
other details of the Mosaic law, had not a wise reticence, due
to his times and to the nature of his mission, prevented him.
As far as he has spoken, we are left to notice how widely his
manner diverges in raany respects from that of the Old Testar
ment. The jus talionis to which Mosaism gives a place in the
Book of the Covenant, as belonging to the words which Jeho
vah spoke to Moses and as part of the national compact with
God, Jesus characterizes rather as one of those concessive and
morally iraperfect enactments which were spoken by Moses and
his successors to the men of old tirae. (Compare Matt. v. 38
and Exod. xxi. 24.) The law of divorce which Deuteronomy
gives among the other statutes of Jehovah coraraanded through
Moses, Jesus regards rather as a statute of Moses, necessitated
by the hardness of the huraan heart, and indeed no better than
a virtual perraission of adultery. (Corapare Matt. v. 31 f., xix.
8, 9, and Deut. xxiv. 1.) How different, moreover, is the entke
manner of Jesus when speaking of the Mosaic law, from that
of the unqualified praises of the latest books of the Old
Testament, with their peculiar tendencies to insist rather upon
the ceremonial and sacerdotal provisions of the written Torahl
The spirit of Ins words accords with that view which upholds
the principles of righteousness embodied in the Mosaic law,
and its symbolic testiraony to the great Messianic ideas ; while,
at the same time, it relatively depreciates that which is dis-

SUMMARY OF THE CLAIMS OF MOSAISM. 113
tinctivel}- ceremonial and sacerdotal. The scribe, with his
growing importance, due to an increasing number of minute
and often seemingly conflicting legal enactraents, and with his
superlative regard for manuscript authority, is rather pushed
into the background by the teaching of Jesus. But the genu
ine and living word of Jehovah, which this scribe is quite too
likely to overlook in his zeal for the written law, is brought
forth frora its hiding-place in the raanuscript. Thus does Jesus
differ in his estimate of Mosaisra frora both its earUer and later
claims in the Old Testaraent, although drawing in spirit decid
edly nearer to those earUer clairas. He does not, however, so
differ as to abrogate in the least his own declaration, " Until
heaven and earth shaU have passed away, one jot or one tittle
shall in no -wise have passed away from the law, until all things
shall have come to pass."

VOL. I.

H

CHAPTEE IV.
THE CLAIMS OF PEOPHETISM AOT) OF THE HOKHMAH.
That the writings of Prophetisra differ frora those of Mosa
isra, in respect to the basis which they lay in their own claims
for the title of Sacred Scripture, we are now in a position
raore definitely to consider. We find in the claims of Hebrew
prophecy a decided advance beyond those put forth by the
Mosaic Torah. This advance is chiefly manifest in the increased
significance given to Avhat we raay call the eleraent of human
person?.Uty as an inspired medium of divine revelation. It is
to the prophet, with his morally quickened and elevated con
sciousness, that we owe the idea and the fact of inspiration as
it enters into the construction of Sacred Scripture. Indeed, in
the largest and yet perfectly true raeaning of the words, we
may say. Were it not for the Hebrew prophets, we should have
no inspired Hebrew Scripture, and no other than prophetic
inspiration serves as a medium of the inspired books of the Old
Testament. There may be sacred writings, however, whose
claims to the title rest upon other grounds than that of bemg
the products of inspired minds m -writing ; for not aU sacred
Scripture is, in the stricter sense of the term, inspired Scripture.
But for the understanding of those writings of the Old Testa
ment which are justly considered sacred, because they contain
the words of the Lord to Israel tlirough the servants to whom
he had for this purpose given his Holy Spirit, it is surely indis
pensable that we should form just conceptions of the Hebrew
prophets. The study of the claims of Prophetism is, then,
largely a study of the personality of the prophets.
The study of the claims of the Hebrew prophetic writings,
as those clairas are embodied in and put forth by the inspired
personality of the Hebrew prophets, we shall conduct in three
divisions. We shall consider, first, certain ethico-religious ideas
which enter into all Hebrew prophecy, so far as that prophecy
is connected with the doctrine of Sacred Scripture ; and, sec-
m

GENERAL CONDITIONS OF PROPHECY. 115
ond, the reality and the nature of the prophet's clairas to re
ceive the word of Jehovah by inspiration, so far as these claims
are made known in the titles applied to his person and work,
and in the descriptions given of his call, manner of exercising
his office, and especially of his prophetic consciousness. Only
in the third and last place shall we be in position to consider
the argument by which the clairas, priraarily belonging to the
personaUty and oral work of the prophet, pass over to the writ
ten product which becomes incorporated into Sacred Scripture.
The nature of the atmosphere, the agent and the product, of
Hebrew prophecy, must, then, be in turn considered.
It is both a scriptural and a phUosophical view which Ewald ^
takes, when he derives the prophetic call and office, as well as
the character of prophetic inspiration, from the very nature of
all reUgion. That God is a Uving God, and is therefore the
source of all spiritual life, and that raan is raade in the image
of God, and is therefore capable of communicating with God
and of receiving spiritual life, are reciprocal truths of all reli
gion. It is the moveraent of this divine Ufe within the soul of
man which constitutes the soul of prophecy. The one divine
life is the only source of inspiration, but the manifestation in
humanity of this life is variously deterrained. A voluntary
recognition of the divine presence is necessary on the part of
raan, in addition to his norraal and constitutional fitness, if the
divine Spirit is to stand face to face with the human spirit, and
converse with it as though in a clear and audible voice. It
accords with the very nature of prophetic inspiration and utter
ance, that the number of prophets should be few.^ A divine
choice and a divine call are therefore necessary to the consti
tuting of the prophet.
That the clairas made for other religions of antiquity as
well as for the Hebrew, to the indwelling of the Spirit of the
Almighty, are founded in the very nature of religion, we have
no disposition to deny. We need not refuse to see the fitful
glimmerings of the aurora because we admire the full-orbed
moon. We cannot, however, admit the accuracy of Ewald's
words in the declaration, "The Bible everywhere concedes
that the heathen divinities also can have their (true?) proph
ets " (p. 12). We are far rather ready to say with Winer,^ that
1 Die Propheten des Alten Bundes, I. p. 2 ffi. ' Ibid. p. 10.
3 Eeal worterbuch, Leipzig, 1848, II. p. 283, note. And compare the remark of
H. Schultz: Die Stellung des christlichen GJauhe^s zur heiligen Sehrift. Brauns-
herg, 1877, p. 35.

116 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
"all the prophecy of other nations is piece-work," — a sporadic
and isolated manner of uttering prophecy. No other prophecy
than the Hebrew is an organic growth. The common compari
sons between the Hebrew prophets and various other classes
in other nations, popularly supposed to be inspired, — e.g., the
p.dvTeL's of the Greeks, the Italian improvvisatori, the minstrels
of the Christian Church, — are, then, of little worth in giving
us the true conceptions for our theme. But, having formed
these true conceptions, we raay illustrate them by such com
parisons, and so place the Hebrew prophecy in its larger rela
tions with the general work of the Divine Spirit in history.
To the prophetic writings of the Old Testament alone, can we
resort for the conceptions themselves.
The epithet which Winer applies to the prophecy of other
nations (Stuckwerk, "piece-work") indicates by contrast the
true point of departure for an examination into the natufe of
Hebrew prophecy. The conceptions of Hebrew prophecy grow
out of the central ideas of the Hebrew reUgion ; its reality is
due to the intense vitality of that religion. Every Hebrew.
prophet was born into the inheritance of those great national
religious ideas which we have already found to underUe Mosa
ism, and to be incorporated into it. To receive, and constantly
to experience afresh, these truths by revelation of Jehovah, is
the claim of the religion of Israel. Tins general claim under
lies all the special claims of Prophetism.
The wonderfully vigorous and free developraent of the pro
phetic spirit and office araong the Hebrews was due to the
divinely iraparted truths which lay at the foundation of their
religion. These truths are like an atmosphere to be breathed
by every true Hebrew prophet. These truths of themselves
enable us to define (1) the agent, (2) the subject, and (3) the
organic law of the working of prophetic inspiration. The
agent of inspiration is the Spirit of Jehovah, who is the livmg
God. What was the Old-Testament conception of the divine
being and activities, we have already briefly described. As the
living God, in the full Hebrew meaning of those words,— a
fulness of meaning which, alas ! historic Christianity has too
often abated and contracted rather than expanded and elevated,
— the Spirit of Jehovah is the source of all life: aU other life
exists by the inbreathing of his life. That which is deemed true
with regard even to human deeds of craft and prowess, we
surely may expect to find claimed as true concerning the voice

THE SUBJECT OF INSPIRATION. 117
which avowedly announces the will of Jehovah upon his cove
nant relations with the theocratic people.
The subject of inspiration is primarily the entire faithful }ieo-
ple of the covenant of Jehovah. The divine voice announces
the gift of the Divine Spirit to thee, O Israel, and to thy seed,
to such as keep the covenant. The promises to impart knowl
edge of di-vine things, to guide into righteousness, to elevate
and fill -with life all the moral and spiritual being, when re
garded as having a national application, are not incidental to
the subject of prophetic uispiration : they are rather necessary
and fundamental. The gift of the Spirit to the nation furnishes
the explanation for the inspiration of the incUvidual prophet.
The inspired nation, the covenant people of Jehovah receiving
the Spirit of Jehovah, is the primary fact. The inspiration of
Moses, Isaiah, or Ezekiel, is the secondary fact which is de
pendent upon the primary. The faithful ones among the peo
ple are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exod.
xix. 5, C). The avowed wish of him who was, in the estimate
of the people, their greatest prophet, is to the effect that the
gift of the Spirit might not be restricted : " Would God that
all the people of Jehovah were prophets, and that Jehovah
would put his Spirit upon them ! " (Num. xi. 29.) The cove
nant of Jehovah -with Jacob is such that his Spirit is upon him
and his seed forever (Isa. Ux. 20, 21 ; compare Joel ii. 28 ff.) ;
and, indeed, prophecy in general is a proof of the divine favor
to the people Israel (Amos U. 11; Hos. xii. 10). When the
people rebel, they vex the Holy Spirit of Jehovah which he
put -within them (Isa. Ixiii. 11).
For the true conception of the primary subject of Hebrew
prophetic inspiration, the locus classicus, Deut. xviii. 9-22, is
decisive. The promise here recorded is neither, on the one
hand, to be restricted in its appUcation to Messiah alone, nor,
on the other hand, so to be interpreted as to deny its highest
typical application to him. That its primary historical refer
ence must be taken as extending to the whole class of prophets,
clearly appears from the contrast between true and false proph
ets, from the natural extent of the words " out of the midst of
thee, of thy brethren," and from the plain applicabUity of the
promise (verse 18), " I will put ray words in his raouth," to the
form of divine inspiration which was coramon to all the proph
ets. Every true Hebrew prophet was like unto Moses, inas
much as by virtue of his office as prophet he stood between

118 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
God and the theocratic people ; but no other one was so great
as Moses until the typical fulfilment of these words by Messiah.
Now, every distinctive feature of the prophetic inspiration and
office is given, at least in germinal form, in the promises here
recorded. The distinct divine vocation of the prophet who is
to be raised up (D"p;) by Jehovah, — a vocation which is, how
ever, as a call without restrictions among the people of the
covenant (" from the midst of thee, of thy bretiiren ") ; the
firm historical connection of the revelation which is to con
tinue the testimony of Moses ; the distinctively ethico-religious
nature of the prophetic mission and activity, since the claim to
be a true prophet must rest not so rauch on signs and wonders
as on the confession of the God who redeemed Israel and gave
them their law (verses 18, 19, and compare xiu. 1-5) ; the corrob
oration of the predictive word by its historic fulfilment, without
basing the claim of the prophet upon any minute insight into'
the definite occurrences of the future (compare xviu. 22 and
xiii, 1 ff.), — all these are traits distinctive of all true Hebrew
prophecy. They are, however, all involved in the promise of
the gift of the Spirit of Jehovah to the theocratic people.
Moreover, the faithful portion of Israel is invited and obligated
to so much critical use of the judgraent as is necessary to dis
tinguish between true prophets and false. The means for such
distinction are given priraarily in certain ethical conceptions
which are revealed to the nation by Jehovah, and which con
cern his own personality and providential dealing with the
nation ; and subordinately, in the tests by which the recogni
tion of the truth or falsehood of alleged prophecy was to be
determined in its fulfilment (see xiii. 1-5 and xviii. 9-22). The
forraing of the category of true prophets is thus committed to
the faithful of the nation. We even find here the germs of
a commission to criticise the claims of prophecy, and to form a
select class, or canon, of prophetic utterances. But this com
mission, so indispensable to the recognition and preservation of
true prophecy, belongs by gift of the Divine Spirit to the hhj
nation.'^ In accordance with the foregoing idea is the historical fact,
that the actual exercise of the prophetic office in Israel was not
restricted by sex, age, rank, or tribal connections. The cases
of Deborah (Judg. iv. 4), Huldah (2 Kings xxii. 14), Noadiah
1 See tho complete and beautiful expression of this thought, that the gift ot
the Divine Spirit belongs to the nation, in Isa. Ux. 20, 21.

THE SUBJECT OF INSPIRATION. 119
(Neh. -vi. 14), show that it was not limited by sex ; there are
false prophets among the daughters of Israel (Ezek. xiii. 17).
The herdsman Amos is taken frora following the flock (vii. 14,
15). The swarming of prophets in Israel, and the intense and
large activity of prophecy in the Hebrew life, are also made
e-vident by the facts, that no less than twenty-three prophets,
besides those whose writings are preserved in the Canon of the
Old Testament, are mentioned by name, and that large num
bers of naraeless ones are brought forward at different points in
Hebrew history.^
To Israel, the chosen people, the gift of prophetic inspiration
primarUy belongs ; in behalf of the ho}y nation, the realization
of its promised coming is always to be expected. Yet the
course of Ul-treatment which not only kings and priests, but
also the people at large, gave to such as alone realized in fullest
measure this divine gift, shows how circumscribed, even among
the Hebrews, the number of true prophets necessarily was.
WhUe, then, the primary subject of the gift of Jehovah's Spirit
is the entire theocratic nation, a choice of certain individuals
becomes necessary on account of the departure of that nation
from the fundamental law of the covenant. The people Israel
receives the promised gift of the Spirit in the person of the
prophets of Israel ; the prophets themselves, in the exercise of
their office, prepare the people for the fuUer fruition of the
same gift.
The law of the working of prophetic inspiration must also
be conceived of as it is related to those ideas and truths which
we have seen to be fundamental in the religion of Israel. The
organizing law of Hebrew prophetic inspiration is distinctively
and exclusively ethical, in the meaning which Israel attached
to this conception under the term " righteousness." The pro
phetic caU, condition of consciousness, office, and final purpose,
— both special with reference to Israel, and general with refer
ence to all history, — are aU ethical in their characteristics.
The sphere of prophetic activity is pre-eminently the sphere of
righteousness. Prophetic activity is raost intiraately connected,
not with pure thought, but with raoral action. Subjectively, it
1 See -Winer, Eealworterbuch, II. p. 283. Clement of Alexandria enumerates
thirty-five, and others even aa large a number as forty-eight prophets, and seven
prophetesses. Of the sons (or disciples and helpers) of the prophets, a hundred
are mentioned (2 Kings iv. 42 f.) as taking their meals together before Elisha at
Gilgal, and fifty of them went with Elijah aud Elisha to the Jordan (2 Kinga
U. 7, 16).

120 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
is an intuition of the relations and consequences of righteous
ness and unrighteousness, of right-doing and wrong-doing;
objectively, it is a call to righteousness, a reproof of unright
eousness, a proraise of reward for right-doing, and a threat of
punishment for wrong-doing. It is a revelation of what Jeho
vah is doing and will accomplish in righteousness, as the living
God. The truth of these statements will be made clear in all
our subsequent discussion of the Hebrew prophet and of the
nature of his inspired consciousness and work in prophecy.
The distinctive and exclusive pre-eminence of the ethical
eleraents in Hebrew prophecy was, however, a raatter of growth
through the divine training of the nation Israel. For Hebrew
prophecy shows an advance in its point of view, from one more
nearly corresponding to the point of view frora which heathen
raantic regards itself, to the fully developed and completely
ethical point of view. This later point of view is the only one
from which we have to regard the phenomena of revelation and
inspiration araong the Hebrews, so far as they form a basis fo-r
a true doctrine of their prophetic sacred writings. The consid
eration of other raodes of alleged revelation and inspiration
than the prophetic, and, among the prophetic, of other modes
than the one which is thus staraped throughout -with ethical
characteristics, has little or no value for the present discussion;
for there are no clairas to be raade regarding these other
raodes of revelation, in which we can lay any assured basis for
the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. Indeed, in the discussion of
the general question of inspiration, the value of these sporadic
and inferior phenomena is apt greatly to be exaggerated.
Among the temporary and inferior raodes of alleged divine
revelation which withdrew before the advance of true prophecy,
we raust place the use of Urim and Thumraim. The nature
of receiving and declaring the judgraent of Jehovah by Urim
and Thuraraim cannot be determined ; though the fact that a
claim was made thus to render a divine judgment is sufficiently
clear ^ (see Num. xxvii. 21). If, araong the conflicting views
as to the manner of this revelation, we might adopt the one of
sorae modern theologians, especially Bahr and Hengstenberg,—
viz., that the decision was really given by the high priest who
1 The name given to the breastplate of the high priest in which they were set
(Exod. xxviii. 30), the translation of the term by the LXX., with the words 8i»««"!
Kai akrie^M, and the Hebrew term D'Bfini D'^Xn, which refers to the divine
illumination and unimpeachable correctness of the decision rendered, — all prove
the fact of this claim.

COMMUNISTIC ELEMENTS OF PROPHECY. 121
was inspired for that purpose, and that the " pledge that the
answer should be in accordance with God's will . . . was worn
on his heart in the Urim and Thuramira," — then, indeed, this
forra of alleged divine revelation might be brought into direct
relations with the later forra in prophecy. The priest would
then wear his Urim and Thuramira as a syrabol of the really
prophetic relations in which he was standing with Jehovah.
Of this view we can, however, at most only say with Oehler,
non liquet. But, the right to make use of Urim and Thuraraim
being restricted to rare occasions, when the interests of the
whole congregation were endangered, it could not satisfactorily
serve the pedagogic purposes of divine communion with the
nation. Moreover, this mode of revelation partakes much less
of the ethical characteristics, and more of the characteristics of
mere di-vination, than does prophecy. For this reason both it
and the use of the sacred lot retire into the background before
the advance of the higher form of divine revelation. The
nature of Urim and Thuraraim was as much a matter of dispute
in the tirae of Philo and Josephus as it is now.
Of certain eleraents of Hebrew prophecy itself, we raust also
say, that they are relatively inferior, and frora their very nature
destined to be only sporadic and temporary. This is indeed
true of aU except the distinctively ethical elements, and those
predictive elements which grow out of the ethical. Among
the inferior elements we must class such as we will call the
communistic. For, although the gift of the Spirit of Jehovah
belonged primarily to the holy nation at large, it was not a
gift for distribution and enjoyment in communistic fashion.
We would not, indeed, deny that the spirit and wosk of true
prophecy might be connected with the so-called schools of the
prophets. The contagiousness, the imitation, the tendency to
congregate, and the physical excesses of prophecy in these
schools, belong, however, to the true prophetic activity only in
the ruder times and temporary uses of the reUgion of Israel.
These schools of the prophets have raost of their value in rela
tion to sacred prophetic writings, by the general impulse which
they gave to prophetico-historical composition. But the true
prophets, whose words from the Lord form the lofty ethical and
predictive contents of sacred prophetic books, were not usually
men pf the schools.
Scarcely any other subject of Old-Testaraent research has ex
cited a larger share of interest than the so-called schools of the

122 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
prophets ; and concerning thera nearly every possible view has
been held, not excepting the theories that they were raonastic
brotherhoods, or even quasi-Fjthagoiean associations, or singing-
academies. Yet they make their appearance only for a time at
two periods in the history of Israel ; viz., in the days of Samuel,
and again in those of Elijah and Elisha. They seem to have
been voluntary assemblies of men who thought themselves in
spired, and who for a time cherished their prophetic gift in
common, and under certain comraunistic relations which cannot
now be determined: they were not "schools" at aU, properly
so called.^ It is important for a true conception of Hebrew
prophecy, to observe that the distinctive characteristics of these
schools are without exception not the distinctive characteristics
of genuine Hebrew prophecy, although the former character
istics may be incidentally connected with the latter. The con
tagious self-propagating nature of the alleged " inspiration of
these assemblies does not, indeed, in all cases disprove its genu
ineness. It may be regarded in the light of similar phenomena
accompanying the work of the Divine Spirit in the kingdom of
God ; e.g., in the Corinthian church and araong the Camisards.
It is not, however, favorable to those lofty ethical qualities
which spring frora the raost intiraate communion of the human
organ of revelation with the source of aU revealed truth. The
temptation furnished by these so-caUed schools of the prophets,
merely to imitate the genuine prophetic caU and inspiration,
could scarcely fail to degrade the prophetic functions. Nor
does the word of Jehovah come in its clearest form to the soul
which is self-excited, or hurried into prophetic speech hy the
impact of crowds of others similarly excited. To these com
raunistic eleraents we may attribute in part the swarms of false
prophets, self-deceived and deceiving the people, which arose in
Israel. The physical excesses of inspiration, the predominance
of dreams and visions, the use of prophetic insight in the petty
details of life and in response to self-interested inquiry, — these
are also inferior and incidental phenomena which ally Hebrew
prophecy more with heathen mantic, and which need to be
largely left out of the account in considering such prophetic
1 The assembly of prophets about Samuel is called S3 0 (a band), and npn'?
(a company); and Samuel as their head is spoken of under the title 3SJ (1 Sam. xix.
20). The sons of the prophets in the days of Elijah and Elisha seem to be in
stricter relations of dependency upon these prophets. Compare Oehler, ibid., II
pp. 144 ff.; Keil and Delitzsch on 1 Sam. xix. 18-24; and Tholuck, Die Propheten
und ihre -Weissagungen, p. 20 f .

THE STAGES OF HEBREW PROPHECY. 123
revelation and inspiration as form the basis of Sacred Scrip
ture. Moreover, we infer that the organic law of Hebrew prophecy
is distinctively ethical, from our ability to trace the growing
predominance of ethical and religious elements throughout the
various stages of this prophecy. Of such stages Ewald,i and
Tholuck 2 following him, enumerate four. It will serve our pur
pose best to speak rather of five periods of Hebrew prop)hecy.
In each of them we behold the word of Jehovah coraing to the
people of Israel through the messenger who is chosen to be in
special coraraunion with Jehovah ; but each of them has its own
characteristics, which may be regarded as adapting that word
to the needs peculiar to the period. In the period preceding
Moses, the prophetic inspiration may be called patriarchal in
quality, and manifests itself in personal guidance of its recipi
ent by dreams, visions, and other providential indications : it has
the nature of calm communion on terms of friendship with the
Spirit of Jehovah. Yet the ethical quality and final purpose
of all true prophecy are distinctly manifest in this earUest type.
Abraham is the typical man of this period of prophecy. In
the next period the manifestations of prophetic inspiration are
concentrated in the person of Moses : its method is that of open
disclosures of those ethical and religious truths and ordinances
which are needed for the founding of the national life in its
legal and ceremonial form. Its forraula is: "Jehovah spake
unto Moses, saying." In the third period the germ of the sub
sequent form which Hebrew prophecy assumed is seen enveloped
in surroundings of heathenism, and yet successfully striving to
burst through this envelope. The prophets of this period are
grouped about the persons of Sarauel and Elijah. In the fourth
period the gerra has corae to its full blooraing. In this age
of the great prophets whose work has given us the choicest
contents of Old-Testaraent Scripture, the distinctive and high
raoral quality of Hebrew prophecy is most apparent: it is
especiaUy apparent in the growth of the great ideas which are
at the sarae tirae ethical and Messianic. And then in the last
period, the bloom is seen falling off as the time for putting forth
the flowers of prophecy gives way to the time for gathering
their fallen leaves, and preparing them for preservation.
The thought at present before us is a corrective of the ex-
1 Die Propheten des Alten Bundes, II. pp. 40 ff.
- Die Propheten und ihre Weissagungen, pp. 28 f.

124 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
treme view of Noldeke, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and others. The
prophecy of Israel in every period, and even in those germinal
periods which precede the time of Sarauel, grows out of the
underlying ideas of the national religion. To raisrepresent
these ideas in the supposed interests of a scientific view of their
development, and then, as a matter of course, misrepresent the
nature of that prophetic activity which is dependent upon these
ideas, is an uncritical reversal of the right method of research.
If we know any thing at all of the beginnings of the religion
of Israel, we know of them as already saturated with the same
ethical truths and opinions. Without admitting this fact we
discover no roots from which to trace the wonderful growth of
Hebrew prophecy. This prophecy cannot be introduced as
heathen soothsaying into the nation, and then raade to account
for the very development of those ideas, which, in their own
development, must themselves rather furnish the partial ac
count of it.
We now turn to consider the personality of the individual
prophet, and especially the nature of his personal and pro
phetic consciousness. The primary subject of revelation and
inspiration is, indeed, the entire holy nation. But the volun
tary attitude of the nation at large toward Jehovah, the his
toric limitations which encompass the divine self-disclosure,
and, finally, the necessity for a course of divine discipline in
the carrying-out of the compact of God with the people, neces
sitate a further restriction of prophetic activity. As in the
new covenant, so also in the old, certain individuals are espe
cially chosen to receive, in behalf of the community, the gifts of
the Divine Spirit. Both prophets and apostles are constituted
such by divine choice ; the former through an inner caU, the
latter by the personal act of Jesus.
The three elements which enter into the true conception of
the prophet are revelation, inspiration, and utterance; for the
prophet is the inspired medium of divine truth to other minds.
Revelation, the inner disclosure of the divine thought and will
to the human soul, is an essential element of genuine prophecy.
But this revelation cannot becorae realized, cannot become a
real disclosure of thought and purpose to the individual as
a preparation for prophecy, without inspiration. The soul of
the prophet raust be ethically quickened and elevated in order
that the word of Jehovah raay reach the people through him.
Nor can the message remain concealed in the prophet's own

TERMS FOR THE HEBREW PROPHET. 125
soul ; for it is a message, a divine coramission to communicate a
revealed truth to those for whom it is divinely intended. The
existence of these three elements in the conception of all true
Hebrew prophecy is made evident even by the titles employed
for the prophet, for the gift of inspiration, and for the prophetic
message. The term nabi (x'3J) for a prophet is the oldest and most fre
quent of all, and is found in all the Semitic languages. It is,
according to Ewald, from an independent root which has the
meaning " to make clear." Among the Arabians, nabi is " the
speaker." The primary meaning of the Hebrew word is, then,
to be a clear speaker, or, in the passive form, to speak for
another. " As the dumb man requires his raessenger or inter
preter to speak for hira, so does the voice of God, dumb to the
throng of raen, require sorae one to utter it." ^ The Hebrew
used the reflexive forms, niphal and hithpael, as the Romans
expressed the sarae class of conceptions by the deponent verbs
loqui, fari, vociferari, concionari, vaticinari. The conception that
the prophet does not speak his own thoughts, but those which
he has received frora God, is, then, inseparably connected with
his title. Thus Aaron is said to be given to Moses as his prophet
(Exod. vii. 1), or mouth as he is elsewhere designated (iv. 16) ;
because he is to speak for Moses as an ambassador or interpreter
speaks for his superior. Nor is this germuial idea wanting in
the wider use of the word when it is applied to Abrahara
(Gen. XX. 7) as one in friendly communion with God ; for this
patriarch here receives the title "as the God-addressed or
inspired, because the inward speaking or inspiration of God
constitutes the essence of prophecy." ^ A certain divine ac
tivity in revelation, and a corresponding passivity in receptive
ness of the prophet, are both impUed in the title koj. To the
conception uivolved in this title, the eleraent of utterance is
added in more definite form by the designation "messenger
(ijsjSp) of Jehovah" (Hag. i. 13; Mal. iu. 1; perhaps Judg.
ii. 1 [Gesenius]) ; a designation given to the whole people,
Isa. xUi. 19. The title "man of God "is also given to the
1 See Die Propheten des Alten Bundes, I. p. 7, and note; and Lehrbuch, § 149,
E.: and compare H. Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 214 f.; and Tholuck,
Die Propheten und ihre "tt'eissagungen, p. 21 f. The view of Havernick and Hof
mann is similar ; but Gesenius (see Lexicon) considers X31 the same as J?3J , the
i' being softened to K, and makes the verb mean " to boil forth," as a fountain.
According to Delitzsch, the root is to be translated " to divulge " (on Ps. cv. 15).
2 Delitzsch in loco ; compare Ps. cv. 15.

126 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
prophet, 1 Sam. U. 27, ix. 6 ; 1 Kings xiU. 1 ff., and Jer. xxxv.
4 ; the same title is appUed specifically to Moses, Deut. xxxiii.
1, and to David, 2 Chron. viu. 14, who are regarded as the
media of divine blessing to the nation. The term " man of the
spirit " is used, Hos. ix. 7, of pretended prophets ; Di?-p with its
kindred words is used only of the false prophets, who are to be
classed with the heathen soothsayers, — a distinction preserved
by the LXX. in the contrast between ¦n-pocft-riTevw and parrevonan
In this distinction we may detect the germs of the true view
of the prophetic consciousness in its differences from the view of
the rabbis and early Church fathers.
The realizing of revelation in the transformed raoral con-
ciousness of the prophet — prophetic inspiration proper — is,
however, more clearly asserted in the following titles. The
word hoseh (nin), which belongs, for the most part, to the silver
age of Hebrew (Gesenius), and which perhaps carae late into
prose speech from earlier usage more nearly poetic (Winer), is
found alraost entirely in Chronicles (see 1 Chron. xxi. 9, xxv. 5,
xxix. 29; and Araos vii. 12). The word roeh (n^'i, "seer") is,
however, given pre-eminently to Samuel (1 Sam. ix. 9, 19; 1
Chron. ix. 22, xxvi. 28) ; but it is also given to the prophet
Hanani (2 Chron. xvi. 7, 10), and is used in the plural of thg
prophets generally (Isa. xxx. 10). We are informed (1 Sam.
ix. 9) that this title was the earlier one for the prophet, in the
declaration, " he who is now caUed N'33 was beforetime called
nx'-*." This declaration, winch plays so conspicuous a part in
the representation of Hebrew prophecy which is given by cer
tain critics, can be urged at most in proof only of the following
facts : viz., that there was a lack of true prophets in the time
just preceding Samuel, and that the people resorted for con
sultation regarding their own affairs to a class of men fitly
called in popular language " seers," while the later and dis
tinctively Hebrew form of prophecy came into general activity
only after the tirae of Samuel. All three titles for the prophet
are found, but distinguished according to some principle not
easy to define, in 1 Chron. xxix. 29 ; the title roeh being apphed
to Sarauel, nabi to Nathan, and hoseh to Gad. With correlated
significance do we find the term npis (speculator) used of the
prophet, because he, like the watchman, announces what is
coming, unseen by others but manifest to his vision of a wider
range (see Jer. vi. 17; Ezek. iU. 17, xxxiU. 7; Isa. lii. 8);
while by the title igii' he is more expressly represented as the

TERMS FOR PROPHETIC INSPIRATION. 127
shepherd and guardian of Jehovah's flock (see Isa. xxi. 11,
Ixii. 6). By these titles the quickening and elevating of the
intuitions by the work of the Spirit of Jehovah, and the pro
duction within the prophet of a truly divine insight and fore
sight, are clearly indicated. But this inspiration is also repre
sented as imparted to the individual in order that he may be
fitted to inspect and oversee the ways of the nation and of
their rulers toward Jehovah, and the correlated divine ways
toward them.
The fact of prophetic inspiration is more distinctly asserted
by the formulae used to describe the gift of the Divine Spirit to
the prophet. The Spirit of Jehovah is said to "faU upon" the
prophet ; the word '73: signifying the descent from heaven, the
supposed place of Jehovah's presence, of that divine influence
which the prophet was supposed to possess (see Ezek. xi. 5).
The hand of Jehovah "fell upon" (Ezek. viii. 1), or "was upon"
(Ezek. i. 3, iii. 22, xxxvii. 1), or "was strong upon" (Ezek. iii.
14), are expressions favorite with one of the prophets to de
scribe the coming of this divine influence. A sirailar phrase is
used to describe the imparting of skill to the minstrel in playing
(2 Kings iii. 15), and, -with a change of the preposition (^^),
of divine strength to Elijah for running (1 Kings xviU. 46).
" The Lord spake unto me with a strong hand," — i.e., spake
laying hold of me with a firra hand, — is the description of Isa.
viii. 11 ; and Jeremiah (xv. 17) is said to be inspired with moral
indignation because of the hand of the Lord. The Spirit of God
is also spoken of as " clothed upon " (^?)) the prophet like a sort
of inner garment (see 2 Chron. xxiv. 20); an expression which
is, however, also used of the preparation of the hero for right
eous battle (of Gideon, Judg. vi. 34 ; of Amasai, 1 Chron. xii.
18). These forraulae, as the use made of thera indicates, dwell
rather upon the less definitely ethical features of the prophetic
consciousness in which it more resembles the ecstasy of heathen
mantic. But in the phrases, " The word [or oracle] of Jehovah
came unto [or upon] rae," or " Jehovah spake unto me saying,"
the intuition of truth which inspiration brings to the prophet
is made prominent, rather than the stress of feeling occasioned
by the intuition. The objective word of Jehovah, intuitively
received by the inspired prophetic consciousness, and acting
upon that consciousness to stir it to its lowest depths, consti
tutes the genuine Hebrew prophet according to the formulae
examined above.

128 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
The same general impression regarding the three elements of
revelation, inspiration, and inspired utterance, is made by the
terms used to describe the prophet's message. These terms em
phasize the element of utterance. The title ox: (a word or cry
coming from the deep breast [Ewald], the supernatural voice
which was supposed to whisper oracles in the. ear of the prophet
[Gesenius]), indicates that process of communion with God in
contemplation by which the intuition of divine truth secretly
assumes the more definite form needed for utterance. But by
the term " word of Jehovah " (nin; "ian) the message is presented
as more strictly objective, and as both cause and effect of the
inspiration received. The word is from Jehovah as a source,
and to others : it is, therefore, a divine commission to utter a mes
sage. How deeply the consciousness of the prophet is affected
both by his intuition and also by his commission, we may con
clude from the title ne?d which is used to describe the contents
of his message. The raeaning of this word is, indeed, much in
doubt. Gesenius and others would translate it by effatum mere
ly, the lifting-up of the voice in speech; and, as apphed to
prophetic speech, effatum divinum, an oracle. But its deriva^
tion and the nature of its use with the prepositions '^V. and '^^
(see 2 Kings ix. 25), as well as the general characteristics ofthe
prophecies it prefaces, seem to indicate a raore specific meanmg.
According to Ewald, the clew to this meaning is to be found in
Zech. ix. 1, where the word of Jehovah is represented as lifting
up wings in flight to come to a rest only in the land of Hadrach.
Its more appropriate use would then be limited to prophecy
relating to a far-off land and people.^ At the sarae time the
thought of a word of threatening, raised, as it were, above, or
passing over upon, its subject, must be taken into the account.
The older commentators, following Jerome and Luther, adhere
raore definitely to the etyraology of the Hebrew, and translate
by the word " burden." And, despite the departure of most
modern authorities from this earUer view, we are of opinion
that the cognate element which connects the two meanings of
xiz/p — viz., the meaning "to lift up" and the meaning "to
bear " — always asserts itself in the usage of the prophets.
The word, then, as applied to the contents of prophecy, repre
sents these contents as coming from Jehovah into the prophet's
1 For this reason it is that so many prophecies inscribed with this word con
cern foreign countries: "Hoch-spruch wenn Flug-spruch zu sch wer dunkt," says
Ewald, Die Propheten, etc., I. p. 66.

THE BASIS OF PROPHETIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 129
soul, as making a vast and generally even a painful impression
upon it, and as demanding utterance to others.^
Inasmuch as the prophet is distinctively a " seer," the con
tents of the divine word to him are themselves called a vision
(n«n), which must be made visible to others through the
prophet (see Isa. xxix. 11, xxi. 2). We have also the compound
expression, "the oracle which Isaiah saw" (ii. 1) ; and, return
ing to the figure of a word uttered, the oracle is said to be spoken
by Jehovah in the ears of the prophet (Isa. v. 9, xxii. 14).
Important truths, suck ^s the reaUty and objective certainty
of revelation, the continuous and reciprocal action of revelation
and inspiration, the activity and passivity combined in the
prophetic mental state, anci the elevatirtg of the faculties of
intuition with reference to the discernment of ethical truths,
are aU implied in the very titles and terras used to designate
the Hebrew prophet, his inspiration, and his message.
We attempt now to determine more precisely the nature of
the prophetic consciousness by considering the claims of the
genuine Hebrew prophet as to (1) his vocation, (2) his com
mission, and (3) his inspired mental state.
What we raay call the natural basis of the proplietic con
sciousness can be regarded as twofold ; it is both historical and
psychological. The characteristics of the H-ebirew prophetic,
ofiice and inspiration were, to a large extent, dependent upon
the ethical and religious ideas of the nation into wlilch, as into
: an atraosphere, the prophet was born. In the case of the later
prophets, the preceding work of their fellow-prophets became
an inheritance whicli no one who uttered the word of the Lord
was either disposed or ^hle to hinder from having its in^fluence
upon himself. Moreovcr, certain natural gifts and personal
quaUfications are presupposed by the divine call to tliis office.
But the combined resources of natural endowment and inherit
ance of national ideas do not avaU to satisfy the claims justly
made by every genuine prophet of Israel. The claim of the
prophet is a claim to -be the individual organ of a divine revela-
' tion. This general claim involves the particular claims to a
" divine vocation, to a divine coraraission, and to an endowment
with the strengthening, iUumining, and sanctifying Spirit of
-; God.
-¦ An individual vocation, or divine <caii -addressed to the
; ^ That the term does mt alwaya designate the "Oiaclo cif Jehovah as a truth
'.i heavy to be borne, see Zech xii. 1 and Mall. i. 1.
VOL. L I

130 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
prophet's own soul, forras one indispensable element of genu
ine Hebrew prophecy. It is the consciousness of this vocation
which gives the first impulse to the prophetic spirit ; it is the
raeraory and the renewal of this consciousness which continue
to feed the prophetic spirit. A certain kind and amount of
prophetic activity seems, especially in the times of Samuel, to
have attached itself rather to the community of prophets, and
to have been shared by all the members of the community on
the ground of their position in it. Under leadership, by imita
tion, and for a tirae, even Saul might be deemed a prophet.
But it was not by those belonging to a company like that
described, 1 Sara. x. 5, or having been trained in a school,,
but rather by individuals, under a distinct divine impulse, that
the great and enduring prophetic work of Israel was under
taken. Men like Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah come forward as
prophets by individual sumraons of the Lord. (See Amos vii.
14 , Isa. vi. ; Jer. i. 2.) The overwhelraing effect which this
divine vocation sometimes exercised upon the prophet may
be seen in the case of Amos, who assures us (ui. 8) that he
trembled like a shepherd before the roaring of a lion when
Jehovah coraraanded hira to prophesy. At times it happened
to the Hebrew prophet, as it has happened to many messengers
of God in all ages of the world, that he at first listened to the
call of Jehovah with rauch resistance, or that he accepted it
only when fully aware of the hardships involved. We learn
that Jereraiah, who well knew that all the events of his Ufe had
been ordered with reference to his prophetic vocation (i. 5),
nevertheless at first resisted the caU on the plea of youth
(6) ; but Jehovah overcame, at the last, his resistance (xx. 7).
Again, afterward, he would gladly have restrained the divine
impulse to .predict the coming woe, but was unable to do so
(xvii. 16). We notice in this case the effect upon the pro
phetic consciousness of a repeated, or rather prolonged, divine
call, for the understanding of which both the psychological and
the supernatural elements must be taken into the account. The
irapression raade upon the raind of the recipient by the convic
tion of such a vocation frora Jehovah is by its very nature an
ethical and spiritual impression. It could not fail, in the case
of any thoughtful and upright mind, to have a distinct and
lasting influence in elevating and strengthening the most
essential of the moral faculties. The nature of this influence
is illustrated by all the analogous convictions of a lofty divine

THE VOCATION OF THE PROPHET. 131
vocation which have been held by those souls who have been
morally choicest, most useful, and best, in all places and ages
of the world. How the memory of his divine call was so
burned into the soul of the Hebrew prophet as to become a
radiating point of perpetual light and heat, we may be con
vinced by reading Isa. vi., Jer. i., and Ezek. i.-iii.
But the inner call which is felt by the Hebrew prophet is a
call to soraething external to himself. He regards himself not
only as called, but also as coraraissioned. His vocation is to
receive a word or -vision from Jehovah, the objectivity of which,
as respects both its source and its destination, is made known
by speaking of it as a comraunication given or put into his
mouth by God. (See Deut. xviii. 18 , Jer. i. 9 ; Ezek. ii. 8.)
Even though the revelation be originally made in the still hour
of contemplation, it is accorapanied or followed by an irapulse to
reveal to others what has been for this purpose revealed to the
prophet himself. Indeed, the revelation is itself an inner divine
command to speak to others the truth revealed (Amos iii. 8).
The prophet may not isolate himself, and keep his message : he
is laid under divine obligations to seek for utterance and for
hearers, even those to whom Jehovah has commissioned him to
bring lus word. His coraraission involves, therefore, the invita
tion that men shall Usten to the word brought them frora the
Lord. (See Joel i. 2 ; Amos iii. 1.) It impels him to resort to
the teraple as a place of convocation (Jer. vii. 1 f., xix. 14,
xxvi. 2, xxviU. 1; Hos. ix. 8), or to the gate as a place of public
asserably (compare Jer. xxv. 2).^ Not to prophesy as commis
sioned of Jehovah, and not to impart exactly the message given
in commission, whether keeping back any part through fear,
or changing any thing through love of favor, is to forfeit his
divine gift. This conception of the inviolable character of the
divine coraraission to the prophet is found, Deut. xviii. 18,
and is an underlying thought of 1 Kings xiii., Ezek. xxxiii.
1 ff., and of the entire Book of Jonah. Faithful to this cora
mission, the prophet may be confident in Jehovah (Isa. viii.
17, 18). This message has a powerful effect upon the souls
of the prophet and his hearers, for it is received as one coming
through inspiration of Jehovah (Jer. xxiii. 29, Hos. vi. 5) ; but,
for this reason, in bringing it to others the messenger is given
1 Ewald understands the words, " he that reproveth in the gate," as a title of
the prophet, and refers to Isa. xxix. 21, and Amos v. 10. (See, also, Winer, Eeal
worterbuch, II. p. 278.)

132 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
declarative authority as a part of his commission (Jer. i. 10).
And this coraraission is objectively as wide as it is subjectively
intense. It has application not only to the people, but also, and
oftentimes especially, to their priests and rulers. It may extend
over the affairs of all nations, and cover with its wide sweep
the entire domain of the kingdora of God. For the prophet,
as the commissioner of Jehovah, is set " over the nations and
over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to
destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant." (See
Jer. i. 10, xxviii. 8.) The genuine prophet is not commissioned
to be a soothsayer or oracle-monger, but an apostle of righteous
ness. The forms of his activity which concern the petty details
of Ufe, — e.g., the finding of asses, the recovery of a lost axe, or
the giving of counsel in unimportant cases, — are merely acci
dental and teraporary in Israel. He has rather a commission
which is distinctively ethical ; he is appointed to stand in be
half of Jehovah, as a word which rebukes, incites, encourages,
instructs, and warns the people in righteousness.
Yet further, this coraraission of the prophet raay involve more
than the verbal utterance of the divine message. He is him
self, in his person, conduct, and life, called and commissioned to
be a concrete word of Jehovah to his feUows. The thorough
honesty and intense earnestness of even the earUer prophets
are made manifest by their traditional habit of clothing, viz., the
long, folding mantle (n^^.K) of coarse hairy stuff, drawn together
by a leathern girdle. Such a symbol of his commission plays
an important part in the history of Elijah (2 Kings ii. 8). As
a raerely external and yet significant feature of the prophetic
office, this clothing was, however, assuraed by the false proph
ets (Zech. xiii. 4). The prophetic coraraission often becomes
incorporated into the entire manner of the prophet's life ; his
consciousness is so permeated and filled with the sense of his
raission, that his life becomes largely a life of prophetic symbol
ism. His conduct is thus a prophecy, and a pledge and first-
fruits of the events prophesied. Ahijah's treatment of Jero
boam (1 Kings xi. 30 ff.), Zedekiah's horns of iron in imitation
of the true prophetic method (1 Kings xxii. 11), Isaiah's bare
feet (Isa. xx. 2), Jeremiah wearing bonds and yokes (Jer.
xxvu. 2, xxviii. 10), Elisha with his bow and arrows (2 KingS
xiii. 15 ff.), and Jeremiah again with the prophetic girdle (Jer.
xiii. 2 ff.) or with the potter's bottle (xix.), are temporary and
less important instances of the power of this commission. But

THE PROPHETIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 133
the whole personal history and surroundings — house, wife,
children, and personal experiences — of the prophet may appear
to him as parts of the truth given to him from Jehovah (Isa.
viii. ; Hos. i.-iii. ; Jer. xvi.). As a prophet he may direct into
the line of his coraraission his secular transactions ; and thus
does Jereraiah purchase a field to express his confidence in the
return from the captivity (xxxii.). The past transactions and
experiences of his own life, which had not at the time of their
occurrence been understood, the prophet may come to under
stand in the light of his great divine commission. In this way
we are perhaps to interpret the difficult passage Hos. i.-iii.
Even natural events appear as portions of prophecy (see 1 Sam.
xU. 17 f.).
Thus called and thus commissioned, the prophet must be
divinely transformed in his moral and spiritual being, or else
be forced to confess that he has misinterpreted his office. The
dependence of the prophetic call and coramission upon ethical
conditions is distinctly stated by the Hebrew writers. That he
may fitly accept the call, the iniquity of the prophet needs to
be taken away, and his sin purged (Isa. vi. 5-8). A genuine
moral receptiveness and submission (Isa. 1. 5 ff.) prepare him
for being sent forth by Jehovah. To flatter sinful lusts (Mic.
ii. 11, iii. 5), or to speak Ues (Jer. xiv. 14), or, indeed, to yield
in any way to moral impurity, would result in obscuring his
prophetic consciousness, and in reducing him to the base posi
tion of a falsifier of the divine word. (See Hos. ix. 7, 8.) But
being "full of conscious sincerity and of his divine corarais
sion," he raay announce with all boldness to the people his
inspired message respecting their sins (Mic. Ui. 8).
We discover further proofs of the nature of the prophetic
consciousness, when we consider more definitely the effects of
revelation and inspiration upon the mental state of the prophet.
The objective point of starting for this consideration is the
reality of that disclosure of the divine thought and purposes
which is made within the prophet's soul. The genuine proph
et differs from the false in that the former has, and the latter
has not, the true word of Jehovah as a message to be delivered
unto others. False prophets are therefore designated as those
who speak out of their own heart (Jer. xiv. 14, xxiii. 16 ; Ezek.
xiu. 2, 17) ; or they are declared to be not really sent by God,
although pretending to be so sent (Jer. xxvii. 15 ; xxix. 31 ;
Ezek. xiii. 6). But this word, objective and/rom Jehovah, can-

134 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
not become a message to men without first becoming a word
subjective and revealed in the raind of the organ of revelation.
The inspiration, or transformation of the consciousness of the
prophet, is necessary in order that revelation raay be realized.
In and through this act of divine revelation, certain effects are
represented as divinely produced upon the personaUty of the
prophet. Araong such effects, although of inferior importance for the
present discussion, and only incidental in the determination of
the true nature of prophetic consciousness, must we class the
tokens of excessive physical agitation. They neither prove nor
disprove the genuineness of the inspiration of those alleged
prophets in whose cases they occur. They belong, indeed,
rather to a crude stage of the Hebrew prophecy and to the ex
cesses which characterize the heathen mantic of the time. We
are given to understand from the narrative of Saul's conduct,
1 Sara. xix. 24 (especially frora the repeated phrase "he also"),
that stripping to the tunic, and lying prostrate on the ground,
was the habit of the prophets with whom the king is here asso
ciated. Balaam is said (Num. xxiv. 4) to see the vision of tbe
Almighty, falling down, and with open eyes. Notices of simi
lar phenomena araong heathen nations have been collected by
Hengstenberg, Tholuck, and others. The designation of the
prophet as one frenzied (I'JB'd) or under impetuous excitement
(Gesenius), although used of false prophets, Hos. ix. 7, and of
true prophets in contempt, 2 Kings ix. 11 and Jer. xxix. 26,
probably indicates not only the popular estimate of the condi
tion of the prophet's mind, but also much in the mental state
and conduct of the prophets which gave rise to the popular
estimate. The recurrence of similar phenomena in Ezekiel and
Daniel, at so long a tirae after the schools of Sarauel and Eli
jah, is a proof of the decline in that age of the highest and
truest prophetic spirit. Yet even Ezekiel, as Oehler remarks
(II. p. 328), after falling down overpowered b}^ his vision, has to
stand up again to receive the divine revelation (Ezek. i. 28,
ii. 1) ; and Daniel, although at first stunned, and even at one
tirae made ill for several days (viii. 27), raust recover conscious
ness before he is intrusted with the entire divine self-disclosure
(x. 8-10). This latter prophet, whose excessive excitement in
the presence of his prophetic vision distinguishes him, according
to his own narrative, from all the other Hebrew prophets, repre
sents himself as falling senseless after he had heard the sound

THE PROPHETIC CONSCIOUSNESS. 135
of the words, and then as being made to arise in order that he
might give heed to them ; although he became sick in conse
quence of the impression of the vision.
The condition of ecstasy may, then, be considered as one
which, in the view of the Old Testament, especially when that
view receives treatment in the light of its historic development,
is only incidental to the revelations received by the prophets.
Extremes of the ecstatic state, in which the moral self-con
sciousness appears for a time to be sunk in a flood of frenzied
eraotion, do not belong as a distinctive characteristic to the
greatest Hebrew prophets. Nor do the phenomena of ecstasy
deserve any conclusive weight in estimating the nature of
Hebrew prophecy as a basis for the doctrine of prophetic Sacred
Scripture. These are, indeed, the phenomena upon which the
mechanical theory of inspiration primarUy laid chief stress;
and this fact shows to what crudity and violence of views this
theory is to be referred for its basis. For, although Winer's
remark, that the home of the prophets is the land of the South,
" where the blood runs quicker through the veins, and feeling
breaks forth stronger and prompter," is undoubtedly applicable
to the Hebrews ; the fact neither explains on the one hand, nor
on the other discredits, the inspiration of these teachers of
ethical and predictive truth. We must, then, in coraraon with
raost raodern opinion, express our dissent from both the earlier
and the later views of Hengstenberg.
The consistent claira of the Hebrew prophets estabUshes the
following statement as to their mental state : In genuine proph
ecy the Spirit of God, having its seat in and taking its point of
departure from the ethico-reUgious nature, illumines the intui
tive faculties, quickens and elevates the ethical emotions, and
so possesses and sways the entire soul. This effect is not to
be described, however, as a mere quickening, by natural and
historic forces, of the ordinary ethical and reUgious faculties.
The Divine Spirit moves within the prophet, having first come
to him as an influence frora Jehovah. But the centre of this
spiritual influence is in the ethical and religious nature. The
prophetic insight and foresight which result frora the divine
illuraining are distinctively ethical; the eraotions which are
excited and strengthened are those which are connected with
moral conduct; the final purpose of the inspiration is the
imparting of ethical and religious truth, and the inciting of
right moral conduct. Thus does the entire soul become au

135 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
organ for the revelation of the thought and will of Jehovah;
but the organ is used only within the sphere, and for the final
purpose, contemplated in the act of inspiration.
We consider then, first, the illumining of the intuitive facul
ties of the prophet by the divine gift of ethico-religious insight
and foresight. Peculiar insight and foresight are claimed for
the true Hebrew prophet as bestowed upon hira by the Spirit
of Jehovah in the forra of an " inward intuition." It belongs
to the very nature of prophetic consciousness to behold things
present and things to corae, more than is possible for the com
mon consciousness of uninspired men, from the divine point of
view : the true prophet of the Lord sees all things which he sees
prophetically, as one seeing thera in God. Tho titles of the
prophet, n^^T and nt'n, and the word jiin -with its kindred words
for the revelation made to hira, have already been referred to
in proof of this truth. In view of tho same claim are we to
interpret the favorite use of the verb " to see " (Hin) to desig
nate even the divine communications in forms of speech
(Amos i. 1 ; Isa. ii. 1), — a form of inward perception which is
also represented as hearing a word spoken within and yet to
the soul (Isa. xxi. 10, xxviii. 22). The sarae thought is also
indicated in those forras of speech by which the prophet is
represented as a watchman who stations himself upon his post
of outlook, that he may be the first to behold the inner mean
ing of his own times, as well as of those coming events which
rise in anticipation above the horizon of prophetic vision.
Thus we have the A'arious figures of speech blended in Hab. ii.
1, where the prophet declares he will take his stand on the
watch-toWer, and wait for a vision of what Jehovah will say to
his soul : such a vision is recorded for us, Isa. xxi. 6 ff. In
cases where the inward intuition is represented as a picture, or
vision, presented before the eye of the inspired imagination,
-w^ are not generally to suppose such a work of the faculty of
sensuous representation as takes place in the case of vivid
dreams, or in waking states of disease, or in other abnormal
excitement of the brain. Such a work of the imagination
seems, however, sometimes to be implied ; or, rather, it cannot
always be excluded. Excitement of the faculty of recaUing
and picturing anew, and in new combinations, the objects of
sense-perception, may be implied iu the prophetic visions of
Araos vii. 1-ix. 6 ; Jer. xxiv. ; Isa. vi. Specimens of vision,
combined with the appearance of deep insensibility or enhanced

THE PROPHETIC INTUITION. 137
to rapture, are to be found in Dan. viii. 18, x. 9, and Ezek. viii.
1-3, xi. 1. In other instances the form of vision seems to be
assumed, and rhetoricaUy used to convey prophetic truth, in
rauch the same fashion as that in which the parable also was
eraployed (see 1 Kings xxii. 17, 19, and compare 2 Sam. xii.
1-9; Isa. V. 1-7). Some of the so-called visions of the later
prophets, as for instance that in the tenth chapter of Ezekiel,
cannot be represented as they are described in the text by any
combinations possible for the plastic art or even the sensuous
imagination : they must be regarded as the wholly artificial
work of the verbal composer, — though perhaps upon the basis
of some confused experiences of the sensuous imagination, —
rather than as the result of prophetic intuition reaUzed in pic
torial forms. The one conception of an " inward intuition "
accompanies, however, the great variety in form of the pro
phetic vision ; from the artless symbols of Amos to the arti
ficial and complicated verbal productions of Zechariah, Ezekiel,
and Daniel.
The coraparison sometimes raade between this inward intui
tion, in which the inspired iraagination, although representing
ethical objects, assuraes the forra designated as " a vision," and
the case of orcUnary vivid dreams, is of Uttle value. Revela
tion by dreams is to be regarded as an inferior forra (Nura. xii.
6-8), and one particularly Uable to self-deception. For this
reason the claim to such revelation is spoken of as a token
of the false prophets (Jer. xxiii. 25-28 : corapare, however,
Joel ii. 28). And, although a comparison of the prophetic
state -with the state of somnambulism or hypnotism suggests
itself raost obviously in such cases as those recorded in Daniel,
the coraparison itself, when made, serves to show how unlike
all such mental states was the quickened and elevated ethical
"inward intuition" distinctive of the truly inspired prophet
of Israel. The result of every such coraparison may be
summed up in these words: "Divine prophetic inspiration,
from whatever point of view it may be critically regarded, is
a unique phenomenon." ^
Nor do the intuitions of heathen diviners, or the penetrating
conceptions of genius, even when distinctively ethico-religious,
correspond precisely to the claims to insight and foresight of
the Hebrew prophets. The former are indeed analogous to the
1 See Ennemoser, Der Magnetismus im Verhaltniss zur Natur und Eeligion, pp.
91, 241.

138 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
latter ; because all intellectual endowment, and all human in
sight and foresight, especially in ethico-religious matters, are
the results of a divine spiritual influence. To the former,
however, are wanting not only the national atmosphere created
by tho^e revelations of fresh ethical and religious truth which
belonged to ancient Israel, but also the clear self-consciousness
of receiving the objective word of the Lord, and of being
constituted by hira the media of his communication with the
nation. In one chief feature, indeed, the better class of heathen
diviners may be compared, as respects their state of conscious
ness, with the Hebrew prophets. Both divination and prophecy
are saturated with the ethical and religious convictions and
feeUngs of our coraraon huraanity. But, even as respects the
essentials of the mental state of insight and foresight, the self-
consciousness of heathen mantic and of Hebrew prophecy are
unlike. In extravagance of emotions the mantic is most like
the inferior authors and passages of Hebrew prophetic writuig.
But as respects the inward intuition ; his much superior concep
tions of God and holiness, his loftier sense of divine vocation,
his clearer consciousness of the divine communion, his surer
conviction of receiving the undoubted word of the Lord, his
consciousness of more absolute response in feeling and will to
this divine word, — all these eleraents of difference find their
expression in the raental condition of the Hebrew prophet.
As rays of moonlight, feebly and fitfully breaking through
the chinks of a cabin wall, seem to the open beams of the sun
advancing frora dawn to full daylight, so may we compare
the fickle and dim light of the Spirit in the souls of heathen
diviners, to the clearness and Ulumining power of the inward
intuition which belonged to the genuine Hebrew seer.
The prophetic consciousness differs from that in which arise
the marvellous conceptions of genius, with their seemingly divine
insight into ethical truth and into the consequences of moral
conduct. These conceptions do not involve the consciousness
of coraraunion with God, nor the conviction of recei-ving a
word frora him which must become, by the moral action oi
the recipient, a divine message to others. Lasaulx may see in
Scipio's allusion, amidst the ruins of Carthage, to the future
fall of Rorae, " a genuine prophecy ; " but the mental state of
the predictor bore Uttle resemblance to that of the inspired
Hebrew seer. Scipio did not feel that the word and Spirit
of the Lord had come upon him, or that he must station him-

THE FORESIGHT OF THE PROPHET. 139
self upon the watch-tower to see what the Lord would say to
him ; he did not preface his conjecture with a " Thus saith the
Lord." The further claim to a divine power of foresight is embodied
in the proraise of a succession of prophets (Deut. xviii. 15),
and is repeatedly raade by the individual raerabers of the suc
cession, especially by the writer of Isaiah frora chapter xl.
onward ; e.g., xU. 21-28, xiii. 9, xUU. 9-13, xliv. 25 f., xlv. 21.
But this prediction, which is involved in prophetic intuition,
is distinctively an ethical affair. It is true that the earlier
prophets were applied to for disclosures in raatters of ordinary
life ; possibly we may also admit the assertion of Oehler, that
such disclosures were really, though sparingly, given in order
to keep the people from resorting to heathen soothsayers.^
The great and distinctive elements of Old-Testaraent predic
tion are, however, of quite another order from those required
for work like this. The true seer must not use his prophetic
foresight to pander to selfishness, as does the false Hebrew
prophet, or the prophet of false and heathen gods. (See Hos.
iv. 12 ; Ezek. xiv. 1-11, xx. 1-4.) Possessing an imparted divine
insight into the present ethical relations of the kingdom of
God, he possesses also a certain cUvine foresight into the future
unfolding of those relations. Looking back and forth between
the world and God, he sees the future of his nation, and even
of other peoples, as lying in God.^ Thus is he fitted to under
stand and declare the counsels of Jehovah, both with reference
to the present and to the future, especiaUy with reference to
the future as contained in the present. (See Jer. xxiii. 18, 22 ;
Amos Ui. 7, iv. 13.) His prediction regarding the future is a
message of righteousness unto the raen of the present: "Be
cause I will do this unto thee, prepare to raeet thy God, O
Israel " (Amos iv. 12). We note for the present the charao
teristicaUy ethical nature of the Old-Testament claim to pre
diction : as to the nature and validity of its predictive contents
we shaU examine in another place.
Nor can we omit to mention the great influence which the
Messianic idea must have had toward quickening and illurain
ing the consciousness of the Hebrew prophets for the intuition
of moral and religious truth. The so-called prophecy of Plato
concerning the Lord's righteous but suffering one is perhaps
1 Theology of the Old Testament, II. pp. 346 ff.
2 Compare Ewald, Die Propheten, etc., I. p. 23.

140 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the most remarkable gleam of true ethical insight and foresight
which has shone upon the world outside of the Sacred Scrip
tures. But in the Hebrew prophets we have a succession of
men whose meraories, iraaginations, thoughts, and purposes were
divinely quickened and elevated by the celestial word which
bore, under its various forras, the revelation of Messiah.
The mental state of the prophet, besides the inward intuition
in its two forras of ethical msight and ethical foresight, involves
a certain excitement of the emotions. To assist this excitement
the prophets of the tiraes of Sarauel and Elisha seem to have
employed music. (See 2 Kings iii. 15.) To this purpose Oehler
also refers (II. p. 330) the circumstance aUuded to by Hengsten
berg, that the prophets sometimes received their visions by the
side of murrauring waters. (See Ezek. i. 3 ; Dan. x. 4.) It is,
nevertheless, pre-eminently the strong play of those emotions
that belong to the intuition and promulgation of ethical and
religious truth, which characterizes the raental state of the
prophet. His mental state shares in the divine emotions that
are appropriate in the presence of the ideas which he receives
by sharing in the divine intuition. Thus the prophet feels the
same wrath which he understands to be burning in the heart of
Jehovah against sin, and as well the same pity and compassion
toward the people who suffer on account of their sin. The
raoral eraotion of triumph enables hira at times to walk -with
firm and light foot upon the high places where God has placed
hira. (See Hab. iii. 19.) Even when he beholds prophetically
the desolations which the anger of Jehovah will visit upon them
for their sins, he experiences a joy at the execution of the will
of Hira frora whom his commission comes. (Hab. ui. 17 f.;
Ezek. ii. 10, compare iii. 3.) The eraotions of dread which
precede and accorapany his inspiration are also distinctively
ethical : they are the ¦ sinking of the soul before the holiness
of Jehovah (Isa. vi. 5), or the reversion of self-sacrificing love
before the divine judgments upon the beloved nation. Nor
does this dread, born of self-sacrificing love, always confine
itself to the case of Israel : the prophet even feels the woes
advancing against Moab (Isa. xvi. 9-11) and Babylon (xxi.
1-10), the oppressors of Israel. On the other hand, the emotion
of joy with which the prophets almost uniformly contemplate
the destruction of the eneraies of their people is intensely eth-,
ical. This joy is an element of devotion to Jehovah, and to
the cause which is supposed to represent his interests upon the

MORAL EMOTIONS OF THE PROPHET. 141
earth. In certain instances, however, the expression of this
joy seems to approach a fierce vindictiveness, and thus gives
rise to the same ethical difficulties which accorapany the con
sideration of the iraprecatory Psalms.
Grandest and most cUvine of all the moral emotions uniform
ly stirred by inspiration within the consciousness of the proph
ets, is the pure joy with which they everywhere regard the
predicted moral regeneration of their nation, and the establish
ment through it of the perfected kingdom of God. Through
whatever dim valleys of sorrow, over whatever boggy ways of
doubt, up whatever steep places of anger, the prophet raay be
called in inspired feeling to pass ; he always returns frora the
journey at tiraes to the lofty watch-tower of hope, frora which
he can see the Delectable Mountains, and utter his distinctively
prophetic cry of corafort to the people of God. By inspiration
of the Alraighty are also the raoral emotions of courage and
fearlessness before men, and the happiness of conscious recti
tude, enhanced in the prophet's soul. Thus Micah claims (iii.
8) a bold and intrepid spirit in proclaiming to Israel its sin ;
and Jeremiah, though fearing, by natural emotion, a failure
before his enemies, becomes strong, by inspired feeUng, in
the consciousness of rectitude, and in the conviction that he
should certainly triumph over them (see Jer. i. 19, xv. 20, xx.
11)- Accepting, then, the claims of Prophetism as affording a sub
stantiaUy true description of the inspired raental state of the
genuine Hebrew prophet, we conclude : Within his soul, as pre
pared by the influence of national religious ideas and by the
sense of a divine vocation and coraraission, the Spirit of God
so quickened and elevated the faculties as to produce a super
natural inward intuition, — an insight into the present and a
foresight of the future as seen frora the ethical and divine point
of -view ; and this intuition was accorapanied by appropriate
moral feelings, the unusual excitement of which may be as
cribed to the same divine source. The centre of the divine
influence upon his soul was in the ethico-religious nature of the
prophet : nevertheless, all the faculties employed in the work
of supernatural insight and foresight — his memory, imagina
tion, faculties of apprehension and comprehension — were also
supernaturaUy quickened and elevated. The final purpose of
this inspiration was in order that the prophet might, as one
possessed of a supernatural ethical intuition, become the me-

142 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
dium for conveying ethico-religious truths and ideas to Israel
and to the world.
In accordance with this ethical conception of the Hebrew
prophet stands the fact that his prophetic word is represented
as coming to him in answer to his desire for communion with
God, or even in answer to actual prayer (see Hab. ii. 1 f. ; Isa.
xxi. 8 ; Jer. xxUi. 35, xxxii. 16 ff. ; Dan. ix. 4, 20). " Call unto
me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and hidden
things which thou knowest not " (Jer. xxxiii. 3).
Such, briefly described according to the data furnished by
theraselves, were the preparation, call, coraraission, and mental
state in prophetic activity, of those remarkable men whose
claims serve to lay the basis of a doctrine of sacred prophetic
Scripture. We now consider the argument by which these
claims, primarily belonging to the personality of the prophet
and to his oral work, pass over to that written product which
becomes incorporated into the writings of the Old Testament.
For the inspiration of the prophetic writings of Hebrew Scrip
ture can be spoken of only as a derived quality. The work of
writing is in general an entirely secondary affair with the He
brew prophet. With clairas on the part of mere scribes or com
pilers to be inspired in the act of collecting and editing the
prophetic utterances of inspired men, we have nothing what
ever to do. Such claims can form no basis for a correct view
of the prophetic writings.
Titles and narratives which transfer certain qualities of
prophecy to the record of the same prophecy are not, however,
wanting in the writings of Prophetisra. The phrase " word of
Jehovah " is in some instances appUed to the entire contents
of a prophetic book, although the prophecies which it contains,
or rather of which it gives an epitome, have extended over
tliree (Mic. i. 1) or even four (Hos. i. 1) reigns of contempo
raneous kings (see also Zeph. i. 1). This use of this phrase
shows how the prophet carae to regard all his impressions, and
all his conduct, as a message or word frora Jehovah to his own
fellows. In two other instances, viz., Amos and Jeremiah, the
prophetic deliverances when committed to writing are called
the words of the prophet ; but they are so called with a quali
fying phrase (" which he saw " in Amos i. 1, and " to whom the
word of Jehovah came " in Jer. i. 2) to show the divine origin
and authority of the prophecies thus fixed in -written form. In
such cases, however, the implied claim is made for the prophet

¦lUJi CLAIMS OF PROPHETIC WRITINGS. 143
in his reception and oral delivery of the raessage. The claim
can be transferred to the writing only by inference, and with a
secondary appUcation. Amos records what he saw, i.e., as an
inspired seer ; Jeremiah writes down his own words as those of
one to whom the message of the Lord had formerly come. The
sarae conception of prophetic Scripture, as a record of divine
revelations made to the inspired seer, explains the use of the
word "vision " (jitn ) when applied to the contents of a prophetic
book. This use of the word is found in Nahum, Obadiah, and
Isaiah ; the latter of whom especially confirms the vaUdity of the
conception by introducing it again (ii. 1) under an expanded
form of designation, viz., " the word which Isaiah saw." The
contents of the prophetic vision are regarded as an oracle from
Jehovah ; and inversely the word of Jehovah coraes in the form
of a prophetic vision to the inspired seer. In this form of speech
the two conceptions which are blended in one are the follow
ing : the truth received as of divine origin and authority, and
the prophet as receiving this truth in an inspired condition
of insight and foresight. The contents of that vision which is
a word of Jehovah are represented as constituting the prophet
ic book. Of the condition of the writer's consciousness when
raaking the record, or of the qualities of the record except so
far as they are iraplied in the titles given to its contents, noth
ing whatever is said. The oracle of Jehovah, originally deliv
ered in verbal form, is, however, soraetiraes spoken of as a
vision when reviewed for the purpose of committing it to writ
ing (see 2 Sam. vii. 17 ; Isa. i. 1, xxi. 2, xxu. 5). The seer in
writing is a seer stUl.
Numerous instances are also found of an alleged express di
vine commission to prepare the contents of revelation which
have previously been made to the prophet, in a permanent form
of record. In Isa. viii. 1 the prophet is divinely commanded
to take a large tablet, and engrave upon it in a distinct char
acter, " Concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz : " this was probably
to be done for the purpose of erecting it in some public place
where it should attract the attention of the people.^ Parallel
with the command here given to Isaiah is that received by
Habakkuk (ii. 2). So also is the prophet commanded both to
engrave upon a tablet, and to record in parchment, the conduct
of the people toward the oracles which were received from
Jehovah, and which denounced their intention to form an alli-
1 Ewald, Die Propheten, etc., I. p. 348.

144 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ance with Egypt against the threatening power of Assyria,
The record is to serve as a perpetual witness of the rebellion
of Israel. The interesting narrative of Jereraiah, chap, xxxvi,,
inforras us how this prophet, at divine coraraand, dictated to
his faithful companion and scribe Baruch, the prophetic oracles
which Jehovah had given him concerning Israel, Judah, and
the nations generaUy; and how, when the first roll was de
stroyed, he caused to be prepared another roll containmg, be
sides the contents of the first, raany sirailar oracles. This
account, although its right location in the Book of Jeremiah
is disputable, is evidently designed to authenticate one of the
larger sections of the book. In case we place it where Ewald
does, it forms, together with chapter xlv., the close of all the
prophecies of Jeremiah excepting the later additions found in
xxxvii.-xliv. and xlvi. 13-28. The divine promise of a re
turn from the exile is not only written in a letter by Jeremiah
and sent to Babylon (xxix. 1), but is also, according to an
oracle from Jehovah (xxx. 1, 2), written in a book, that it may
have a permanent record. So the prophet Ezekiel, besides
being commanded by the Lord to publish orally and to act
forth his mission, as well as to embody it in various symbolical
forras, is also instructed from the same source to commit certam
small portions of it to writing (xxiv. 1, 2). Probably the com
mand of xliii. 10, to show the temple seen in his prophetic
vision to the house of Israel, raay be interpreted of a written
description. Other portions of the writings of Prophetism are directly
ascribed to the activity of the prophets, though without an
alleged divine coraraission to write. The message of Isa. viii.
5-15, after having been committed to writing as an epitome of
his oral prophecies on the subject of Judah's proposed alHance
with Assyria, is, under divine direction, sealed up and given for
safe-keeping to his disciples (see verse 16). In Jeremiah we
find repeated notices of the committing of his oracles to writing
by the prophet himself. It is by no means clear what. were the
contents of the book referred to (xxv. 13) as containing what
Jeremiah prophesied concerning all nations. The subscription
does not correspond to the chapters just preceding, and is re
garded by some as manifestly unoriginal and interpolated.'
Notice is given of Daniel (vii. 1) that he made a record of the
dream which he had in the first year of Belshazzar.
The divine verity and authority of the Hebrew prophetic

FORMING OF A PROPHETIC CANON. 145
writings, regarded as oracles of Jehovah given through inspired
messengers, are also sustained by the coramunity of testimony
which the prophets themselves exhibit, and by their habit of
borrowing from one another the language which expresses their
community of ideas. Among such quotations of considerable
length, we may note the foUowing : Isa. ii. 2-4, compare Mic.
iv. 1-4 ; Isa. xi. 9, compare Hab. ii. 14 ; Isa. xiii. 19-22, com
pare Jer. 1. 39 ff. ; Isa. xiv. 4, 13, compare Hab. ii. 6, 9 ; Isa. lii.
7, compare Nah. i. 15; Jer. xlix. 7-22, compare Obad. 1-4;
Amos ix. 13, compare Joel ui. 18. More frequent are those
echoes of language and thought which were rather the common
inheritance of the prophets, and which resound from chapter to
chapter and from verse to verse throughout the writings of
Prophetism. We find rarely, raoreover, express authenticating
of one prophet by another ; as when Micah (Ui. 12) is quoted
by Jeremiah (xxvi. 18), who gives a summary of his prophecies
in the words of that special declaration, which raust have raade
most impression upon the contemporaries of Micah. Even as
early as Isa. xxxiv. 16, certain prophecies, containing oracles
upon the fate of Edom, and including some of Isaiah's own, are
spoken of collectively as the book of Jehovah. Ewald, indeed,
insists upon assigning this chapter to the deutero-Isaiah, and
interprets the phrase, " Search ye out of the book of Jehovah,
and read," as pointing to the prophet's own writing in the light
of a witness for the future. This interpretation is, however,
arbitrary. There is no reason to doubt that we have here an
aUusion to a canon of sacred prophetic writing already in exist
ence, though only in a germinal form. The books referred to
in Dan. ix. 2 are without doubt the Sacred Scriptures of the
Old-Testament Canon, into which at that time Jeremiah, here
quoted by name, had already been received.
For the complete argument by which all the claims of pro
phetic revelation and inspiration that are contained in the
writings of Prophetisra, are transferred to the writings them
selves, we must exaraine in detail the nature of prophetic com
position and the history of the canon of prophetic writings.
This argument is as complete -as any similar argument can well
be, provided that We are content simply to construct a reason
able view of the Sacred Scriptures of Prophetism>. It must be
conceded that the writing-doWn of prophecy is only a " con
tinuance and supplementing of the genuine prophetic activity."
The claims to receive divine revelations through inspiration
VOL. L K

146 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
apply primarily, then, to the prophet in his oral activity. The
force of such a concession is curiously illustrated in the case of
Jeremiah, whose action in chapter xxxvi. 1 ff., although under
taken under an alleged divine coraraission, is stiU regarded as
subordinate and supplementary to his real work. His purpose
in writing down his prophecy lies in the possibility that the
people of Judah will repent of their evU, if the record of divine
threatenings is kept before them. The purpose is regarded as
a possibUity, .as a hope subjective with the prophet, and not as
a certainty in the sense in which every purpose must be held
by the divide raind. This alleged divine coraraission was, then,
given by the subjective impression of the prophet. It must also
be conceded that we have no direct proof that aU the prophetic
writings were made by the prophets themselves, although large
portions of them undoubtedly were ; nor have we any direct
claira that those portions written by the prophets themselves
were written in the same inspired condition of consciousness as
that in which the revelations were received. We are depend
ent, then, upon the -conclusions of criticism for establishing the
correspcndence of the writings -with the revelations received m
an inspired consciousness. In accordance with these conclu
sions we may establish the following clairas : The contents of
the prophetic writings correspond substantially with the con
tents of revelation raade to the prophets. The prophets, in pre
paring the record of their forraer revelations, would doubtless
feel again the breath of Jehovah upon thera, and would add
whatever they added to these forraer revelations under the
same divine impetus. The prophet would remain an inspired
seer, if he wrote or dictated what formerly as an inspired seer
he had orally proclaimed. Two things — viz., (1) the substan
tial accuracy, and (2) the prophetic authorship, of the books
received as results of the oral activity of the prophets — must,
then, be established, in order to transfer the complete claims of
the prophets to the books which bear their naraes. While,
however, this is true of these books, if we are to regard them
as being themselves inspired Scripture in the strictest meaning
of the term inspired, we cannot deny that many words of the
Lord, coming from unknown messengers and gathered by un-
prophetic and uninspired minds, might be useful for the Church,
and entitled to a place in Sacred Scripture. Such portions of
prophetic writings are genuine Sacred Scripture, if they con
tain genuine words of the Lord once given by inspiration; by

THE CLAIMS OF THE HOKHMAH. 147
whomsoever they have been recorded, and in whatever mental
state. Only when made by prophets themselves, are the pro
phetic writings to be called "inspired scripture " in the highest
sense of the words ; but genuine prophetic oracles, by whomso
ever scripturaUy fixed, are Sacred Scripture.
The argument by which the claims of the Hebrew prophets
are raade to authenticate the Hebrew prophetical writings is,
as has been said, sufficient for a reasonable statement of doc
trine. It should be reraerabered, however, that the very at-
terapt to raake these claims authenticate any extreme form of
doctrine inevitably defeats itself. Granted that the prophet is
himseK so inspired as to utter God's ipsissima verba, and then
record them in a manner fi-ee from every form of error : who
shaU prove that any particular prophetic writings contain such
a record by the prophet himself? Only historical and critical
researches are corapetent to connect the record with an inspired
prophet ; they only, then, can transfer the clairas which belong
to a personality over to a written record. The -writings make
for themselves few claims. They simply, and for the most part
sUently, claim that they are a faithful record of the words which
Jehovah sent to Israel through his inspired messengers the
prophets.

The third of those divisions under which we are considering
the Hebrew writings makes few claims, either direct or in
direct, within the Old Testament itself, to derive its contents
from revelation of Jehovah through inspired media. The
writings of the Hokhmah, or Wisdom of the Old Testament,
comprise especially the Books of Tob, Proverbs, and Ecolesias
tes, and, according to Oehler, in virtue of their matter, many
of the Psalms also. As to their contents, they are devoid of an
express claim to a derivation from Jehovah, in the sarae sense
in which the Mosaic Torah and the prophetic oracles are said
to come from him. The revelation which arouses the intel
lectual instincts of the wise is not revelation in the stricter
sense of the word. The contents of the Hokhmah may in part
be spoken of as " rooted in the law," or rather as springing up
" upon the soU already formed by the facts of divine revelation
and the theocratic ordinances." But even this view of them
regards these contents as more indirectly derived frora revela
tion than are the contents of Mosaism and Prophetism, and as

148 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
basing their claim to be received as true solely on the ground
of so much, of truth, thus mediately derived, as may be found
in thera.
Frora the tirae of Solomon onward we hear of a class of men
among the Hebrews denominated pre-eminently "the wise,"
whose reflections, directed for the most part upon nature and
the practical ordering of the world, and especially of human
affairs, have come down to us in Sacred Scripture. These men
were distinguished from the priest and the prophet as late as
Jeremiah ; whose eneraies seera to have thought that enough
such -wise men would remain, even after they had destroyed
him (Jer. xviii. 18). Jeremiah himself manifestly cUd not high
ly regard the services which the sages of his day rendered to the
people (viii. 9 ff.). The record of Prov. xxv. 1 is thought to
imply that an association of these wise men was in existence
in the days of Hezekiah, and that they occupied themselves
with literature ; although it is doubtful how far they acted
under any special commission. There is no trace of their ever
having had, Uke the priests and the prophets, an official voca
tion or connection with the theocratic Ufe of the nation. Then:
writings, then, are left — so far as any claims found in the Old
Testament are concerned — to comparison of their contents
with the writings of Mosaism and Prophetism.
Nor can we speak of the writings of the Hokhmah as claim
ing to come through inspired media. It is true, that, in the
view of the Old Testament, wisdom is the gift of God. In
Prov. XX. 27 the spirit of man is styled " a lamp of Jehovah ; "
but so is all huraan intelligence ascribed to the Divine Sphit.
" The wide circle of virtues and mental endo-wments " which
the Hebrews comprised under the word " wise " (D^n, see Gese
nius, Lexicon) prevents us from ascribing inspiration, in the
stricter sense of the word, to those said to be possessed of this
wisdom. At the sarae tirae, so far as these writings of the
Hokhmah profess to have the truth of the divinely revealed
Torah for their objective principle of knowledge, and so far as
their composers exhibit that fear of the Lord which is the chief
of wisdom (Prov. i. 7), they put forth an indirect claim to a
place in Sacred Scripture.
Of claims, either direct or indirect, put forth in the Old
Testament itself for the Psalms, Uttle indeed can be said,
This meagreness of testimony to their divine origin by inspiia
tion of their authors belongs to the very nature of theu: com-

THE CLAIMS OF THE PSALTER. 149
position. The Psalms, unlike the Torah and the words of
Jeliovah to the prophets, are subjective utterances of divine
truth. They are not primarUy designed or conceived of by
their authors as vehicles of revelation, as messages frora Jeho
vah to the people : their authors are satisfied with the conscious
ness of personal communion with Jehovah. The Psalms are,
indeed, rooted in the truths of Mosaism and Prophetism. The
nature of their contents is determined by the nature of the
revelations given to Israel in the law and in the prophets. But-
because the authors do not, like the prophets, consider them
selves as called and coraraissioned to impart divine truth to
Israel, and as inspired for that purpose by Jehovah, they are,
with few exceptions, sUent as to any claims for their utter
ances. The indirect claims which the Psalms put forth result from
the connection of their contents with the sources of these con
tents in the law and the prophets. Points of contact between
the Psalras and the Mosaic Torah have already been designated.
The law is like a well from which the Psalmists often draw
the waters, the refreshment of which causes them to break forth
in praises. The theocratic pedagogy of the nation, with its
dark riddles of insoluble providences, its temptations to dis
trust Jehovah as weU as its occasions to praise his goodness,
and all the experiences of the covenant people as predicted in
the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy, and as fulfilled in
the vicissitudes recorded by its historical books, afford inspiring
subjects for many of these sacred songs. And when the more
strictly personal affairs of the authors come before us in the
Psalras, they are often, either expressly or irapliedly, joined
with the national sins, sorrows, trials, blessings, and expecta
tion of triuraph. The underlying thought of many of thera is
thus made distinctively theocratic; the song becomes a the
odicy, and its predominant tone is the declaration : " Jehovah
executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.
He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the chUdren
of Israel."
The contents of many of the Psalms partake also of tho
characteristics of genuine Hebrew prophecy. It is true that
they are never, with one exception, introduced with that full
•prophetic formula which announces the coraing of the word of
Jeliovah to their author. But the word which is really pub
lished, although unannounced, is no less truly a word of Jeho-

150 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE,
vah. The close objective connection between the Psalms and
the prophets is seen in the facts, that the earUer prophets made
use of rausio to seek and to express the contents of revelation
(see Exod. xv. 20 f. and 1 Sara. x. 5), and that the language of
prophecy has so many points of resemblance to the language
of poetry, becoraing, indeed, at tiraes strictly poetic. We have
also to note the fact, that the Hebrew titles of the Psalms—
although by no means in themselves incontrovertible proof of
authorship — ascribe so many of them to David, whose position
as an inspired servant of Jehovah is generally recognized in
the later books of the Old Testament. A few psalms claim to
have certain words of the Lord incorporated into their con
tents; as, e.g., Ps. U. 7 and ex. 1. We have more express
declarations concerning the two noble psalms of thanksgivmg
recorded in 2 Sam. chapters xxii. and xxiii. The first of these
two is almost universally acknowledged as Davidic, and is with
raany minor divergences found in oui^ Psalter as Ps. xviii.
The heading of this psalra in Second Samuel, which is doubtless
of later origin than the body of the psalm, corresponds to the
forraula for the song of Moses, and dedicates the psalm to
Jehovah as a song of thanksgiving for deliverance. Its key
note is struck at the very beginning (2 Sara. xxu. 2), and
sounded again at its close (verse 50), with the words, " I will
praise thee, Jehovah, among the nations." It is, in all its
melody and harmony, thus made typical of a large number of
the Psalms, and, indeed, by the present Hebrew appellation
(" Praises "), of the entire Psalter. This heading is especially
significant in its bearing upon our inquiry. Its significance
results both from the fact that it makes evident the distinction
already drawn between the word of Jehovah to the prophet
and the word of the Psalmist addressed to Jehovah, and also
from the fact that a coraparison of the two versions of the
psalm is indicative of that process of alteration, amendment,
and free handling, through which so raany of the Hebrew
Scriptures have undoubtedly passed. The text of neither of
these two versions of the one psalm can be considered as an
exact transcript of the original composition of David. It is
now impossible, however, to determine exactly the historic rela
tions and temporal sequence of the two versions.
The heading of the other psalm (2 Sam. xxiU.) places it at
once on a par, as to its claims, with other prophetic words
announced by inspiration of Jehovah. The character of an

THE CLAIMS OF THE PSALTER. 151
oracle, revealed by inspiration of its composer, is thus definitely
assigned in the Old Testament to the so-called last words of
David, alone araong all the Psalms. The title ofi, although
probably by a later hand than David's, is given with propriety
to this psalm on account of the prophetic nature of its con
tents. These contents exhibit the fruits of the covenant made
by Jehovah -vrith David, as they will exist at the coming of the
just Ruler whose reign shall bring salvation to the righteous and
overthrow to the wicked.^ This prophetic utterance is declared
(verse 2) to be the word upon the tongue of David, but spoken
by the Spirit of Jehovah through him. The oracle proper is,
therefore, fitly introduced with the phrases, " the God of Israel
saith," and " the Rock of Israel speaketh to me ; " just as the
prophets preface their oracles with a "thus saith the Lord."
Now, although the direct claim to divine origin for the contents
of this poetic utterance, and the further claim to utterance by
inspiration of Jehovah, cannot be transferred frora these last
words of Da-vid to any other psalras ; nevertheless, the iraplied
and more important claira from the prophetic, and especially
from the Messianic, character of the contents of both these
psalms, is capable of such transference. The latter claira
applies to all psalras whose contents are prophetic, or Mes
sianic, or especially — to use again the terra of Delitzsch —
" prophetico-Messianic." It is this claim which Jesus avowedly
authenticates in the case of Ps. ex. The Messianic idea and
promise are found, in germinal form, in both of these psalras,
although they are almost undoubtedly of Davidic authorship :
we may, then, expect to find the sarae idea and promise in the
later psalms. The Psalms wUl undoubtedly celebrate the grace
of Jehovah to David and his seed forever, — a grace, the fruit
of which shall be a Ruler who is just, and rules in the fear of
God ; of whora David perhaps felt hiraself to be the tj^e, but
the perfect Anti-type of whom was to come in the glorious
future of the Da-vidic kingdom.
The Old Testaraent contains no historical mention of any
portion of the Psalter except in Neh. xii. 46 ; where, upon
notice of the great revival of the temple-service of song, we
are told that certain institutions were re-established as they
were originally formed by David and Solomon. We are thus
informed that there were leaders of singers, and a singing of
praises and thanksgiving to God, in the days of David and
1 See Tholuck, Die Propheten, etc., p. 1C6.

152 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Asaph of old ; mforraation which one author,i with character-
istic eagerness, unwarrantably expands into the declaration:
" Nehemiah alludes to the third di-vision of the Old Testament
as forming, with the other parts, an authoritative code." But
the testimony of the New Testaraent and of the Christian
consciousness is as ample to the validity of the title " sacred "
and " inspired," which is worn by these Hebrew Psalms, as the
notices given them in the Old Testament are meagre.
The only clairas made by the historical writings of the Old
Testament to a place in Sacred Scripture, are those which
arise from the nature of their contents and from the imparted
characteristics of the writings themselves. They contain prag
matic history seen from the theocratic point of view. They
are professedly the record of what Jehovah did to and for his
people Israel, in the forraing and executing of his covenant
with thera.
We return now to the higher point of view from which to
consider the nature of the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Tes
tament ; and inquire. How are the claims, already presented,
modified or authenticated by the teaching of those who were
themselves taught by Christ?
1 Lee, Inspiration of Holy Scripture, p. 283, note.

CHAPTER V.
THE CLAIMS FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT BY THB WEITEES OP
THE NEW.
The authority which must be allowed to the writers of the
New Testament, touching the origin and nature of the Hebrew
Scriptures, is largely determined by the consideration of two
classes of conditions whose influence contributed to form their
views : one of the two classes we may caU the subjective, and
the other the objective. The subjective conditions of their
views were furnished especially by the realizing of those prom
ises of the Spirit which were made to the apostles by Christ.
The imparting of divine insight into the ethical and religious
truths of the Old Testament, and of a substantially correct
understanding and estimate of such truths, was secured by
those promises. For, pre-eminent among all the things which
were said to the apostles by Christ, and which, therefore, his
promised Spirit should bring to their remembrance and reveal
the meaning of (John xiv. 26), are his discourses upon his own
relations to the economy of the Old Testament. These are
truths which glorify Christ ; and which can, as by native right,
lay claim to a place in that pre-eminent truth, wherein also tho
Spirit was promised as their leader (John xvi. 13). Di-vine
enlightenment as to the substantially true knowledge of the
ethical and reUgious truth of the Old Testament is, then, to be
expected as a subjective condition of the apostolic calling.
But this subjective condition cannot a priori be held to guar
antee the apostles against all hermeneutical raistakes. It only
secures to them a divinely imparted insight into the truth Kar
i^oxfjv, so far as this truth is contained in the Old Testament.
To the apostles and other writers of the New Testament, the
statement of Rothe, already quoted, especially applies: The
highest kind of divine insight does not take the place of expe
rience in the art of hermeneutics. The words of Tholuck con
cerning Christ are certainly true of the apostles : " We cannot
153

154 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
assert before examination, the impossibUity of mistakes in her
meneutics any raore than of a grammatical fault or a chrono
logical error." Indeed, when we consider how largely other
subjective conditions of their views were derived from rabbini
cal training, and frora the rabbinical atmosphere of their time,
we should rather assert, before examination, the strong proba
bility of manifold hermeneutical raistakes. Moreover, the failure
of the New-Testaraent writers always to maintain that reserve
which Jesus shows when approacliing questions that directly
involve the results of biblical criticism, makes more difficult
the justification of all their implied opinions upon such ques
tions. The subjective conditions, which involve the probability
of errors in hermeneutics, may also be expected to show various
forras and degrees in the case of different writers.
The conditions which we have caUed objective are such as
were furnished by the circumstances in the midst of which the
New Testament was written. The circumstances of the apos
tolic life of service were determining conditions for the views
which the apostles express as to the nature of the Old Testar
ment, and for the character of the quotations which are made
from the old writings in the new. We cannot, to be sure,
speak of any such accommodation on their part as would make
them merely feign a beUef in the validity of the current views
regarding the Hebrew Scriptures. They surely had no need to
feign belief in views which Jesus had taught as true. We do,
however, need to admit the influence of those difficulties which
were encountered in introducing the gospel as the fulfiUing of
the law and the prophets, and which gave rise to certain char
acteristics of the apostolic -wi-itings, as weU as of the apostolic
preaching and entire manner of life. Among their converts
were not only many who were zealots for the Mosaic Torah
(^r/Xwral tov vopov, Acts xxi. 20), but also not a few who through
excessive zeal were, in the estimate of Paul at least, mischiev
ous and spurious Christians (KaKol ipydTox, PhU. iii. 2, and
il>evSd8eX(ji0L, Gal. U. 4). Many of the converts held the strictest
Pharisaic and rabbinical -view of the relations of the gospel to
the economy of the Old Testaraent.
The conditions of early apostolic teaching gave rise to the
necessity for defining more accurately the relations of the new
teaching to the ancient economy, of the fresh and vigorous
Christian truth to the old and venerated books of Judaism.
The attempt at such definition involved several particulars.

APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 155
Such particulars are the effort to show a substantial accord
between the old economy and the new ; the concession of cer
tain views and corresponding practices to those who clung
most closely to the old ; and the rebuke and thwarting of those
who would dwarf or destroy the new by couforraing it to the old.
The particular attitude assuraed by any apostolic teacher toward
the Judaizing class of converts — whether of open opposition,
of milder remonstrance, or of attempt to lead from the germi
nal and incomplete conceptions of Christianity into the more
mature — could not fail to manifest itself in his forras of speech
and writing. In these objective conditions, then, as well as in
the subjective, we have grounds for expecting a difference of
-view. We must, therefore, examine the apostolic doctrine of the
Old Testaraent with a disposition to give due weight to all the
determining conditions, — both subjective and objective, both
favorable and unfavorable to its complete accuracy. We can
not avoid raising the questions, whether the writers of the New
Testament have not in certain cases fallen into mistakes of
hermeneutics ; whether they have not sometimes left the point
of view occupied by Jesus, and taken rather that of the rabbis ;
and whether they do not differ somewhat amongst themselves
in respect to their points of view. We may, however, expect to
find the apostles exhibiting an unerring divine insight into that
substantial ethical and religious truth, the summing-up of which
is given in the complete doctrine of Messiah; for into this
truth they have the promise of Christ that his Spirit shall more
and more conduct them.
An impartial examination shows us that the apostles unitedly
taught the same doctrine concerning the origin and nature of
the Old Testament that was taught by Christ ; so far, at any
rate, as the two essential elements of the doctrine are con
cerned. These essential eleraents are : (1) the divine origin
of the Old-Testament economy as a preparation for, and testi
mony to, Jesus as Messiah ; and (2) the perfect fulfilment of
this formally imperfect economy in the Messianic work of Jesus.
The first element of their comraon doctrine covers the view
that certain ethical and predictive contents of revelation, given
through inspired raedia, are scripturaUy fixed in the venerated
Hebrew writings ; the second covers the view that these writ
ings contain absolute and ideal truths of the Christian religion
given in imperfect and fallible manner of presentation.

156 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
That the common apostolic view of the Old Testament re
garded its -writings as containing the contents of divine revela
tion through inspired media, we may conclude in a general way
from the very titles employed to designate these writings.'
Among such titles are the following: (17) ypa^jj to designate
the Hebirew Scriptures as a whole (John ii. 22 ; Rom. iv. 3 ;
Jas. ii. 8 ; 1 Pet. ii. 6), or to designate some single portion of
the whole (John xix. 37 ; Acts i. 16) ; ai ypa^ol, the writings
pre-eminent (1 Cor. xv. 3) ; ypacpal Trpo^Tp-iKaC (Rom. xvi. 26) ;
¦TTpofjirjTeia ypai^^s (2 Pet. i. 20) ; ypa<f>ai ayiat (Rom. i. 2) ; and
TO lepa ypdpp.aTa (2 Tim. Ui. 15), — the adjective aytos being ap
plied to these Scriptures as originating frora God, and contain
ing his revelation, and the adjective tepo's adding the thought
of their being held in pious reverence among men, — and
17 TToAata. hui6-riK7), uscd by metouomy of these sacred books as con
taining the laws and doctrines of the ancient covenant of God
with Israel. By metonoray also, the writing in which the ut
terance of God is recorded is placed instead of the name of
Deity raaking the utterance (Rora. ix. 17 and Gal. iv. 30). In
Gal. ui. 8, the phrase ^ ypa<i>-ri is personified ; and the Scripture,
with reference to raany passages confirraing the general tone of
its teaching, is said to have foreseen and announced what God
foresaw and announced in the Scripture, concerning the future.
By such metonoray and personification the truths adduced in
quotation are authenticated as being of a divine origin and
authority. But the truths which are thus described by a
figure of speech, as foreseen and uttered by the Scripture, are
the very ones which constitute Paul's quite unrabbinical con
ception of the gospel. We cannot make this figurative way of
speaking a proof that Paul regarded all the contents of the Old
Testament as veritable words of God, and therefore free from
all imperfection and alloy of error.
The comraon apostoUc view of the relations of Messiah to
the econoray of the Old Testament also corresponds with the
teaching of Jesus. Christ is already become, in the view of
these writers, the plerosis of the law and the prophets. It is in
enforcement and illustration of this view that the authors of
the New Testament deal with the writings of the Old. It is,
therefore, chiefly by inference from this view, and from their
corresponding raanner of quotation, that we arrive at their
teaching with regard to the nature of those writings. The
New-Testament writers do not connect the Hebrew Scriptures

APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 157
and the apostolic teaching for the purpose of exhibiting the
nature of the Scriptures, but for the sake of illustrating and
enforcing their own teaching, in the view of men who already
received the Scriptures.
The recognition of the di-vine elements of the Old Testament
does not, however, prevent the common apostolic doctrine from
recognizing also its fallible elements. According to the writer
of Heb. x. 1, the Mosaic law furnished a dim and shadowy out
line, rather than a clear and express image, of the blessings of
eternal Messianic salvation. The contrast here introduced
reminds us of the words of Cicero, " De Officiis," 3, 17 : " Nos
veri juris, germanaeque justitiae solidam et expressara effigiem
nuUam tenemus, umbra et imaginibus utiraur." So also the
Epistle of James calls the gospel a perfect law of freedom, as
contrasted with the Mosaic law (vopoi reXeios o t^s iXev9epia^, i.
25, and vop.o's iXevOepia';, ii. 12) ; while Peter in his Epistle (i. 10-
12 and ii. 5-10) sets forth the two classes of elements, the abso
lute and the imperfect, rather as regards the prophecy of the
Old Testament; and to the view of First Peter the writer of
Second Peter expresses his adherence in even more definite form
(i. 19 ff.). The writings of Paul and John contain clearer,
more abundant and definite, statements of the relative inferiority
of the Old-Testament economy, and of its fulfilment in Jesus
Christ (John i. 17, compare 1 John i. 2 ; Gal. ii. 21, iii. 21 ; 2
Cor. iU.; Eph. U. 17 f.; Col. U. 16 f.; Tit. i. 2). Messianic
salvation has indeed been announced and witnessed to by the
Old Testaraent (Rora. i. 2 f., iU. 21 ; Gal. iU. 24) ; but its law
could not bring in this salvation, nor its prophets fully compre
hend and enjoy the same. Moses -wrote of Him whose posses
sion is the grace and truth which Moses lacked (John i. 17,
46). WhUe, however, all the -writings of the New Testament
agree in the conception that Christ is the fulfilling of the law
and the prophets, they differ, somewhat fundamentally, in the
way in which they carry out this conception. They differ as
weU in their general attitude toward the Old Testament. Of
the different fundamental forms we here distinguish — follow
ing, for the sake of convenience, the leadership of Schraid
("Theologie des Neuen Testaraentes," pp. 367 ff.) — two prin
cipal, and, under each of these, two subordinate, forras.
The least developed view of the nature of the Old-Testament
economy is that taken in the EpistlQ of James; which by its

158 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
first verse foreshadows the main characteristics of the teaching
to be expected in an epistle so addressed (rats SwSeKa (j>vXah tois hi
TTj 8tacniop«). Here the Old Testament is conceived of as pre
eminently law, and the gospel as the fulfilled and perfected law.
The object of Christian faith is, according to ii. 19, the God
who is the author of salvation, and who bears the designations
of the Old Testaraent (xvptos and Kvpio^ a-a^awO, v. 4). The sal
vation of Messiah's followers is attained by attaining to be
called " a friend of God " (^tXos Oeov KX-qOrjfvai, ii. 23) ; a designa
tion which is not necessarUy of rabbinical origin, but is found
in the Hebrew Scriptures, Isa. xli. 8, and 2 Chron. xx. 7. The
words Xdyos and vop.o's, as used in this Epistle, correspond closely
to the usage of the Old Testament, and serve to exalt its dis
pensation of truth as in unity with that of the New. By ex
hibiting the word of truth under the form of a law, and by
attributing to it the potency of raoral freedora (i. 18, 25, ii.
12, iii. 2), the author insists upon the parallel between Chris
tianity and Judaisra. The Mosaic law is, then, to be attributed
to the same source in the divine will as the Christian law ; but
the former lacks the quality of having attained to completeness
as a manifestation of that wUl, and to the power of bringing
human souls into relations of free obedience.^ The perfect
keeping of the perfect law is a true service of God and a fin
ished work of perseverance (ii. 26) ; the encouraging examples
of such exalted legality are taken from the Old Testament.
Wisdom is an important element of the Christian Ufe, as it was
of the right life under the ancient law. Thus does the doc
trine of Jaraes exalt the unity of the economy of the Old Testa
ment with the gospel ; especiaUy upon its ethical side in the two
elements of obedience to the wUl of God (iv. 12), and of wis
dom regarded as a gift of God (i. 5, iU. 13-17).
The Gospel of Matthew and the Epistle of Jude may be
assigned to the same general phase of doctrine with the Epis
tle of James. In the case of the Gospel, however, its difference
of form, and its composite origin, place it in contrast, in many
respects, with the two most decidedly Hebraistic of the Epis
tles. Matthew is, nevertheless, undoubtedly the Hebrew type
of the Gospel. Its right to this title it acquires by the funda
mental conceptions which underlie its composition, and which
make prominent the Messianic kingship of Jesus ; as weU as by
its distinctively Jewish assumptions and ideas. The same right
1 See Huther, Handbuch iiber den Brief des Jacobus, Gottingen 1S63, in loot.

JUDE AND THE APOCRYPHA. 159
is affirmed by the facts and traditions which fix its authorship
and its special dedication to Jewish readers. The raany paral
lels between the doctrine of Matthew, and that of the Epistle
of James, cover its conception of God, its fundamental view of
subjective Christianity as BiKaLoarvvr) Oeov, and many of its special
doctrines and precepts. A distinctively Hebraistic view of the
nature of the Old Testament is, then, as a matter of course, to
be expected. A raore strictly rabbinical way of understanding
Hebrew prophecy may also be expected. Hence the fact that
the author announces so many prophecies of the Old Testament
as fulfilled in the rainuter occurrences of the life of Jesus, and
also uses for these announcements the strictest of the rabbinical
formulae. The Epistle of Jude, in its appUcation of the law to trans
gressors of its o-wn tirae, does not confine its illustrations and
precepts to the contents of the Old Testaraent: it especially
departs from the general custom of New-Testament writers by
using as Sacred Scripture certain rabbinical and apocryphal
sources. Jude assumes the authenticity and ethical value of
the Old-Testament narratives of the escape from Egypt (verse
5), of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (7), of the
wickedness of Cain, Balaam, and Korah (11) ; but it also as
sumes the authenticity and ethical value of certain traditions
concerning the fall and punishment of the angels (6), the strife
of Michael over the body of Moses (9), and as well the pro
phetic nature and value of the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
These references to the case of the angels and to Michael
cannot be traced to Gen. vi. 2, Deut. xxxiv. 6, and Zech. iii.
1-3 ; but the rabbinical traditions to which the references are
to be traced raay theraselves have originated on the basis of
certain Scriptural passages. Jude's doctrine of the fall of the
angels is, however, found in the Book of Enoch, x. 12 and xii.
4 ; in this book mention is also made of Michael as " one of
the holy angels" (xx. 5; compare Dan. xii. 1; and Rev.
xii. 7). The full tradition of the contest of this angel with
the DevU, concerning the body of Moses, is nowhere to be
found, either in the Old Testament, the Book of Enoch, or
in other rabbinical and apocryphal writings. The fourteenth
verse of Jude is without doubt intended to be a formal cita
tion, as genuine prophecy, of words found at the opening of
Enoch. These words are (i. 9) put by the author of this apoc
ryphal writing into the mouth of the angel, and addressed to

160 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Enoch with the intent to call his attention to his so-called pro
phetic vision : " And see, he coraes with myriads of saints to
hold judgment upon them ; and he will annihilate the godless,
and reckon with all flesh for every thing which the godless and
the sinners have done and undertaken against him." Now,
however we may regard the position of Jude as one of the
Antilegoraena in the Canon of the New Testament, the decid
edly uncanonical way in which the author indiscriminately
accepts and uses both the narratives of the Hebrew Scriptures
and the traditions of rabbinical and apocryphal writings pre
vents us from giving authority in our statement of the doctrine
of Sacred Scripture to the iraplied views of this epistle. The
clairas of the Old Testaraent in the New are not injured by
rejecting upon tlus point the authority of Jude : rauch less iare
they helped by appeal to that authority.
With the Apostle Peter, Christianity is especially the ful
filment of Old-Testament prophecy. For this view the locus
classicus is 1 Pet. i. 10-12. Of this classic passage the doctrine
is, that the chief subject of Old-Testaraent prophecy is Mes
sianic salvation ; and accordingly the prophets of the Old Test
ament are designated as those who prophesied concerning the
grace which has been shown unto Christians. The sufferings
and subsequent glories that have reference to Christ are held
to have been the chief themes of prophetic concern. Moreover,
the prophetic knowledge of these themes carae as a revelation
wrought by the Holy Ghost, who is here designated to waiui
Xpio-Tov, the Spirit which Christ, as pre-existent, has and gives.
The whole intent of this passage is to exalt the present divine
grace and the future perfected divine salvation bestowed upon
Christians, by representing it as the subject of prophetic reve
lation and inquiry. The sarae point of view toward the Old
Testament is held in the discourse of Peter, Acts iii. 12-26.
The tiraes of the restitution of all things — tum verae theo
cr atiae, tum perfectioris illius rerum etiam physicarum conditions,
quae fuerat ante lapsum (Grimm) — have constituted the grand
theme of prophetic utterance from the days of Moses, Samuel,
and all their successive co-workers in prophecy. The unity of
the gospel with the contents of Hebrew prophetic writings,
and yet the vast superiority of the former as the fulfilment of
the latter, are both taught in these Petrine passages.
In the forms also of its special doctrines, the Petrine teach
ing discovers the same point of view for regarding the Scrip-

PETRINE DOCTRINE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. IGl
tures of the Old Testament. Christians are the true theocratic
folk, who thus realize the prophecies concerning the chosen
people of Jehovah ; they are the elect race of Isa. xliii. 20 f.,
the royal priesthood of Exod. xix. 6 (see 1 Pet. ii. 5, 9). The
Christology of the Epistle of Peter is shaped frora the sarae
point of view. The risen One is disclosed in his connections
-with the ideas of Old-Testaraent prophecy. Sis pre-existent
Spirit dwelt as a revealer of truth in the prophets. Chosen as
Messianic Saviour before the founding of the world (-n-po Kara-
fioX^^ Koa-pov, i. 19 f.), Christ is raade raanifest by the incarna
tion: he will further be raade manifest by his return from
heaven in times and ways which were matters of prophetic
intuition and inquiry. On his human side, he is considered
(Acts ii. 30 f.) to be the successor of David according to proph
ecy ; but he was especially anointed by the Holy Spirit for his
Messianic office (see x. 38), and is designated irais Oeov in the
theocratic sense (Acts iii. 13, 26 and iv. 27, 30). His sufferings
and death are declared (1 Pet. i. 11 and ii. 22-25) to have been
in fulfilment not only of express prophetic utterances, but also
of manifold typical rites and cereraonies. He is named (i. 18,
19) the'lamb blaraeless and spotless, in reference to the typical
offerings of the Mosaic law ; a reference probably induced, how
ever, by Isa. lUi. 7. His blood has sacrificial purifying effect
according to the prophetic conception of Exod. xxiv. 6-8 ; Lev.
xvi. 14-19 ; and is a ransora (Xvrpovv) as the blood of the offer
ing was considered a price of release under the law of Lev.
xvii. 11, 14. The resurrection of Christ is declared (Acts
ii. 24-32 and 1 Pet. i. 11) to have been in fufilment of Old-
Testament prophecy.
The subjective conditions of Christian salvation are also con
sidered by the Petrine doctrine as corresponding with the char
acteristics of the upright man under the old covenant. Faith
in Jesus Christ is, indeed, that condition of receiving salvation
which 's announced by prophecy (see Acts x. 43) ; but this
faith is always considered — e.g.. Acts xi. 17, xv. 9, 11; 1 Pet.
i. 5-9, U. 6-8 — by the Petrine doctrine in distinctively Hebra
istic form. The baptism which produces salvation (o-w^ei) is
regarded (1 Pet. iii. 20, 21) as having its mystical type in the
flood of Noah, which is thus made prophetic — on account of
its rescue of the patriarch by water — of the coming Messianic
rescue by Christian baptism. The difficult passage (1 Pet. iii.
18) which contains the declaration of the descensus Christi ad
VOL. L L

1C2 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
inferos, and of Christ's activity in proclaiming the gospel to the
aforetime disobedient dwellers in Hades, may be said to accord
with the Old-Testament notions of death and resurrection;
but by what sources of information, or processes of unfolding,
its doctrine attained the form it bears here, we are without
information. The regard given by the Petrine doctrine to the prophetic
¦vsoritings does not, however, prevent its recognizing the inferi
ority of the economy of the Old Testament to the gospel. In
the feeling of this inferiority the term iXevOepoi is appUed (1 Pet.
ii. 16) pre-eminently to Christians, and the declaration of the
apostle is recorded (Acts xv. 10 f.) that observance of the
Mosaic law is not a condition of Messianic salvation.
The standing of Second Peter, as one of the most doubtful
of the Antilegomena, prevents us from citing its contents in
proof of the apostolic doctrine of Sacred Scripture ; although
its general agreement with the first Epistle must be admitted.
Indeed, the author expressly declares (iii. 1) his purpose to
stir his readers, as in the first so also in this second Epistle, to
remember the oracles pronounced by the holy prophets : these
oracles are considered as in substantial unity with the command
of the Lord through the apostles. To this prophetic word of
testiraony, which is more sure (on account of its avaUability to
his readers [?]) than even the audible voice that spoke from
heaven to confirm Christ's sonship, they will do well to pay
close attention. For no prophecy contained in the Old-Testa
ment Scripture has its origin as a matter of raerely subjective
explication, as a result of the prophet's own power intuitively
to discern the raeaning of the subject he cogitates ; and prophecy
is never sent by the wiU of man as a cause, but is rather uttered
by men who are borne along by the Holy Ghost, and therefore
speak as from a divine source (i. 19-21).
Thus do certain of the new Scriptures emphasize the unity
of their contents with the contents, predictive and legal, of the
more ancient Scriptures. The Old Testament is regarded by
these New-Testament writers as in substantial accord with the
truth of the Gospel, especially with reference to the one theme
of Messianic salvation.
In marked contrast with the view thus far examined stands
the view of the Pauline and Johannean writings. In these
writings the wide divergence of the new from the old, the
relative imperfections and weaknesses of the old, and the vast

PAULINE DOCTRINE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 163
superiority of the new, are the emphatic considerations. Their
teaching is the more truly distinctive teaching of the New
Testament regarding the Old ; for the contents of the writings
of Paul and John are far more extensive, and their form of
teaching is more advanced in the progress of New-Testament
doctrine. "Paul," says Schmid (p. 479), "recognized it as the problem
of his apostolic calling to exhibit Christianity in its divergence
from the old covenant, the salvation of the gospel in its inde
pendence of the law." The phrase to evayyeXiov p.ov is the result
of his consciousness of this calling. Christianity is therefore
characterized by him as divine power and wisdom, in opposition
to what not only the Greeks but also the Jews sought, but did
not find in it (1 Cor. i. 24, ii.). Especially sharp is the dis
tinction raade by this apostle between the Mosaic law and the
SiKoioavvT] Oeov revealed in the gospel. The righteousness of God
has been made raanifest -without the law (x<«p« v6px)v), although
¦witnessed to by both the law and the prophets (Rom. iii. 21).
The Old Testament contains the norms or rudiments of the
Messianic ideas in its Messianic types, promises, and precepts ;
but it cannot bind, or give law for, the independent and free
development of the gospel. They who insist upon the rudi
ments of non-Christian humanity (toi a-Toixe'ia tov Kocrp-ov), "the
eleraents of sacred discipline or ritualistic precepts coraraon to
the rites of Jews and Gentiles " (Grimm), are designated by
Paul (Gal. iv. 1, 3, 9 ; compare Col. ii. 8, 20) as children and
slaves.! The salvation of the gospel does not, like that of the
Mosaic cultus, flow from the works of the law ; nor is the oppo
site of the condition of legality, in which man is left by the
Old Testament, considered as a new and more perfect legality,
but rather as divine grace received through faith in Christ.
With the same intent relatively to disparage the law of the
Old Testament as compared with the gospel, does the context
show Gal. iii. 19 ff. to have been written. The Mosaic Torah
is spoken of as inferior and iraperfect in that it was only
enjoined by angels in the hand of Moses as mediator.^ Its
1 The rudiments spoken of in the latter passage consist rather of ritualistic
Jewish precepts theosophically treated.
^ This difBcult passage, with its two hundred and fifty (Winer) or four hundred
and thirty (Jowett) interpretations of the twentieth verse, seems to have this gen
eral intent ; and so — in opposition to Calvin, Winer, Meyer, Alford, and others —
it is regarded by Lnther, Eiickert, EosenmuUer, De Wette, Ewald, Hoffmann, and
perhaps the majority of modern commentators.

164 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ceremonial and ritualistic provisions and precepts are but dim
and shadowy outline-pictures of truth (Col. ii. 17). Christianity,
regarded as a life-giving spirit, is contrasted with the Mosaic
law, regarded as a death-producing letter ; and the ministry of
Moses, which took the form of a decalogue, is designated (2 Cor.
iu. 6-9) as a ministry of death, in opposition to the gospel as a
ministry of the Spirit and of life. The apostle does not, indeed,
design to deny the divine origin and ethical value of the Mosaic
law, which is (Rom. vU. 12) declared to be holy and just and
good : he does, however, emphasize the points of contrast and
opposition between it and the gospel, in such manner as to
teach indirectly his view of the nature of Sacred Scripture.
And how different is this from the view of the scribe, who lays
his stress of emphasis upon the form of preserving the contents
of truth, rather than upon the truth itself! The form of pre-
ser-ving the contents is, in the mind of the apostle, of relatively
little account. The most impressive example of Sacred Scrip
ture which the Old Testaraent affords — even the Decalogue,
which Mosaism declares to have been graven on stones by the
finger of Jehovah — raust be estimated by the same standard.
Thus estimated, it is as mere -writing, ink, and stone tablets,
compared with the gospel. Nor does the apostle design in this
passage to deny the service of Moses as an inspired messenger
of Jehovah ; for the glory of his ser-vice is expressly asserted.
But the inference remains, that the value of his service consists
in its witness to the gospel, rather than in any qualities un-
parted by it to sacred writings. Indeed, from the point of
-view afforded by the words of Paul, we see again the Old
Testament in the light of the doctrine of Christ. It is chiefly
its contents of Messianic truth which constitute its claim to
the title of Sacred Scriptures: but regarded formaUy, and
simply as a collection of writings, it can lay no claim to ex
emption from weaknesses and imperfections ; while it must, as
regards its contents of ethical and religious truth, be esteemed
vastly inferior to the oral proclaraation of Christ. In the con
sideration of 2 Cor. iii. 6-9, we are forced, then, to declare
with Bengel : '¦^Paulus etiam dum haec scripsit, non liter ae, sed
Spiritus ministrum egit. Moses in proprio illo officio suo, etiam
cum haud scripsit, tamen in litera versatus est."
The epithets and descriptions which the Pauline writings
choose in order to contrast the gospel with the Old Testament,
and the treatment given by them to special Christian doctrines

PAULINE DOCTRINE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 165
in opposition to the legality of the Old Testament, show the
influence of the same conceptions. For this reason also does
this apostle regard all the history of the divine economy as
divided into two sharply contrasted periods. (See Rora. iv.
13-21 ; Gal. iii. 16-22 ; Rora. ix. 4-8.) It is only at the appear
ance of Christ that the second great period is ushered in, and
that the secret divine plan, to p.va-T-rjpLov tov OeX-rjp.aTO'; Oeov, becomes
revealed. It is by no means the intent of Paul, however, to proclaim
the existence of an impassable gulf between the truths taught
by the Old Testament and the truth he was himself teaching.
How thoroughly his own spirit was imbued with the ancient
-writings of his nation, his own writings abundantly show. His
prevalent intent in handling the Old Testament is to seize and
raanifest the distinctively ethical and religious truths, the divine
ideas of Christianity, as they were embodied in the Old-Testa
raent facts and conceptions. He considered it, however, as his
special mission to present these truths and ideas in their more
distinctive features of difference frora the forms with which
they had been clothed. The ancient forms are, to be sure,
only the A B C of absolute religion; but Paul will find in
thera all those letters of the alphabet which, placed together,
spell the name of Christ.
It is in the Messianic promises, types, and symbols — the
prophetic and Messianic contents in the widest meaning of
these terms — that the Hebrew writings show to Paul their
tokens of divine truth. It is pre-eminently these contents
which authenticate the claira put forth by the writings to the
title " sacred." The divine plan of Messianic salvation, which
is disclosed in the gospel Paul preached, remained hidden in.
the prophetic promises of the Old Testaraent. (See Eph. iii.
5 ; Rom. xvi. 26 ; compare Col. i. 26 ; 1 Cor. U. 9 f.) The sum-
total of the promises given through the prophets (including
Moses and David : so Meyer), and recorded in Scripture, is
such that it can be said (Rora. i. 2) to be concerning the Son
of God, and to constitute a gospel of God. Even the raost dis
tinctive feature of that forra of presenting the truth of Christ
which Paul denorainates "ray gospel," viz., the Pauline doc
trine of justification by faith, he regards (Rora. iv. 3 and Gal.
iii. 6, 11) as germinally existent in the Old Testaraent ; and this
not only in its application to the descendants of Abrahara, but
'¦ also in the proraise of salvation to the Gentiles. (See, also, Gal.

166 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
iii. 14-18, iv. 22 f. ; Rom. iv. 23, 24 ; 1 Cor. iv. 1 ff.) Indeed,
the conception of StKaioo-uvi; has been fitly called "the bond
which unites Saul the raan of the law to Paul the man of
faith." This gospel of proraises, gerrainally present m the
Old Testament, is regarded as having both a logical and a
chronological precedence of the Mosaic law (Gal. iii. 17, 19),
while the law is considered as a subsequent provision for the
fulfilment of the promises by its pedagogic preparation for the
reception of the truth of Christ. (See Gal. iv. 1-6 ; Rom. iii.
20, V. 20 f.) In this view of the uses of the law does the
apostle (Gal. iii. 24) designate it as TraiSaym-yos eh Xpia-Tov.
It is as having the promises in ancestral possession that Paul
(Rom. iii. 2 and ix. 4) congratulates the Jews on their position
of peculiar divine favor : the divine promises of Messianic
salvation had been given to them in trust. The passage, Rom.
iii. 2, confirms the divine origin of the contents of the Old Test
ament which it designates as to. Xoyta toS Oeoii, and also asserts
that the Jews received them as a valuable divine gift (moreij-
Orjo-av) for the benefit of mankind , but the context restricts
the application of this designation to such contents as fore
shadowed and prepared for the reception of the truth of
Christ. And, furthermore, the Pauline doctrine asserts that
Christ has abolished not only the specific requirements of the
Mosaic law as such, but also its entire point of view. Christ is
the fulfiUing of the proraises of faith, and the aboUtion of the
law of the Old Testament (Rom. x. 4). The perfect harmony
of Rora. X. 4 with Matt. v. 17 remains in the fact that Christ ,
asserts the fulfilment of the ideal and absolute contents of
truth in the Old Testament, while implying the cessation of its
formal and faulty constituents , but Paul asserts the latter, and
implies the former.
In substantial accord with the Pauline conceptions do we
find the writings of Luke and of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The point of view taken by the writer of Hebrews is, indeed,
different from that of the Pauline Epistles: it is concessive
where the latter is polemical, explanatory where the latter is
assertive and aggressive. The difference is due in part to
difference of authorship, in part to difference of readers ad
dressed. The writer of Hebrews aims rather to magnify the
claims of the gospel by showing its superiority to a confessedly
great and holy order of affairs under the old economy. As
Christ is in person above Moses (in. 1 ff.), and above the

JOHANNEAN VIEW OF MOSAISM. 167
angels (i. 4 ff.), so the salvation which he as Lord declares,
and which is handed down by apostles, is superior to the word
spoken by angels (ii. 1 ff.). That precept of the Mosaic law
by which its superior priests were constituted is designated
as vd/A09 evToA^s a-apKivq's, vU. 16 ; its Commandment is weak,
unprofitable, and therefore fleeting (18); and, indeed, the entire
old covenant is far from being regarded as faultless, and raust
give way to the new and better one whose mediator is Christ
(viii. 6, 7). The very epithets used by the writer to exalt the
gospel are invested with a significance which indirectly and
relatively disparages the Old Testament. (See vii. 22, ix. 15 ff.,
xii. 24, xiU. 20.)
The view which the Johannean writings take of the Hebrew
Scriptures differs from that of Paul, as respects form, by being
less poleraical, and by proceeding rather from Christological
grounds : they agree in emphasizing the contrast which exists
between the contents of those Scriptures and the truth of the
gospel. The divine origin and contents of the Mosaic law are
claimed (John i. 17 f.) by the use of the word iSoO-q, which
requires wo toS Oeov to complete its raeaning, and by the use of
8ta, which represents Moses as the prophetic raedium of divine
communications. The very contrast made between the two
irapUes that both Moses and Jesus were the channels of divine
coramunication. But the Umited and faUible nature of the
revelation by Moses is also implied in contrasting it -with the
fulness of grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ.
The difference of the two revelations — as to the forra of his
torical appearance (Meyer), and perhaps also as to the superi
ority of the successive degrees of grace when compared with
the narrowness of positive legal enactment (Alford) — is also
set forth in the change from iSoOri to iyevero. The Mosaic Torah
is vastly inferior to the revelation of Christ. It is without the
grace and truth which are with the incarnate Logos. It is
without grace, because it can only awaken, and not satisfy, the
want of grace. It is without the truth, not because it is
wholly false, but because its truth is clothed in only imperfect
and relative forms.^ And that the revelation by Moses is thus
lacking in the qualities which belong to that of Christ, is due
to the difference between the media through which the truth
1 "AXTjeii'd! is opposed, not as the true to the wholly false, but as the perfect to
the imperfect, the faultless to the faulty. See Trench, Synonymes of the New
Testament, New York 1871, Part I., p. 51 f.

168 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
comes. Full and infallible truth could not come by Moses,
because he was not himself such an one as to have the in
tuition of such truth. For no raan, not even Moses, who was,
in the opinion of the Jews, the most intimate of aU writers of
Scripture with God, has the intuition necessary to the possession
of such truth. But he who is so one with God that he can be
spoken of as " he that is in the bosom of the Father " (6 &v ek
TOV KoX-n-ov TOV -n-aTpo?) and even as hiraself ^eo's, — he alone has this
vision of God. He alone, therefore, and no man, even though
he be a recipient of divine revelations, and a selected and in
spired medium of the contents of Sacred Scripture, can teach
fully and infallibly the truth of God. The following declara
tions are, then, supported by the Johannean doctrine of the Old
Testament : —
1. There are different degrees of value and certainty wliich be
long to different divine revelations, even when equally received
through inspired minds and authenticaUy fixed in Scripture.
The revelation of the Mosaic law, although of divine origin
and recorded in the national sacred writings, was vastly inferior
to the truth which the apostles had seen revealed in Christ.
2. Most important differences in different forms of divine
revelation raay grow out of the very nature of the media
through which they are raade. The fulness of grace (that
irX-qprnpa which raakes possible for believers the x^P'" ""^^ x°i"-'"")
and the infallibUity and fulness of truth (since truth is included
in the general terra " grace," and the word aX-^Oeia is used in the
unliraited sense) which belong to the gospel, are due to the
nature of Hira by whom the gospel comes. Christ's word,
however received, is inspired and undoubted as no other con
tents of Sacred Scripture can possibly become.
3. We may say, on the authority of that apostle who stands
next to Jesus in deep clear intuition of divine truth, substan
tially what Martin Luther said, in his own rough but expressive
wajs " There is no other doctor, master, nor preacher, but the
one doctor, Christ, who is interiorly within the Godhead."
With the meaning of a teacher, complete, worthy of submission of
judgment, and to be deemed infalUble, we are to call no man rabbi.
4. It is, then, this declaration of John which harmonizes all
the various revelations made by the one Spirit, although of vary
ing degrees of clearness and value, and which unites them with
the one purpose of becoming subsidiary to the truth which is
revealed in the person and word of Christ.

QUOTATIONS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 169
In this diverse, but essentially concordant, manner do the
•writers of the New Testament exhibit their doctrine of the
nature of Old-Testaraent Scripture, by inference from their view
as to the way tn which the new truth stands related to the
ethical and predictive contents of that Scripture. This doc
trine recognizes the Hebrew writings as containing, scripturaUy
fixed, certain contents of divine truth, which, although in
germinal and iraperfect form and mixed with ethically faulty
constituents, are nevertheless to be received as revelations from
God through chosen and inspired media, and as testifying to,
and preparing the way for, their own fulfilment in the gospel
of Christ. Thus do the writers of the New Testaraent define
raore precisely what they raean by referring to the Old Testa
raent as Sacred Scripture.
These claims for the Old Testaraent by the writers of the
New can be enforced, but not essentially expanded, by con
sidering more in detaU the following particulars.
The araount of recognition given in general form to these
claims may be Ulustrated by the number of express quota
tions, and more inforraal references, which the writers employ.
Of forraal quotations Davidson ^ enumerates two hundred and
fifty-five, and of informal references soraewhat more than four
hundred. Henderson ^ asserts, that "the Epistles and the
Book of Revelation alone contain upwards of four hundred
and fifty passages in which they [the Hebrew Scriptures] are
either expressly quoted, or marked reference is made to them,
or their language is used in a way which evinces that they were
regarded by these inspired ambassadors of Christ as truly of
divine origin. In the Epistles of Paul alone, upwards of two
hundred and fifty such quotations or references are found."
This counting of passages, however, is much less valuable, to
determine the view of the New-Testament writers upon the
Hebrew Scriptures, than the study of that correspondence of
ideas which exists between the two. It would scarcely over
state the truth to say, that there is not a great religious idea of
the New Testaraent which has not its germ in the Old ; and
that there are few important facts narrated in the New which
have not, in the view of its -writers, their anticipatory and
typically corresponding facts in the Old.^
1 Sacred Hermeneutics, Edinburgh, 1843, pp. 338-447.
2 Divine Inspiration, London, 1836, pp. 321 ff.
s It is perhaps worth mention, that, of the books of the Old Testament, rather

170 TIIE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
The elements in the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures, to
which the sanctions of the New Testament most specifically
apply, are the ethical and the predictive. The ethical elements
comprise for the most part the divine ideas and absolute ethical
truths embodied in the Mosaic law; whUe the predictive ele
ments are of course raost abundant in the prophetic writings.
There are, however, such ethical ideas and truths underlying
all prophecy ; while the law, on the other hand, is not devoid
of abundant predictive contents also.
The citation of passages, which are designed to set forth the
identity of absolute raoral truth existing between the old form
of expression in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the new form in
the gospel, is frequent with the writers of the New Testament.
The general purpose of such citation is a twofold ethical pur
pose : first, to advance the proclamation of the gospel by an
appeal to the recognized authority of the Old Testament; sec
ond, to show how the great ethical ideas which had been present
in germinal form with the old econoray had attained in Christ
their more consistent and perfect expression. In emphasizing
the correspondences in form of expression," they reaUy call
attention to the underlying unity of ideas, and to the correla
tion of facts, which bind 'together the Old Testament and the
New. In considering these facts as divinely ordered, and these
ideas as results of the informing work of the Di-vine Spirit, they
announce the valid conclusions from their religious point of
view. He who believes in the reality of the work of such an
informing Divine Spirit has no reason to pronounce their con
clusions invalid.
So purely ethico-religious is the purpose of all the writings
of the New Testament, that, in the quotations from the Old
Testament which they contain, the ethical and reUgious ends
are always kept prorainentiy in view. Even of quotations
from the so-called profane authors, this statement is true. The
words of Aratus and Cleanthes are used by Paul (Acts xvii.
more than half (twenty-one of the thirty-nine) are expressly quoted by the writers
of the New. Of the Pentateuch all the books are thus quoted ; Numbers, how
ever, only once (viz., 2 Tim. ii. 19), and Genesis and Deuteronomy most frequent
ly, — the latter as containing the law, and the former as containing the promises
of faith. Psalms is frequently quoted as containing true prophetic words from the
Lord. Of the historical hooks outside of the Pentateuch, only the first three of
Kings are quoted. Of the writings of the Hokhmah, several quotations from Prov
erbs and one from- Job alone appear. Of the prophetic writings, Ezekiel, Daniel,
Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, and Zephaniah are not quoted. The indirect references,
especially of Eevelation, comprise, however, a larger sphere.

ETHICAL CORRESPONDENCES EMPHASIZED. 171
28) for the statement of lofty moral and religious truth ; his
quotations from Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33) and Epimenides
(Tit. i. 12) are designed to enforce the requirements of practical
morality. Epimenides is, indeed, designated as a prophet, ac
cording to the ancient repute which led Cicero also to reckon
him among the vaticinantes per furorem. With the sarae intent
are the few quotations from the apocryphal writings brought
forward in the New Testament (Jude 9, 14), as well as the ref
erence of 2 Tim. iii. 8 to unwritten rabbinical tradition. Hav
ing received the ethical truth as enforced by appeal to this
tradition, we have hearkened to the author, and are then at
liberty to accept or reject the aUeged facts of the tradition
itself. Pre-eminently ethical, and based upon a recognition of im
portant ethical correspondences, are the references made to the
legal contents of the Old Testament. It is doubtful, then,
whether we can ever speak of citations made from the Old
Testament " for the sake of felicitously illustrating or embel
lishing a discourse." ^ For example : the ethical principle which
makes the quotation frora Deut. xxv. 4 appropriate in 1 Tim.
V. 18, is given in the proverb immediately following ; " Worthy
is the workman of his hire." And when the apostle declares
(1 Cor. ix. 9 f.) that this same provision of the Mosaic law re
garding oxen was written propter nos, he overlooks the historic
raeaning to lay down the divine intent which is involved in the
ethical principle of justice here erabodied, and which is carried
out in its highest application only with reference to men.
Thus it comes about that divine commandments, which ex
press the absolute truth of morals, are, as a matter of course,
given in the form of words which is taken from the recognized
source of such comraandments, viz., the Old Testaraent. The
ethical contents of the Scripture, regarded as divine coraraands,
and not the form of expression which the written comraands
have assumed, are authenticated by such quotation (see Rom.
vii. 7, xU. 19 ; compare Heb. x. 30 ; Jas. ii. 11 ; compare Rora.
xui. 9, xii. 20; Eph. vi. 2, 3; 2 Cor. ix. 9; Heb. xii. 5, 6; 1
Pet. iii. 10). The ethical principle of the entire law of the
Old Testament is recognized and enforced (Rom. xiii. 8 ; Gal.
V. 14; Heb. x. 5 ; 1 Pet. i. 16; Jas. ii. 8). The everlasting
declaration of divine mercy is given (Rora. ix. 15, 25) in the
noble form which it attained in the Hebrew Scriptures ; and
1 So Davidson, Sacred Hermeneutics, p. 509.

172 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the sanction of these Scriptures is invoked (Rora. i. 17, iv. 3, 6,
7) for the doctrine that this raercy is to be attained through
faith. The need of divine raercy is also raade clear by descrip
tions, which, although quoted from such very ancient writings,
seem in no danger at present of growing antiquated (see Acts
xxviU. 26, 27 ; Rom. U. 24, iU. 10 ff.) ; and at least until they
are antiquated, will the quoted threatenings of divine judgment
be always in place.
It is this keen hunt for ethico-religious truth, as it exists
in its essential unity under various forras of expression, which
induces some of the quotations from the Old Testament in the
New that are raost difficult and even impossible critically to
justify. To the conviction of the ethical unity which exists
between the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures and the gospel,
is due that allegorical interpretation of Deut. xxx. 11-14, which
Paul brings forward, Rora. x. 6-8. The repeated toCt' hnv,
explanatory of the meaning of the ancient writing, wUl not,
indeed, serve to claira full prophetic consciousness for its author;
but that the words of Deuteronoray are in principle predictive,
and so capable of covering an indefinite number of such cases
as are ranged under thera by this usage of Paul, cannot well be
denied. This capacity they acquire by reason of the nature of
that ethico-religious truth which is expressed in them. The
unity of this truth, thus expressed under varied and yet corre
sponding forms, concerns the following particulars : (1) the ques
tion of unbelief, which is always an inquiry after a di-vine word
already provided and brought near to the mind ; (2) the near
ness to the doubter of the divine word, a nearness wliich is con
summated in the incarnation and resurrection of Christ ; (3) the
duty of faith, which recognizes and appropriates, in whatever
way it may be presented, the ever-present divine word ; and (4)
the reward of faith, which is always divine pardon and salva
tion. In recognizing these ethical correspondences of form
given to identical moral truth, the apostle entirely leaves out
of the account the historical application of the passage.
In similar raanner we are to regard the so-called " rabbinical
commenting " ^ of the difficult passage. Gal. iii. 15-17. It is
true, on the one hand, that this fashion of interpreting the Old
Testament is rabbinical (see Wetstein and Schoettgen); and
that the Hebrew >'^J. could not have been used in Genesis other
wise than in the singular nuraber : and that, therefore, so far as
1 " Midraschistisches Kommentiren," see Meyer on Kom. x. 6-8.

ETHICAL CORRESPONDENCES EMPHASIZED. 173
the argument of the apostle is raerely philological, it is uncriti
cal and unsound. But it is also true, on the other hand, as
Windischraann has asserted, that " the argument of the apostle
does not depend upon the grammatical forra ; " and also true,
as the eleraent of chief importance, that certain real correspond
ences of the one ethico-religious truth, divinely revealed in
varying forms, are here clearly taught. We are not, then, to
say of the sentence begining oi Xeyei, as does Meyer, that it is
a "purely rabbinical conclusion:" it is rather a conclusion,
which, although deriving no help from its rabbinical forra, has
its own weight of raoral and religious truth independent of that
form. Of such valid conclusion the following elements may be
in this instance pointed out: (1) the unity of the divinely
chosen theocratic race, which is such that it can be expressed
by the collective use of the singular both in the Hebrew and in
the Greek ; (2) the theocratic headship of Christ as the goal
and crown of Abraham's descendants (Meyer), — a truth taught
dimly in the proraise to Abrahara, but clearly by Paul as an
inspired apostle ; and (3) the perpetuity of the divine proraises,
which, given in this form to Abrahara, were fulfilled ideally
only in Christ, and in those united with him by faith.
On the basis of similar convictions does the same apostle
make the remarkable declarations of 1 Cor. x. 1 ff. The ele
ments of rabbinical tradition which appear to be accepted by
these aUegorical interpretations — such as, perhaps, the current
tradition that "the rock foUowed the IsraeUtes in their jour-
neyings, and gave forth water all the way " ^ — are not verified
by their incorporation into the truth explained by the apostle.
And that the interpretations of the Old Testament here given
are allegorical departures from the historical meaning, seems to
be confessed by the -writer in the use of the word irvevpuriKog,
and especially in the declaration 17 Trerpa Se ?jv 5 Xpia-ros. These
interpretations, then, so far as their purely rabbinical elements
are concerned, cannot authenticate the claims of the Old Testa
ment. But so far as they are the results of the insight of an
inspired apostle into that bond of ethical unity which joins the
two Testaments, — a unity which involves identity of absolute
truth under correspondence of form, — they evince the ethical
and the predictive elements in both. The New authenticates
the Old as foreshadowing itself. SiraUar conclusions will apply
to the cognate cases of Gal. iv. 21 ff. and Rora. ix. 8 ff.
1 So Alford, Eiickert, De Wette, and Meyer's earlier viow.

174 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
It is the same conviction that an ethical unity connects the
Old Testaraent with the New, which justifies raany of the in
terpretations given by the New-Testaraent writers to the pre
dictive contents of the Hebrew Scriptures; so far, at least,
as justification raay be atterapted by raodern criticism. How
exclusively ethical these contents theraselves were in their
germinal ideas and forraal expression, we shall see in another
connection. It is pre-erainently the ethical and predictive truth,
as involving its own connections with the doctrine of Christ,
which the New-Testament writers authenticate. It is to the
Plebrew Scriptures, as containing the latentes rerum Messiae
figuras, that they ascribe most emphatically the titles of sacred
and theopneustic writings.
The verbal mode in which the writers of the New Testament
quote frora the Old raust also be noticed in determining theic
claims for the Hebrew Scriptures. The resemblance of thek
formulae of quotation to those employed by the rabbinical writ
ers is undoubted ; it has been shown in detail by various au
thors, especially by Surenhusius in his BtySXos KaToAXa-y^s. That
the shaping of these formulae in the New Testaraent was due
largely to forras of thought and expression then prevalent
among the rabbis, is also undoubted. A certain relationship
of the apostolic hermeneutics with the Jewish can, therefore,
no longer be denied.^ The question, how far false rabbinical
views of Old-Testament interpretation are iraplied in the use
of rabbinical forraulae of quotation, is a question for detailed
criticisra to answer. In examining this question no statement
or inference of the New-Testaraent writers is to be judged un
true simply because it corresponds to views current among
Talmudic doctors : on the contrary, a certain amount of author
ity is lent to these views by their correspondence with the
apostoUc teaching.^ But, on the other hand, a certain amount
of erroneous rabbinical hermeneutics, adraitted into the writ
ings of the New Testaraent, would by no raeans vitiate, or even
essentially weaken, their authenticating of the valid claims of
the Old Testaraent.
That the Hebrew Scriptures contain absolute truth, especially
Messianic truth, in their ethical and predictive contents ; that
this truth was divinely iraparted to their writers, in accordance
with the one plan of God which unites these Scriptures with
1 See Tholuck, Das Alte Testament im Neuen Testament, pp. 7, 10-20.
2 So Tholuck justly claims, ibid., p. 8 ; and see Schoettgen on Matt. i. Ifi.

TELIC PHRASES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 175
the gospel, and by the one Spirit of God who administers both
the old economy and the new, — these claims are involved
even in the New-Testament forms of quotation. Araong such
forms are the following : the term 17 ypacj>-^ and the various uses
of the verb ypd4,w ; the use of Xeyei (scilicet 6eo's) ; and especially
the phrases 'I'a (or ottok) TrXrjpoiO'g -fj ypat^yrj (or TO yeypappevov, or
TO p-r/Oiv, or o Xoyo? yeypap.p.evo^), totc eirXripwOr) to prjOev, and KaOw's
yeypa-mai (or tort yeypap.p.evav) . Different -writers in the New
Testament seem to evince a preference for different forraulae
of quotation. The use of telic sentences is especially favorite
with Matthew. The use of the various forras of ypdcfiw is cora
mon in all the other Gospels and in the Epistles of Paul, —
with the exception of Ephesians, which has Sto Xeya in two of
its three citations. The words Xiyei, p.aprvpe'i, e'p-qKe, and <^i7o-6
prevail in Hebrews (much after the manner of PhUo) and in
the Epistle of James. The attempts to assign definite reasons
for these authorial peculiarities are not satisfactory. The rea
sons for a choice in each case are probably to be found in a
union of personal points of view with specific intent, and are
too complex to detect -with any assurance of accuracy.
The use of telic phrases is undoubtedly to be taken as signi
fying the confidence which the New-Testament writers had in
the divine origin and objective validity of the predictive con
tents of the Old Testament; in its types and typical corre
spondences, its history symbolically foreshadowing the fuller
economy of grace under, the gospel, as well as in its directly
typical and prophetico-Messianic prophecies. That this use
was not by accommodation, and cannot be lowered or flattened
out into the merely ecbatic use, critical examination has suf
ficiently deraonstrated.i It authenticates the claira of the Old
Testament to a unity of substantial truth with the contents of
the gospel. The Hebrew teleology, "which represents every
[important and especially every surprismg] event as ordered
and designed by God," is in the case of the apostles the theo
logical conception which furnishes the ground for their divinely
imparted insight. This insight they exhibit in detecting the
tokens of one divine plan which runs through and binds to
gether those two great epochs of its manifestation with which
they were familiar. It is, then, only the so-called " organic
1 See -Winer's Grammar, Andover 1869, pp. 457 ff. ; Meyer on Matt. i. 22;
Grimm's Lexicon; Davidson, Sacred Hermeneutics, pp. 474 ff.; Schirlitz, Grund-
aiige der Neutestamentlichen Gracitat, pp. 86 ff.

176 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
apprehension" of the citations from the Old Testaraent in the
New, and the " organic method of interpretation," which can at
the same tirae satisfy the conditions of criticism, and admit the
verity of the claims of the Old Testaraent, both in its own
writings and in the writings of the New. The idea of an organ-
isra alone suffices to justify our belief in the inspiration of the
apostles. Happily this is also the method prevalent among
those scholars who incline to accept both the results of criti
cism and the reality of divine revelation in the Bible.i In the
use of this organic raethod of interpretation we escape the
errors of extrerae views. On the one hand, we are not forced
to understand the Old-Testaraent writers unhistorically, and so
as to bring their utterances into a dead and inorganic likeness
with the interpretations of the New Testaraent; nor are we
obliged always to vindicate, however contrary to the eridence,
the hermeneutical skill and accuracy of the later writers.^ On
the other hand, we are led to admit this organic unity and
living correspondence of great ethico-religious ideas between
the two Testaments as a prirae proof of the divine origin of
both. The insight that in the eariier writers diraly foreshadows,
as well as the clearer insight that in the later writers detects
and cUstinctly exhibits, these ideas, is thus ascribed to the
divine illumining which both prophets and apostles claimed to
enjoy. As to the nature of the prophetic consciousness, the writers
of the New Testaraent have Uttle to add to the claims which
we have already exarained. Their mode of quoting the proph
ecy of the Old Testaraent, as though it were interpreted by
thera in the manner in which it was presented to the conscious
ness of its first authors, is by no means decisive. 1 Pet. i. 10 ff-
represents the prophets as making eager search into the more
precise time, with its accorapanying and defining events, which
the indwelling Spirit of Christ was revealing, as it testified
beforehand the sufferings of (? eU) Christ. This eager search
we are however, to interpret rather of their private desire than
of any indications in their -writings (so Calvin and Huther).
For, so far as we can judge by these writings, we find only in
1 Compare especially the articles of Kiehm in the Theologische Studien una
Kritiken, 1865 and 1869.
2 By this method alone can we defend Christ against the impression of "ia»-
binical subtlety" (" not wholly without ground," says Tholuck), made hy his projj'
from the Old Testament for tbe resurrection, given to the Sadducees (Matt, xa'' :
32).

NEW-TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY. 177
Daniel, among the Hebrew prophets, a manifest effort to fix
the date of the fulfilment of theU Messianic prophecies, or,
indeed, any considerable interest in its fixing ; so absorbed in
the idea, and so well restrained from presumption, are their
rainds even in their prophetic work.^ The contents of the
revelations which were made to them are further declared by
this passage to have included the general consciousness that
they were doing service for the advantage of certain persons iu
the indefinite future ; ^ and that this service had for its object
the affairs of Messiah's kingdom. These are the same affairs
which, in their developed form and -with the clearer conscious
ness and loftier point of view belonging to them, the apostles
announced in preachuig the gospel. For although it was the
Spirit of the pre-existent Christ who dwelt in the Hebrew
prophets, and who through thera brought forth the Messianic
prophecies, the prophets themselves had by no means those
same clear conceptions of the one great truth which were pro
duced in apostles by the Spirit sent from heaven.
The dimness of the prophetic consciousness — in which the
bright but Ul-defined forms of eternal ideas rise into loftier
position, and then at once, when they have reached the required
altitude, appear in clear and full beauty, like the sun emerging
from the morning mist — is evidently conceded by the writer
of 2 Pet. i. 19. He makes the concession, although commend
ing attention to the prophetic word. The prophetic word is
indeed to be compared to a candle by which even Christians
may choose their steps ; but walking by it is, after all, like walk
ing in a misty spot (iv avxp.-rjpw tottw) with only the light of a
lamp (Xvxyo';), compared with that more perfect state of the
believer, when the full daylight which the revelation of Christ
brings has corae within his soul.^ Such a view of the yearning
interest, and yet dim and shadowy outlines of knowledge, which
belong to the genuine prophetic consciousness, Jesus himself
confirms (Luke x. 24 ; with perhaps special reference to 2 Sam.
xxui. 1-5). The manner in which he (John viii. 56) represents
Abraham as rejoicing that he should see the day of Messiah,
and again (Matt. xxii. 43) David as in the Spirit calling Mes-
1 See the comment on verse 11 in Briickner's edition of De -Wette's Handbuch
zum N. T., and per contra the note in Huther (both in loco).
2 Only the ovx iavroU is to be regarded as known by the prophets, to which the
¦writer puts in contrast the vii.lv of verse 12.
2 How this more perfect state of the believer stands related to the Lord's com
ing, it is not necessary to our purpose to inquire.
VOL. L M

178 THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCRIPTURE.
siah Lord, affords further confirmation of the view. Even in
their Messianic prophecies these seers of the Old Testament
did not know what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of
Christ in thera was revealing.
Slight regard for the wording of the written framework that
holds the contents of truth appears in the handling which the
New-Testament writers give to the ancient sacred -writings.
It is true that the argument of Paul (Gal. iU. 15-17) has the
appearance of turning upon the grammatical form of the one
word )!% But just so far as this appearance is proved to cor
respond to the reality, it discredits the argument, and makes it
a piece of " rabbinical dialectic ; " while our removal of the
charge of rabbinizing from the apostle depends upon our being
able to show that his arguraent does not depend upon the gram-
raatical form. The same considerations apply to Heb. xii. 26 f.
The little stres? which they lay upon the ipsissima verba of the
Old Testament is sufficient proof that the weight of practice
with the apostles is against the ordinary theories of verbal ui
spiration. But the proof reaches even further than this: it
indicates a totally different point of view fr-om that held by the
advocates of these theories.
How far the New-Testaraent writers are frora being intent
upon the exact verbal forras which they found in the Old
Testament, their raanner of quoting frora it strikingly shows.
The raere fact that they are obviously often quoting loosely and
frora raeraory, is a most important fact.^ The variety in the
manner of use raade of the Old Testaraent by the writers of
the New is not greater than the variety in the verbal manner
of quotation. Sometimes they quote accurately, either from
the LXX. or again from the Hebrew, where the texts of these
two editions of the Old Testament are in closest accord ; some
times they accompany the LXX. in their departures from the
Hebrew, and at other times reraain with the original form of
scriptural language ; soraetiraes they change a word when seem
ingly making use of the language of one version in preference
to the other, and either with or without an assignable motive;
1 Mr. Lee, indeed, after acknowledging that this fact "is obviously fatal "to
his view of the inspiration of Scripture, proceeds with the endeavor to disprove
the fact (pp. 304 ff.). This he would do by showing that the quotations are as
perfect as they would have been if they had been accurate. In view of the evi
dence which is abundant enough, the authority of scholarship which is consentient
enough, and the prevalent practice of the early Church Fathers which illustrates
that of the New-Testament writers, we may pronounce the fact untouched by
Jlr. Lee's argument. The fate of his own view lie has himself pronounced.

VERBAL INACCURACY IN CITATIONS. 179
and sometimes they even prefix the customary formulae of
quotation to forms of words which can be found neither in the
LXX. nor in the Hebrew.^ It is not an exaggeration, then, to
say with Immer, " Every single citation is in need of a special
investigation." ^
Of these quotations, so varied as respects their verbal forra,
it wUl be enough for our purpose to note the few following.
Tn quoting Isa. xl., and applying it to John the Baptist, Mat
thew (iU. 3) and Mark (i. 3) use only verse 3, which they take
from the LXX. with the exception of the substitution of avToC
for TOV Oeov -rjp-wv, and connect the words iv T-rj iprjpw as the LXX.
do, and as the Hebrew probably does not ; Luke (iii. 4 f.),
however, in adding verses 4 and 5, after agreeing with both the
others in closely following the LXX., begins to diverge quite
widely frora the Greek version, although following it in the
unwarranted expansion of i^n! by the phrase to a-wrrjpiov tov Oeov.
Again, in Luke iv. 18, 19, the Evangelist, after following the
LXX. as far as Kal td^Xois avd^Xeil/iv, although with the oraission
of one clause, to quote which would seera to have served his pur
pose exceUently, and with the inclusion of a departure of the
LXX. frora the Hebrew, adds, by an apparent error of memory,
from Isa. IvUi. 6, certain words not found in this passage in
either the Hebrew or the LXX. ; and this manner of quoting is
to indicate what Jesus read from a Hebrew MS. Surely, in his
intentness to signify the great truth, he was not especially care
ful to authenticate the very words of the ancient Sacred Scrip
ture. In quoting Mal. Ui. 1, all the evangeUsts raake a free
adaptation of the Hebrew, probably in accordance with the
habitual use raade of this passage in the apostolic preaching.
Matthew (xu. 18), however, quotes freely frora the Hebrew,
and departs -widely from the Greek ; but admits echoes, so to
speak, from the words of the LXX., especially in the last clause.
Again, in quoting Deut. xxv. 5, the three Synoptists all differ
among themselves, and yet neither one agrees verbatim with
^ In examining cited passages we perceive," says Davidson (Sac. Her., p. 469),
" that every mode of quotation has been employed, from the exactest to the most
loose, from the strictly verbal method to the widest paraphrase ; but in no case
is violence done to the meaning of the original." Per contra of the last sentence,
Immer says (Hermeneutik des Neuen Testamentes, Wittenberg 1873, p. 134),
" Der Gebrauch des Alten Testamentes im Neuen ist nun ein sehr maunigfal tiger;
von der buchstablichsten Anwendung his zur kuhnsten Allegorik, von einer im
Ganzen treffenden Benutzung bis zur grossten Willkiihr." And to this view the
later work of Davidson manifestly goes over.
2 Hermeneutik, etc., p. 134.

180 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
either the Hebrew or the Greek. John (xix. 37), in quoting
Zech. xii. 10, apparently with deUberate purpose departs from
the erroneous reading of the LXX., substitutes the correct
translation i$eKevTr]a-av, and for the reading of the Hebrew fol
lows the one (viz., vSk for ''?«) which, although without the
weight of MS. authority, is probably correct. (So Ewald and
Meyer.) In the lengthy quotation of Acts ii. 17 ff., it is im
possible to tell why the writer should raake his few unimpor
tant variations frora the translation of the LXX., here quite
exact, unless he were quoting freely and from memory.
How freely Paul handled the verbal forras of the Old Testa
ment in his effort to extract their contents of truth, and how
confidently he attributed the di-vine quality which he found in
Sacred Scripture to the latter rather than to the former, there
can be no doubt. We find him (Rom. iU. 10 f.) introducing
after the phrase KaOw? yeypa-nrai a sentence which can be found
only for substance of truth in the Hebrew -writings, and then
following it with extracts frora Ps. xiv. 1 ff. ; Ps. v. 9 ; Ps. cxl.
3 ; Ps. X. 7 ; Isa. Ux. 7, 8, and Ps. xxxvi. 1; some of which are
accurately given after the LXX., and others of which are verb
ally changed, either through inexactness of memory or to suit
the purpose of the apostle.^ From the same eagerness to seize
upon the contents of truth, without anxiety as to exactness of
verbal forra, doubtless arises, at least in part, the remarkable
fact, that some of Paul's quotations are not, properly speak
ing, quotations at all : they are only statements of his riew of
some general truth to be found in the Old Testaraent, which he
has put into a rough correspondence of language, and to which
he has prefixed the customary formula of citation. The words
KaOo)<; yeypaTTTai in 1 Cor. ii. 9 mark what follows as an alleged
quotation from canonical Hebrew Scripture. But the nearest
approach to the apostle's language (undoubtedly Isa. Ixiv. 4,
rather than lii. 15, with perhaps a reminiscence frora Ixv. 17, in
the words i-n-l KapSiav OVK ave^rj) is far cuough reraoved still, both
in significance and verbal shaping .^ In the sarae way are we
to explain the quotation Eph. v. 14, where, although using the
forraula (8io Xeyei) for citing canonical Scripture, the apostle
changes, both in words and in significance, the passage Isa. Ix.
1 " The codices of the LXX., which give the entire passage (Rom. iii. 13-18) in
Ps. xiv. 3 ff., have had the words interpolated in the Christian era from this pas
sage" (Meyer).
2 There seems to us no need, however, of the conjecture in which Meyer fol
lows Origen, that these words are taken from the apocryphal Prophecy of Elias.

VERBAL INACCURACY IN CITATIONS. 181
1, 2; yet, while making these changes, he shows the corre
spondence of essential and ideal truth which exists between
the contents of the Old Testaraent and the gospel he preached.
To suppose these quotations to be due to slips of memory, in
which the apostle remerabers the words of apocryphal writings,
and raistakes thera for the words of Hebrew Scripture, is to
suppose his raind quite too rauch saturated with the former,
and quite too Uttle with the latter.^ For even Jesus is repre
sented (John vii. 38) as introducing after the words KaOm elirev
7) ypa<l>-rj a Statement which, only after being changed in lan
guage, and adapted in sentiment, gives a sort of epitome of the
contents of several Old-Testament passages.
The atterapt to apply the theory of verbal inspiration, first to
the Hebrew text and then to all the deviations raade frora it
through the text of the LXX. by the New-Testaraent writers,
not only leads us into the wildest extravagances of criticisra,
but also goes obviously counter to the ordinary methods of
those -writers. If they held the theory of verbal inspiration,
their practice is generaUy against their theory. Nor will any
theory of plenary inspiration so called, which excludes all in
exactness of memory, language, or scientific interpretation, in
the quotations of the Old Testament within the New, explain
the phenomena.
The great variety of scholarly opinion as to the nature of
those differences which exist among the different writers of the
New Testament, in their manner of quoting the Old, also con
firms the judgraent that these -writers did not hesitate to use
scriptural language with critical inexactness, and that they did
not in general consciously ascribe the attributes of di-vine origin
through inspiration to the ipsissima verba, but to the contents
of truth. The Uterature on one branch of this subject, Holtz
mann pronounced some years since to be " nearly iraraeasura-
ble."2 The raere existence of such a Uterature is an argu
ment against those theories of Sacred Scripture which stick in
the letter, and then endeavor to hold themselves firm by an
appeal to apostolic authority. Indeed, everywhere in both
Testaments do we find the scribe, with his work of verbal
exactness, left in the background ; while the voice of hira who,
1 Meyer makes the quotation 1 Cor. ii. 9 to be due to a lapsus memoriae ; and so
does he also treat Eph. v. 14.
2 Die Synoptischen Evangelien, pp. 258 ff. Among the earlier of the modern
works Credner's Einleitung ; among the more recent, Kautzsch, De Vet. Test.
loois a Paulo apostolo allegatis, — are noteworthy.

182 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
being in the Spirit, brings the ethical and reUgious message,
everywhere claims divinity and authority for its contents of
truth. It is not primarily the written words, but the divine
truth in them, which is regarded as the Word of God. It is
this which gives its title " sacred " to the, Old Testament, in
the estimate of the apostles as well as of Christ.
We conclude, then, that the writers of the New Testament
confirm the general estimate put upon the Old Testament by
its own claims ahd by the teaching of Christ. They are in
position, however, to interpret those claims in the fuller light
of their highest significance, as their original authors could not:
they are not always, on the other hand, in that position of
wonderful clearness of vision into ideal truth, together with
equally wonderful reserve upon questions of criticism, in which
we find Christ. Nowhere in either Testaraent is the doctrine
of verbal or errorless inspiration forraally raaintained.^ But
the apostles and Jesus alike authenticate the claims that the
ancient Hebrew writings hold in their law and prophecy, scrip
turaUy fixed, the contents of revealed truth received through
inspired souls, and used by God in preparation for the establish
raent of the kingdora of Messiah.
And, finally, we discover in that passage of the New Testa'
ment which raost directly and explicitly asserts the doctrine
of Sacred Hebrew Scripture, a confirraation of the conclusions
given above. This passage is 2 Tim. iii. 16. To place this
passage in right relations with the resiUts reached by our re
searches, the following particulars of its interpretation must be
noted : —
1. The main purpose of 2 Tim. iU. 16 is to declare the eth
ical quality and uses of the Old Testaraent in perfecting a
righteous character : in the light of this main purpose we must
examine all the details of its interpretation. The general dec
laration of the preceding clause, to. Bwdp,evd a-e a-o<j)ia-ai €is (Tomipiav,
is enforced by the statement of verse 16, which enumerates
several particulars including both theoretic (BiBaa-KoXia) and prac
tical discipline (De Wette). The adjective Oeoirvevaros belongs to
the subject, and the particle Kai is ascensive or corresponsive.
All Scripture, theopneustic, is also profitable for the ethical
purposes of teaching, conviction, correction, discipUne in right
eousness (compare Rora. xv. 4).
1 See W. Schmidt, Zur Inspirationsfrage, Gotha 1869, p. 41.
^ See Huther'a comment, and especially the careful discussion of EUicott

THE MEANING OF 2 TIM. m. 16. 183
2. As to the nature and extent of the subject to which the
qualities of theopneusty and ethical profitableness belong, we
need have no doubt ; although the grammatical interpretation
of this passage is somewhat difficult. The term to, lepa ypdppiara
of verse 15, found only here in the New Testament, is to be
taken as referring to the Old Testament. It does not include
any apostolic writings (Huther contra De Wette), but desig
nates the Sacred Hebrew Scriptures under the somewhat loose
title of sacrae litter ae (scilicet Veteris Testamenti), and repre
sents them as the objects of pious study rather than as sources
of authority (Cremer). It is noteworthy that the author, in
repeating his subject under another terra, omits the defining
article. The words irao-a ypa<f>-^ are, therefore, neither to be
interpreted " the whole of Scripture " as including the entire
Canon Sebraeorum (so most of the ancients, and Wiesinger and
Philippi), nor " every Scripture," as referring to each passage
or every part of the Hebrew writings (so Alford) ; but rather
every, or better all. Scripture, — that is, sacred writing in gen
eral as found in the Old Testament.^ The subject is, however,
liraited by the very statement contained in the predicate, as is
the case with the oa-a irpoeypdtpTj, eis ttjv -rjpeTepav Bi8a(TKaXiav iypd(l>r]
of Eom. XV. 4. AU Scripture that is theopneustic is also
morally profitable, and, although it is not the intent of the
writer to suggest the possibility of denying theopneusty to
any Scripture whatever, neither is it his intent to imply such
theopneusty of any such Scripture as is not also morally profit
able. Whether each book and passage in the lepa ypdppara is,
taken in detaU, to be considered as theopneustic and also profit
able for the purposes specified, the writer does not pronounce.
But evidently he intends here under his subject, irao-a ypa^-q, not
the verbal scriptural form of truth, but rather those contents
of ethical verity, and those Messianic promises and predictions,
which he wished especially to commend, and to which in prac
tice he directed his own attention (the argumentum scripturae
[Grirara]). 3. The meaning of the adjective ^eoVi/evo-Tos as applied to the
subject -n-aaa ypa^ri is not defined in this passage : its definition
must be sought from other writings of the New Testament, and
1 " Alles was geschrieben steht" (Hofmann followed by Moller); " jede von
Gott gehauchte Sehrift " (Eothe); "ist irgend eine Sehrift sc. Schriftstelle von
Gott gehaucht, so ist sie auch, etc." (Tholuck), — are paraphrases which throw
light on the translation of this passage.

184 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
from the claims of the Bible in general. So also " the relation
of this divine working to human activity, of the divine co'riitenis
to the human forra (words, conceptions, and representations), is
here left indeterrainate," and the deterraining of this relation
must be derived frora other sources.^
Upon these and all other sirailar points of New-Testament
teaching regarding the nature of the Old Testaraent, we are in
a position from our previous examination to pronounce as satis
factory those conclusions in which they accord with Christ
Certain ethical and predictive contents of revelation, given
through inspired raedia, certain absolute and ideal truths of
the Christian religion, although in an iraperfect and faUible
form of presentation, are scripturaUy fixed in the canonical
Hebrew "writings; therefore these writings are sacred, theop
neustic, and morally profitable for the individual and for the
Church. 1 See in Moller's edition of De Wette's Handbuch dea N. T., in loco.

CHAPTER VL
THE CLAIMS FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT BY ITS OWN WRITERS.
The basis for the claims of the New Testament to the title
of Sacred Scripture is laid in the promises of the Redeemer to
his apostles. To these proraises, as already exarained,^ corre
sponds the consciousness of their reaUzation which the apostles
raanifest, and which affords additional ground for deterraining
the nature of those writings that are due to the fulfilment
of the promises. Such is the consciousness of coraraunion with
the Risen One, — a consciousness which serves, by the fulness
of truth received in this coraraunion, to authorize their teach
ing, and to make it, both in their own opinion and objectively,
in accordance with the raind of Christ. Such a consciousness
belongs, however, to each member in the entire body of be
lievers ; the consciousness thus becomes for the whole Church
a characteristic of the new life which it receives frora above,
inasmuch as it is the Church of Christ. In the new dispensa
tion, as in the old, the true subject of divine revelation and in
spiration is primarily the community of believing souls ; the final
purpose served in all special distributions of divine gifts within
that community is the development of its common Ufe.
The whole community of Christian believers, as well as the
apostles, received the truth of Christ by revelation ; that is, by
the power of the indwelUng Holy Spirit who took away the
veU which had hitherto concealed God's plan of salvation,
and who made plain to them this divine plan. Christ, who is
designated (1 Cor. i. 24) Oeov a-o4>ia, is the living principle of the
believer; and, therefore, he who receives Christ receives by
divine revelation the wisdom of God. The divine way of con
stituting man just and upright before the divine law, after
remaining long hidden from human knowledge, has had this
enveloping veil reraoved in the gospel (Rom. i. 17) ; every one
who becomes a believer at all becomes such by the work of
1 Chap. II. 185

186 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the Holy Ghost as a revealer within his own soul. According
to 1 Pet. i. 23, all Chiistians have a share in the work wrought
within by the living and abiding divine Word. The concep
tion of the Holy Spirit especially Johannean is that which
designates him as the Spirit of the truth (to Trvevp.a t^s aX-rjOem) ;
and (1 Johnv. 6) we even read, "The Spirit is the truth," —
that is, the personal life-giving principle of truth.
This Spirit of revelation is accordingly represented as given
to all believers. The power to know the truth is a divine gift,
which is designated (1 John ii. 20, 27) as a sort of holy anoint
ing (xp'io-pa) belonging to Christians, who are therefore even
said by it to know all things. The apostle does not teach his
readers because they do not know the truth, for they do know
it (ii. 21). The sarae gift of revelation, which John assigns to
all believers as the work of the Spirit of the truth, Paul prays
to have given to the Christians of Ephesus (Eph. i. 17 ff.) as a
spirit of wisdora and revelation. The details of his prayer also
show us that he expected frora its answering, in their case,
essentially the same working of divine power which presented
the truth to his apostolic consciousness. Revelations of truths
by inspiration to non-apostolic believers, who are on this very
account designated Trpo^Tox, are mentioned as existing in the
church at Corinth. A divergence from his own estimate of
hiraself, and even frora his view respecting a right attitude of
hope toward the resurrection, the apostle is wiUing (Phil. iii.
15) to trust to that corrective teaching of the Spirit which is a
revelation of truth in the heart of all believers.
The whole coraraunity of beUevers, as well as the apostles,
are inspired ; that is, they are endowed with certain charisms
adapted in each case to the conditioning individuality of those
upon whora the charisras are bestowed. For he that has Christ
in hira has also the indwelling Spirit of Him that raised Christ
(Rom. viu. 10 f.). The Spirit of Christ is the Holy Ghost
(see Rom. vin. 9; Eph. U. 21 f. ; Gal. v. 22, 26). The Lord is
the Spirit ; i.e., from the dynamic point of view the indwelling
Christ is the inspiring Holy Ghost (2 Cor. iii. 17). Even the
power to speak with the convictions of a Christian concerning
the divine authority of Jesus Christ does not come without
inspiration (1 Cor. xii. 3). The definition of the Christian
consciousness furnishes the subjective condition, and as well
the proofs of the objective reality, of that Christian inspiration
which belongs to the entire body of believers.

INSPIRATION OF THE COMMUNITY. 187
That Paul regarded the donative work of the Holy Spirit as
belonging primarily to the Christian comraunity, for whose sake
also the special charisras vouchsafed to apostles are bestowed,
adraits of no doubt. The spiritual work, which in its first and
gerrainal form Peter regarded as a fulfilment of Joel ii. 28-32,
Paul regards (Eph. iv. 8), in its later and more comprehensive
form; as typified in the Messianic declaration of Ps. IxviU. 18.
Of the forras in wMch the Old-Testaraent promises of the
Spirit to the holy nation had their actual realization in the
Christian comraunity, we have a vivid picture frora this apos
tle's point of view in 1 Cor. xU.-xiv.
Another thought, fundamental to the true conception of
New-Testament Scripture, raust, however, be taken into the
account. The gift of the Spirit is, indeed, priraarily made to
the coraraunity of beUevers. But, inasmuch as there are many
different individuals and ends to be served in this coraraunity,
there are diversities of the one gift. The proraised gift is dis
tributed in various charisras or gifts. There exists, then, in
the fundaraental conditions of the new life of the Christian
community, not only the necessity for an inspiration common
to the comraunity, but also the necessity for such a distribution
of this inspiration as shall result in diversities of gifts. To
this fact is due the apostoUc office and work, with its special
apostolic gifts. The distinction from which the special in
spiration of the apostles emerges is not a distinction between
genuine inspiration and spurious, nor between two different
kinds of inspiration, nor primarily between different degrees
of inspiration as such : it is rather a distinction between dif
ferent kinds, degrees, and products of inspiration in different
charisms, which are different on the ground of the divine wis
dom and grace, on the conditions furnished by different individ
uals, and for the one final purpose of buUding up the Christian
Church. Without discussing the phenomenon described. Acts ii. 6-13,
— which is manifestly regarded as an actual speaking in for
eign tongues, and therefore quite different^ from the yXwo-o-ats
XaXeiv spoken of 1 Cor. xii. and xiv., — it is only necessary to
notice the general relations to our subject of this distribution
of the spiritual gift of tongues. The later form of the gift was
1 Different, that is, at least, from the point of view held by Luke in his narra
tive. What was, however, the extent of their real similarity, is another inquiry.
(See Meyer on 1 Cor. xii.)

188 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the more permanent, and corresponds more closely to the prom
ise of Christ recorded in the appended close of Mark xvi. 17
(yXwa-a-aii XaX-^aova-iv Kaival's). In this gift the prophecy of the
Old Testaraent is regarded as fulfilled (see Isa. xxvui. 11, and
compare 1 Cor. xiv. 21). The Holy Spirit has created for him
self in all the disciples of Jesus a new organ of utterance. The
conditioning element of individuality is not, however, left un
considered by this endowment of the divine Spirit. The use
of the singular yXwa-(rg, and its interchange with the plural yXm-
o-ats in 1 Cor. xiv., show that the distribution of this one gift
was raade according to individual peculiarities. The yevij yXwo-o-Sv
of 1 Cor. xii. 10, 28, of which -n-podevxj and i/'oA/ao's are especially
raentioned xiv. 14 f., are further proof of the same truth. We
are also taught (1 Cor. xii. 4 ff.) that varieties of gifts, varieties
of ministries, varieties of operations, serve the varied purposes
of the comraunity ; they also norraally correspond to the varie
ties of natural endowraent which, in a raeasure, give conditions
to these gifts, rainistries, and operations. The general rule of
distribution for this donative work of the Spirit is the profit
of the community : CKaor™ Se SiSorai -q t^avepwa-i<s TOV TTveupja.TOi irph
TO <rvp.^epov (xu. 7). The Church is an organism of various
organs, in the midst of which the one Spirit moves, and each
organ of which it energizes for the health, development, and
efficiency of the whole.
It is in accordance with the sarae fundaraental law, that the
inspiration which constitutes the caU, endowment, and guidance
of the apostolic office is to be construed. When aU the cha
risms are bestowed (<S p.ev, SXXw 8e and erepw, 1 Cor. xii. 8) accord
ing to divine wisdom and grace, it follows norraally, and yet by
the sarae supernatural working, that God -will station " apostles "
in the Church (-n-pwrov diroo-ToXous, verse 28).
We find, then, in this chief passage, 1 Cor. xii.-xiv., aU the
essential elements of apostoUc inspiration — except the selective
act of Jesus with its accorapanying coramission — attributed to
the entire community of beUevers. Concerning these essential
elements we note the following truths : —
(1) The donative and distributive work of the divine Spkit
has its ground in the divine power, -wisdom, and grace. Looked
at from the side of divine omnipotence, the charisms are opera
tions (ivepyripara) of the One God who worketh all the effects hi
all who enjoy the charisms ; but they are charisms (xapiV/Aaro) or
dona gratiae, when looked at as flowing from the divine grace.

INSPIRATION OF THE COMMUNITY 189
(2) The work of inspiration has its final purpose in the
building-up of the Christian coramunity, and in the propaga
tion of the gospel. The charisms are also to be regarded as
BiaKoviai, or services, rendered primarUy to the Lord of the
Church (xii. 5), and secondarily to the community of believ
ers, for the good of which they are all to be regarded as work
ing (irpos TO <Tvp.<l>epov, versc 7). They are not, however, without
reference to the conversion of unbelievers and the extensive
growth of the Church (xiv. 22). Moreover, to set forth the
ethical final- purpose of these charisms is the large intent of
the figures of speech employed in these chapters. So also does
Paul designate repeatedly by the same word (piaKovLa) that
special service of Christ to the Church which consisted in his
own apostoUc office : as, e.g., Rora. xi. 13 ; 2 Cor. iv. 1, vi. 3 ;
1 Tim. i. 12 ; this word is also appUed to the apostolic office
in general. Acts i. 17, 25.
(3) The gifts of inspiration are, moreover, conditioned upon
peculiarities of personal history, so-caUed natural fitness, and
previous experience, in the individuals to whom they are dis
tributed ; and from this law, as weU as the preceding, the in
spiration of the apostles is not exempt. In the technical
Pauline sense the charisms are aU exceptional and extraordi
nary endowments, eximiae facultates, in which certain Chris
tians excel their feUow Christians (see Grimm's Lexicon).
(4) All the endowments and attainments, both mental and
moral, which belong in special and higher degree to the apos
tolic office as constituting its equipraent, so to speak, are rep
resented as distributed to the comraunity of believers ; if we
except the one fact of a personal caU and coramission from
Jesus Christ. The equipment for this office, so far as it con
sists in inspiration, is, therefore, one which differs in degree
only frora the equipment of non-apostolic men ; while the office
itself, being special and resting upon a personal call from the
Redeemer and a previous personal intercourse with hira, de
mands and possesses certain of these common charisras in the
highest degree. However we classify the gifts of the Spirit,^
1 Whether with Meyer, into three rigorous divisions, as, (a) charisms which
refer to intellectual power, (6) charisms which are conditioned on faith extraordi
nary, and (c) charisms which refer to the gift of tongues ; or better assert with
Alford only a kind of loose arrangement "occasioned by the falling together
of similar terms;" or even with De Wette resign all attempt at classification.
The power of tbe various miraculous signs, such as charisms of healings, kinds
of tongues, and in general the working of all kinds of miracles; the power

190 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
it is alike clear that those here described as belonging to the
comraunity of believers include in kind all the spiritual qualifi
cations belonging to the apostolic office itself. It is only the
fuller possession of these same qualifications which constitutes
the special endowment of apostles.
The bearing of the foregoing considerations upon our view
of the nature of the New Testament is obvious. For it is this
donative and distributive work of the Holy Spirit which lays
the foundations of the New-Testaraent Scriptures. This work
bestows upon certain men, speciaUy selected by Jesus, that
special, though not essentially peculiar, knowledge of the truth
by divine revelation, and that fitness by inspiration to manifest
the truth, which distinguish the apostolic office. And it is the
apostolic office which gives us the writings of the New Testar
ment. The inspired writings of the New Testament, therefore,
grow out of the inspiration of the coraraunity of believers
through the special forra which this inspiration took in the
case of the apostles. The inspiration which produces Christiau
Sacred Scripture is first of all, and in its specific characteristics,
a Christian inspiration ; it is then in the second place, and as a
matter of degrees, an apostolic inspiration. The divine Sphit
gives the New Testament -to the Church by giving to the entke
body of believers the various Christian charisras ; and among
those endowed with these charisras stand, first, apostles. Apos
tolic inspiration is for the sake of the Christian community: so
far as its leading subjective characteristics are concerned, it is
in and of this comraunity. In accordance with this view, the
apostolic office and its spiritual endowraent are ranked by the
Apostle Paul with the other Christian spiritual charisms (1 Cor.
xii. 28 f.; Eph. iv. 11).
The foregoing view is erabodied in the New-Testament use
of the terra irpo4n^Trjs. The truths, brought before us in the
claims of Old-Testament prophecy, are acknowledged in the
of supernatural insight as shown in prophecy, in the discernment of merely
alleged from real operations of the divine Spirit, and in the interpretation of
tongues; the penetration of the deeper mysteries of Christ's death, resurrection,
and glory (a-a-fiia), as well as the more logical and speculative unfolding of the
system of Christian truth (.yvCurn), together with aptness in discoursing upon the
contents of such wisdom and knowledge — are all provided for in the donative
and distributive work of the Spirit among the community of believers. Not
only the power, by the indwelling and energizing of this Spirit, to be aym and
irreufiaTwoi ethically considered, but also the power to be among the Ti\eM M re
spects the possession of divine -wisdom and knowledge with their faculties of
utterance, are not vouchsafed to apostolic men alone.

SPECIAL CALL OF THE APOSTLES. 191
application of this term by the writers of the New Testament
to the Hebrew prophets. But the term, as applied by the same
writers to inspired men of their own tirae, carries over many
of the ideas of the Old Testaraent into the New. We have
seen that under the ancient economy the gift of the Spirit was
to the holy nation through selected servants of Jehovah. In
accordance with this thought, Jesus himself may be reckoned
among the prophets (Matt. xui. 57; Luke vii. 16, xxiv. 19).
In the community of Christian beUevers, certain men are pre-
erainently acknowledged as Christian prophets. The truths
they reveal are such as concern the present ethical raanagement
of the Christian community (1 Cor. xiv. 3, 24 ff.), and such as
concern the future (Acts xi. 27 f., xxi. 10). Their naraes are
joined by the -writer of the Apocalypse (xi. 18, xvi. 6, xviii.
24) with the prophets of the Old Testament. Prophets and
apostles are so raentioned together (Luke xi. 49 ; 1 Cor. xii.
28 ; Eph. U. 20, in. 5, and iv. 11) as to show that the apostles
were all also prophets ; they were thus fitted for the execution
of- their coramission from Christ by an endowment whose gen
eral characteristics may be described as prophetic. This en
dowment is, therefore, essentially the same as that of other
prophetic men in both the Old Testaraent and the New.
The history of the Canon of the New Testaraent shows us
that apostoUc origin, either direct or indirect, is the acknowl
edged basis for asserting the inspiration and authority of New-
Testaraent writings. But the revelation and inspiration which
are clairaed and enjoyed by the apostles have already been shown
to be the sarae in kind with those of all believers. How, then,
are the apostles more authorized or better fitted than Christians
in general to make clairas in which may be laid the basis of our
right to caU the New Testament pre-eminently Sacred Scrip
ture ? In other words, how do the apostles so differ from their
Christian brethren that their -writings and teachings can be
corae, for all tirae, piUars of Christian faith ?
The answer to this inquiry raust take account of two impor
tant reasons for the specific and peculiar work of the apostles.
1. The apostles had a special call and coraraission from Jesus
in his personal selective act and coraraand ; they had, moreover,
a special fitness in their personal coraraunion with him, and in
their intimate knowledge of his life, death, resurrection, and
doctrine. The significance of the definite choice which Jesus
made of the apostles, and of the call which he issued to them,

192 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
can scarcely be over-estimated. This choice itself constitutes a
sufficient guaranty of their pre-erainent fitness to be the found
ers and prime teachers of the Christian Church. They were
chosen, not simply in the same way of providential guidance
and inner call in which, however clarified or made virid by
ecstatic vision, even the prophets of the Old Testament were
chosen: they were chosen by direct personal act of Christ.
Moreover, the personal instruction of Jesus developed their
natural fitness, and gave to them such a preparation for the
illumining of the Spirit as no others in history could possibly
have. To bring the inner meaning of his teaching before them,
and unfold it into the fulness of its truth, the Spirit of Christ
was promised to them.
Still further must we take into account that intimate knowl
edge of historical facts which was deeraed necessary for an
apostle (see Acts i. 21, -22, ii. 32, iii. 15), and which laid the
basis for his work as a witness of the gospel. Peter alludes to
this indispensable pre-requisite for the apostoUc office, when he
declares (Acts v. 32), " Both we and the Holy Spirit are wit
nesses of these things ; " ^ and so do the proraises of the Re
deemer recorded John xv. 26, 27, and Luke xxiv. 48, 49. The
witness divine and supernatural was conjoined -with the witness
which we may call raerely huraan and natural.
2. The apostles had a raore abundant endowment of the
sarae revelation and inspiration which belonged to Christians
in general. As " especially active organs of the Spirit," says
Schraid (p. 315), the apostles are placed in the front rank of
those endowed with the Spirit, and at the head of the develop
ment of the Church. The charism especially bestowed in
largest raeasure upon them, as teachers of the Church, is yvaxrif,
— the insight into the mysteries of the gospel. This acquisi
tion, by inspiration, of deep, pure, and true knowledge, of all
the truth of Christ, was not simply the product of one revela
tion : it was rather a growth resulting frora the successive reve
lations of the years spent in their office.
In accordance with the above-mentioned view of their office,
and of the nature of their fitness for it, do the apostles construe
their own claims. Yet it is by the validity of these claims that
the clairas of the New-Testament writings must be tested.
The Apostle Paul distinctly places himself in the position of
one especially called and commissioned of Jesus Christ, and
1 Ees quutenus narratur iS the significance of pw« bere.

SPECIAL CALL OF THE APOSTLES. 193
therefore endowed with a more abundant measure of the same
gifts of the Spirit which belonged to the entire body of beUev
ers. He thus lays with his own hand the foundation for that
regard winch the Christian world pays to his writings, as por
tions of Sacred Scripture. His call to the apostolic office he
finds in his conversion (Gal. i. 15 f.), but more definitely in his
subsequent ecstatic vision at Jerusalera. Both at the tirae of
his call, and subsequently, he received the indispensable endow
ment of revelation and inspiration which belonged to his office.
He had received the truth of the gospel, not frora any huraan
source, but through an inner disclosure (iv ipoi, Gal. i. 16) vouch
safed to him by the Redeemer (i. 11 f.). But, after having re
ceived this fundaraental truth in the spiritual self-disclosure of
Christ, he was by no means left without further and more dis
tinctive preparation for his apostoUc work. He avers (1 Cor.
ix. 1) that he has enjoyed the necessary preparation for becora
ing a witness of the Risen One ; he has seen Christ, and that
not siraply after the flesh (Acts xxii. 6 f. ; 1 Cor. xv. 8). Other
revelations in the manner of ecstatic vision he also claims
(2 Cor. xii. 1 ff.) to have received frora the Lord. Moreover,
the continuous indwelling of the divine grace was his well-
spring of inspiration in his apostoUc work (1 Cor. xv. 10, Eph.
iii. 2-9). The special faculty which he had received frora the
sarae source frora which Peter and the other apostles received
their call and endowraent (Gal. U. 8), had reference to his
special work of making known to the Gentiles the divine plan
of salvation by Christ (Eph. iii. 8 f.). The Divine Spirit had
stripped off the veil frora this divine plan, and had raade it
clear within the apostle's soul (Eph. iii. 3). Nor did he feel
V himself to be lacking in the special charisras which the one
Spirit distributed to the various raerabers of the Church (1 Cor.
xiv. 8 f.) Nor were his acts in connection with the teaching
of the gospel devoid of divine spiritual control." ^
The other apostles, like Paul, regarded themselves as espe
cially commissioned witnesses of the gospel, and clairaed to
have their preparation in a fuller divine revelation of its truth
than that given to non-apostolic Christians, and in a richer
1 The journey to Jerusalem, which from Luke's external point of view was
the result of a commission from the congregation at Antioch (Acts xv. 2), Paul
: from the point of view of his own consciousness knew to have been the result
of a divine disclosure of truth within himself (ii-oKoAui^/i!, Gal. ii. 2). In another
instance we have mention of a similar command given in a vision or dream
(Acts xvl. 9).
VOL. I. N

194 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
endowment of the charisms distributed by the Spirit of Christ.
They, however, received the contents of the truth they taught
in a manner more purely historical than Paul. In a different
manner from Paul had the Apostle John seen the glory of
the Lord, and received the grace which was given him in
ever-increasing fulness (John i. 14, 16). He could therefore
say, "What we have seen and heard we announce to you"
(1 John i. 1-4). The relation, however, in wliich the other
apostles stood to the Spirit of Christ was not essentially dif
ferent from that of Paul. They considered themselves, indeed,
as eye-witnesses of the life, death, and resurrection of him
who was the gospel (1 Pet. v. 1) ; they were thus esteemed hy
those who heard thera (Heb. ii. 3). But as witnesses, al
though they spoke that of which they had been historically
cognizant, they nevertheless referred these same contents of
truth, as inwardly received by them, to the Spirit of Christ as
their source. The apostolic announceraent of the contents of
revelation is specified by Peter (1 Pet. i. 12) as made by the
Holy Spirit (m/cv/tart dyiw); like prophecy, the preaching of the
gospel flows from the divine iUuraining and impelling power.
So, also, does John regard the apostolic doctrine which his
hearers had received, as a spiritual unction (1 John u. 27). In
the view of James (i. 18), the word of truth which forms the
contents of his message has life-giving power. We are taught
(1 Pet. i. 3) that the apostles had not merely witnessed, as nat
ural observers, the resurrection of Jesus ; but through it, as an
inner, living, and verifying power, they had been made partak
ers of a new divine life.
Especially in 1 Cor. ii. does the Apostle Paul consider certaui
contents of the apostolic teaching as a species of divine wisdom ,
(o-o<jf)ta) which was received by himself and the other apostles
through a divine work of revelation in their hearts. God
teaches such things to apostles by the Holy Spirit (verse 10) ;-
they have received this Spirit for the very purpose that they
raay the raore fully understand the gracious blessings of Mes
siah's kingdora (verse 12). The origin of the specifically
Christian truth is in the eternal divine wisdom. For this truth
is such as priraarily only God's Spirit can know (verse 11) ^
only those among men, therefore, who have received the Spu^it
and been taught by hira, only the ¦rrvevp.aTiKoi, can discern such
truth (verse 15). The limitation of these particular claims of
inspiration to the apostolic teaching is exegetically required by

SOURCE OF APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY. 195
the context, and especiaUy by the contrast introduced with the
Kal iyw of Ui. 1 between the ¦m/evp.anKoi, of whom Paul considers
himself one, and the v-i^inoi, with whora his hearers are classed.
But even in this passage, apostolic inspiration is not considered
as setting the apostles apart from the community of believers.
The possibUity that any beUever may come to belong to the so-
caUed TeXeioi and irvevp-aTiKoL is plainly adraitted (iii. 2) in the
words WTTW yap and dAA' ovSe hi vvv ; whUe the title of " spirit
ual " ones is elsewhere given by the apostle to his converts (see
Gal. vi. 1 ; PhU. iii. 15).
It is the claira of having received the gospel by revelation,
and of being divinely coraraissioned and supernaturally quick
ened and guided in its teaching, that gives rise to the tone of
confidence, and soraetiraes of coraraand, which appears in the
apostolic writings. Such a tone is especially to be distin
guished in the Epistles of Paul : it is not wanting, however, in
the earlier speeches of Peter (Acts ii. 14 ff. and x. 34 ff.).
Frequently, unhesitatingly, and even passionately, does the
great Apostle tn the GentUes aver his confidence in the abso
lute truth of the gospel which he teaches both in his speeches
and in his writings. The divine origin and authority of its con
tents are such, that not he hiraself, nor even an apparition from
heaven with its credible attestation of a new commission, is to
be beUeved in contradiction of these contents (Gal. i. 8 f.). All
the teachings of himself and of his helpers in the gospel (lyjuets),
as well as of the other chief apostles (ot Sokowtes (ttvXoi elvai), and
even of the lughest created messenger of Jehovah, are to be
tested, and rejected if not conformable to the truth of Christ,
on an appeal to the enlightened Christian consciousness. That
special form of the truth of Christ, which this apostle desig
nates as "my gospel " (evayyeXiov pov, Rom. xvi. 25), or, by asso
ciating hiraself with others of the same view, as " our gospel "
(evayyeXiov r/pwv, 1 Thess. i. 5), is a divine truth which his con
verts can implicitly trust (2 Thess. ii. 13) ; in it they are to
stand firm, whether they have learned its truth by oral preach
ing or by letter (2 Thess. ii. 15). Out of this central persua
sion of the truth of the gospel corae the tones of confidence
with which Paul admmisters the affairs of the churches in the
use of authority, as well as of advice, appeal, exhortation, and
entreaty. We note, however, a descending scale in the tones
of confidence as the raatters treated of becorae less intimately
related to the central truths of redemption.

196 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
And the above reraark introduces us to the following impor
tant inquiry : To what contents of the New-Testament writings
do the clairas of the apostles, as already defined, either directly
or indirectly apply ?
In the New Testament we frequently find the gospel, as
preached by the apostles, declared to be the word of God, and
endowed, therefore, with absolute authority and life-giving
power. As such it is able to save the soul (Jas. i. 21). The
truth which Paul had brought to the Thessalonians they justly
regarded as having the authority of a message from God (1
Thess. ii. 13). This figurative treatment of the oral gospel as
a divine personal potency reminds us of the Old-Testament
view of the word of Jehovah. The ascriptions of quality
raade to this " word of God " are a witness to the belief that
the contents of the gospel, whether as spoken or written, are
given by revelation through inspired raedia for the purposes of
ethical and religious life and culture. It is only these claims
for the word of God in the contents of the gospel as preached
by the apostles, which can be transferred to the writings of the
New Testaraent. As said Luther, " The Word is an eternal
divine power. For, although the voice or speech vanishes, yet
there remains the kernel, the understanding, the truth, thus
compressed as it were into the voice."
This word of God which is taught on apostolic authority
includes those doctrines, facts, and institutions which consti
tute integrant portions of the system of Christian truth,— the
so-called contents of faith. These contents are, however, con
sidered under different determining ideas by the four pillars of
the early Christian Church, and of its sacred virritings. The
main subject of teaching by the Apostle John is the life in
Jesus Christ ; by Paul the sarae subject is conceived rather in
its subjective and negative aspects as salvation (o-mn/pta) ; while
this salvation is looked upon by Peter as the goal of faith, and
by James as an attainment of ethical deliverance. Accordmg
to Schmid,^ the essential elements of the common apostolic
doctrine are the following : (1) The person of Jesus Christ as
the Lord : (2) The salvation and life which he has established
in opposition to the ruin of sin in the world ; and more particu
larly under this head of doctrine, (a) the fulfilling of the old
covenant which is contained in this salvation and life, (5). the
participation in this salvation and life by faith in Jesus Christ,
1 Theologie des Neuen Testamentes, pp, 353 ff.

APPLICATION OP THE APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY. 197
through a new birth from God, (c) the coraraunion of beUevers
in love, and (d) the perfecting of salvation by the corapletecl
revelation of Christ.
The further inquiry touching the extent of the New-Testa
ment writings to which the claims of apostolic authority and
inspiration raay be applied, is a twofold inquiry. This inquiry
has respect, in the first place, to the apostolic authorship of the
writings, either at first hand, or through the influence of apos
tolic teaching and fellowship upon non-apostolic raen. For
only so far as these writings are of apostolic origin, either
direct or indirect, can they claim to have the quaUties which
are the results of apostolic authority and inspiration. We
simply note in this connection, then, the decisive importance of
an historical and critical inquiry into the authorship of the
separate books, and into the nature of the Canon, in its effect
upon the claims of the New Testament to a place in Sacred
Scripture. It raay happen, however, that certain writings in
Sacred Scripture will have to rest their claims to their position
simply upon the basis of Christian inspiration, as distinguished
from the special coraraission and preparation of the apostles.
The second part of the inquiry has reference, however, not
to entire books as canonical or uncanonical, but to portions and
subdivisions of single -writings , or rather to certain kinds and
distinctions of contents which belong to all the writings.
The marked correspondence which has already been shown
between the promises made by Christ to the apostles, and the
claims raade by the apostles theraselves, affords a hint as to
the answer to the second inquiry. The clairas of the apostles
have reference to the sarae extent of contents to which the
proraise of the Redeeraer — t6 irvevpa -rijs aXijOelas oBr/yiQa-ei vp.a.'s £19
TTJV aXtjOeiav Traa-av — also applies. The arguraent for our last
stateraent lies, in part, in our past exaraination of the promises
and of the corresponding apostolic claims. To this arguraent
it is of no avail to object, that the inquirer cannot accurately
or safely distinguish, in one body of Sacred Scriptures, between
infalUble contents given by inspiration and other contents not
so given, or between contents of absolute truth and an iraperfect
form of conveying such contents. To all such objections the
reply must ever remain. We are bidden and bound to make
these distinctions by the very clairas of the New Testaraent
itself. To raake them may, indeed, be no easy raatter ; as it
is certainly not a matter to be rashly undertaken, or managed

198 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
wholly by an appeal to the vagaries of individual judgment.
But certain distinctions are forced upon us by the phenomena
of the New Testaraent, as well as erabodied in its very claims. '
To use the vrords of a little book now nearly two centuries old,
— but whose " vindication" of the inspiration and authority of
the Bible is, on the whole, much more reasonable and con
vincing than that of many raore pretentious subsequent works,
— we raay say with Lowth,i " Surely raen raay distinguish, if
they please, the raysteries of faith and the rules of practice,
from a cloke and parchraents, or a journey to Corinth." The
general assertion may at once be ventured, that imperfections
of memory, mistakes in fact, irapression, or opinion, errors in
judgraent on raatters of practical utility or as to the future of
affairs, and even as to ethical and religious views, — so far as
all these are not contents of that truth with reference to which
the apostolic clairas are made, — do not destroy, or essentially
disturb, the apostoUc claims.
In carrying into detail the distinctions just alluded to, three
classes of contents of the New-Testament writings have to be
taken into account. There are, first, those fundamental facts
and doctrines which are plainly taught in the writings as neces
sary eleraents of the truth of Christ. Of such facts and doc
trines a brief summary has already been given: upon them
we raust lay the stress of eraphasis in defining the doctrme
of Christian Sacred Scripture, for upon thera this Scripture
itself lays all the stress of its own eraphasis in asserting its
own clairas. There are, second, such aUeged facts of histori
cal, archseological, or scientific kind, and such opinions on sub
jects not distinctively ethical or religious, as obviously do not
affect the verity of those facts and doctrines which belong to
the first class. Such raatters cannot, in any sense, fitly be said
to belong to the contents of faith. And, third, there are the
matters of fact, and the inferences and derived views of doc
trine, which lie between the first two classes. The contents
of the third class raay thus be said to occupy middle ground ;
because, while we can by no means examine them with that
comparative indifference to the decisions of criticism which
belongs only to contents of the second class, neither can we
attach to their trustworthiness the sarae importance which is
due to the contents of the first class. As to the contents of
1 Vindication of the Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Old and NeT
Testaments. Reprint of London 1821.

THREE CLASSES OF NEW-TESTAMENT CONTENTS. 199
the third class, both the verdict of criticisra and the judgraent
of Christian consciousness raay oftentimes be much in doubt.
In order to present raore clearly the nature of the distinc
tions, in making which the contents of the New Testaraent
divide theraselves into these three classes, — viz., (1) the obvi
ously indispensable, (2) the apparently unimportant, and (3)
the important but not obviously indispensable, — the following
characteristic differences raust be observed : —
1. The three classes differ in their relations to the contents of
Christian faith. The first class coraprises the fundamental ele
ments of the Christian faith. To receive them is to receive also
the claims of the apostles to a commission for teaching them
authoritatively by revelation of Christ and in inspiration of the
Holy Spirit. To reject them is to reject the Christian system
of faith. The second class coraprises those contents of the
New Testaraent into the verity of which the inquiry is one of
criticism merely, and has no raanifest bearing whatever on this
system of Christian faith. The third class comprises those
contents about the relations of which to the system of faith
there may be reasonable debate araong inquirers alike accepting
this system ; and concerning the adoption of which into the
contents of faith there is needed inquiry, both critical and also
loyal to the truth of Christ.
2. The three classes differ as to the araount of evidence at
their coraraand. The contents of the first class coraraand all
the evidences of Sacred Scripture as tested by critical inquiry
and as approved by the Christian consciousness. The contents
of the second class can at raost only command such probable
evidence, favorable or unfavorable, as belongs to an ordinary
historical inqmry or judgraent on raatters of opinion. The
contents of the third class have, in the minds of different in
vestigators, alike critical and yet loyal to the truth of Christ,
different estimates of the weight of their evidence, as well as
different resulting conclusions respecting their credibility and
authority. 3. The three classes differ in the importance of the conclu
sions which are reached respecting them. This statement fol
lows directly from the two foregoing. It would, indeed, be
less toilsome, and to sorae rainds doubtless raore satisfactory
in laying the foundations of faith, if it were possible to apply
to every word and syllable, or at least to every verse, chapter,
and book, of the New Testament, with every stateraent of fact

200 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and inferred opinion, the same inflexible rule of uncritical ac
ceptance ; or if we could ascribe to all parts the same undoubted
credibility of divine origin and authority, and the same charac
teristics of utterance by the Holy Ghost. The facts, however,
as well as the clairas of the New-Testaraent writers, do not
perrait of this. The sarae Spirit who gave the New Testament
to the Christian Church has raade it necessary for the Church
to raake distinctions in its contents.
4. The three classes differ in regard to the nature of the
claims actually put forth for them by the writers of the New
Testament. For the contents of the first class, the claims to
divine origin, authority, and inspired utterance, are high, ex
press, and unequivocal. For the contents of the second class,
there is no appearance of any similar clairas. For the contents
of the third class, there is either no appearance of any similar
clairas, or else a stateraent or suggestion of raodified and lowei'
claims. We exaraine, then, in the light of the necessary distinctions;
certain contents of the New Testaraent belonging to the second
and third of these classes, together with the expressed or im
plied clairas which accompany them. The lofty and indubitable
clairas made for the contents of the first class have already been
examined, as well as the extent of such contents somewhat
loosely defined.
Different portions, although by no means relatively con
siderable, of the New-Testament -writings plainly belong to
the second class of contents. The salutations of Paul display,
indeed, his Christian brotherly love. His directions as to the
detaUs of his own temporal affairs (2 Tim. iv. 13 ; Philem. 22),
his friendly directions as to the affairs of others (1 Tim. v.
23), his arrangeraents for friendly intercourse m the work of
the gospel (Eph. vi. 21 f. ; Tit. iu. 12), are interesting and
helpful as revealing the raanhood of an inspired apostle ; but
to speak of such portions of Scripture as results of revelation
or inspiration, is to foist on thera a claim which is entirely
foreign to thera. Minor alleged raistakes of raeraory and in-
forraation in details of history, such as are found in the speech
of Stephen, and frequently in the Synoptic Gospels, have no
relation to the clairas of apostoUc inspiration. Nor are such
clairas affected by the recorded errors in judgment regarding
his own future made by St. Paul. If he promises (Rom. xv.
24) to visit Rorae by the way in an expected journey to Spain)

MISTAKES OF JUDGMENT AND FACT. 201
or records (1 Cor. xvi. 7 and 2 Cor. i. 16) his purpose to pass
through Corinth either when going to or returning from Mace
donia, or both, and then changes the purpose, or is prevented
from its accoraplishraent ; the record of these intentions is no
more to be pronounced inspired than the fact of their change
interpreted to the prejudice of the author's inspiration — unless,
indeed, he is guUty of that immoral levity the charge of which
he distinctly denies (2 Cor. i.). Neither the original nor the
altered plan is, to be sure, formed by an inspired apostle with
that disregard of divine guidance which belongs to the carnal
heart (Kara a-dpKa, 2 Cor. i. 17) ; but the announcement of neither
is, provided he be cleared of raoral faultiness in raaking it, a
matter for special divine control. Nor is it the sphere for the
inworking of the Divine Spirit always to reveal to an apostle the
exact truth as to his o-wn future, not even when his impressions
are to be recorded in Sacred Scripture. Thus Paul announces
(Acts XX. 25) his probably mistaken confidence that none of his
converts would see lus face again. He announces elsewhere
other undoubting convictions which were destined to turn out
erroneous. He records also the changes of his raind from expec
tation to despair of deliverance out of the Roman prison. Apos
toUc conjecture as to individual destiny, even when recorded
in Sacred Scripture, may manifest the same dependence upon
human freedom for its confirmation or disappointraent which
was left to many of the predictions of the Old Testament.
The companions of Paul did not regard the prediction of one
acknowledged by themselves as a prophet, even when raade
with a " Thus saith the Holy Ghost," as debarring them from
the right of taking measures to prevent the fulfilraent of this
very prediction. (See Acts xxi. 10 ff.)
The remarkable, but perfectly human, vacillations of mem
ory which the apostle not only experiences, but also records in
Sacred Scripture (1 Cor. i. 14 ff.), do not prejudice his clairas
to inspiration. Thus he recollects, first, that he baptized at Cor
inth only Crispus and Gains; then, perhaps rerainded by Ste
phanas at his elbow, recollects also the household of Stephanas ;
and finally, lest he might be mistaken in even this corrected
restriction, declares that he does not remember whether he did
not baptize others also. The contents of raeraory and of Sacred
Scripture alike lie, in tliis case, outside of the clairas of inspi
ration. The slip of memory by which he writes (1 Cor. x. 8)
the number 23,000 for 24,000 is scarcely to be ascribed to in-

202 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
spiration. Surely the mind of an apostle might waver upon
such raatters without being supernaturally aided, and also with
out prejudicing its divine enUghtenment upon aU matters in
cluded in the proraise of Christ.
Contents of the second class are found abundantly in the
minor historical discrepancies of the Synoptic Gospels. The
extent of such contents is, however, relatively much more re
stricted in the New Testament than the Old. The writings of
apostolic origin, direct and indirect, are quite strictly confined
to deaUng with the contents of faith. The extent of contents
covered by the claims of apostolic inspiration in the New
Testaraent is, then, relatively rauch greater than that covered
by the claims of prophetic inspiration in the Old.
Of the application of the apostolic claims to the third class
of contents in the New-Testaraent writings, it is often difficult
to speak with confidence. On the line between the second and
third classes we raay consider as situated such passages as 2
Cor. xi. Of the contents of this passage the author himself
declares : " What I am saying, I am saying not after the mind
of the Lord, but as it were in folly (verses 17, 21), and even
speaking as one out of his senses (23), and after the manner
of the flesh (18)." We most gratefully receive the biographical
notices of this noble servant of Christ thus providentially pre
served ; we sympathize raost heartUy with his attempt to vindi
cate the dignity and efficiency of his labors in the gospel, and
admire the splendid record of services here raade. But we can
scarcely contradict his own distinct disclairaer of the quality
of theopneusty, in the stricter sense, for these words. Gladly
would we bear with our adrairable apostle, were his boastings
more lofty and lengthy, since they are well-founded and well-
meant, and since Providence has borne -with them in Sacred
Scripture. But what profit is it to them, or to our doctrine,
to deny the very clear distinction, as to origin and authority,
between such writings and the written declaration of God's
condescension in Christ ? For, although we heartily accept the
testiraony of the apostle, that he is on this occasion, as habitu
ally else-»vhere, speaking like one who has the truth of Christ
in him (verse 10), and can therefore use no unchristian giule;
and although we understand his stateraent, that he is here
indulging the impulses of that part of huraan nature which is
sensuous, psychically limited, and opposed to the Divine Spint
(verse 18), as only ironically concessive : nevertheless we can-

CHRIST'S COMMAND AND PAUL'S JUDGMENT. 203
not fail to admit on his own testimony the radical difference, as
related to apostolic inspiration, between the contents of this
passage and the contents of the Christian faith. For that
which he utters "not after the Lord," but "after the flesh"
(ov KaTo. Kvpiov and KaTa r^v adpKa), we caiiuot claim the guaranty
of the promises of Christ. Nor can we regard it as a matter of
revelation and inspiration, in the same sense in which these
words apply to the subject of those proraises. Paul writes
these words in a kind of divinely perraitted concession to the
lowness of his hearers' views ; but he disclaims for them the
high theopneustic character that belonged to the words in
which he was wont to present the truth of Christ.
Essentially simUar, and so coming under the same class, yet
with distinguishing differences, are the contents of 1 Cor. vii.
In determining the relations of the sexes as to raarried life for
the early churches in general, and especially for the church in
Corinth, Paul recognizes the fact, thaty although his judgment
is entitled to acceptance as the judgment of an inspired apostle,
he cannot claim for it the same assurance which is to be claimed
for the express teaching of the Redeeraer. The distinction
here called for is not that between the words of an apostle
when inspired, and the words of the same apostle when not
inspired: it is rather a distinction between those contents of
truth which are indubitably taught by Jesus, and coraraitted
for subsequent teaching to inspired apostles, and those other
contents of truth which are raixed with possible error, since
they carae by reraoter inferences from the truth of Christ, and
were given in the trustworthy yet faUible judgments of the
apostles. This distinction involves a difference between the
two classes of contents : (1) as to the source of their declara
tion : (2) as to the raanner of making the declaration ; and (3)
as to the relation of the declaration to the contents of faith.
(1) Certain judgments of the Lord upon the raarriage relation
have been delivered to the Church ; these constitute the infal
lible and perraanent contents of truth in the cases involved.
Certain other judgraents are given as coming from Paul hira
self, though frora hira as one who has obtained raercy by the
Lord to be faithful (verse 25), and who justly supposes that he,
as well as others, has the Spirit of God to direct and enlighten
his judgment (40). The source of judgraent in the one case is
his own inspired but not infallible " subjectivity : " the source
in the other case is the infalUble objective word of Christ

204 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
(Meyer). On the basis of this word, as it is found recorded
(Matt. V. 31 f., and xix. 3-9), the coramand of the Lord to
the Corinthians is contrasted with the judgraent for them of the
Apostle Paul (vu. 12, 25). (2) The truth, frora its source in
the word of the Lord, is the subject of express commandment:
disobedience to this is disloyalty to Christ. The supposed
truth coraing from the inspired judgment of the apostle is a
matter of concession, recoraraendation, or even of command on
apostolic authority. Therefore the manner of declaring the
word of the Lord differs from the manner of announcing the
judgment of the inspired apostle.^
(3) The differences of source and raanner in the two declara
tions of doctrine indicate the difference of relation to the con
tents of faith. What the Lord has taught, whether as knowl
edge of the raysteries of salvation, or as ethical principles for
the control of the practical life, belongs to the necessary con
tents of faith ; it cannot be doubted or abrogated. For the
denial of the objective word of Christ upon the truths of re-
deraption and the redeeraed life, in any portion or application
of it, involves an unchristian attitude toward the Lord himself.
Inspired apostles, when teaching the truths which they receive
from the words of the Lord, and which are disclosed withm
them by revelation of the Holy Ghost, and taught by them
under the special divine impetus and afflatus, speak and write
as the Lord hiraself. But when giving judgraent and making
inferences, they, although not without inspiration, do not have
the same claim to certainty and infallibility for the contents of
their teaching as when declaring the truth of Christ.
We do not, then, impair the apostolic clairas to inspiration,
or reraove any thing from the basis of Sacred Scripture, when
we discover that these judgments of Paul in 1 Cor. vii. bear
unmistakable signs of being, in several respects, of a purely
human kind. We distinguish, then, in this one passage : («)
certain unequivocal declarations of the mind of Christ once de
livered for the perpetual guidance of the Church ; (h) certaui
wise teachings of an inspired apostle, the acceptance of which
was ethically best for those to whom he wrote ; and (c) certain
erroneous opinions, the rejection of the practical application of
which was best for the same persons. Among these last may
we class the opinions and preferences expressed in verses 1, 7,
1 See verses 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, — where, with l^tl ipa, the apostle argues hia
judgment, and also with the question of verse 16, — 25, 35, 38, 40.

INSPIRATION AND SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION. 205
8, 26, 38, 40 ; opinions and preferences into which the apostlo
was led by his erroneous irapression as to the nearness of the
Second Coraing, but which he was divinely prevented frora lay
ing upon the Church in the burdensome form of express apos
tolic commands.
And, as to apostolic doctrine touching the parousia in gen
eral, we have to distinguish between contents of the first class
and contents of the class now under discussion. We have to
distinguish between the truth of the doctrine of the parousia,
as Jesus coraraitted it to them for their teaching, and those
erroneous impressions as to its time, which soraewhat colored
their conceptions and instructions with respect to the forra of
the doctrine. It is to be noted, however, that there is a very
wide difference, in the effect upon clairas to divine authority,
between teaching a false view as a raatter of express doctrine,
and teaching the true doctrine in a manner colored by an
erroneous view. This difference is one which has to be ad
raitted in the interpretation of the predictive parts of Old-
Testaraent prophecy-: it cannot be altogether disraissed when
considering the predictive parts of the New Testament.
To the third class of contents belong also the apparent mis
conceptions as to the primary and historic meaning of passages
quoted from the Hebrew Scriptures by the -writers of the New
Testament ; and as well, the aUeged rabbinical uses of these
Scriptures. The ethical and religious eleraents of truth, con
tained in the ancient writings, are discerned by the apostles
through the work of that sarae Holy Spirit by whom such
elements were originally given to the prophets. They belong
to the first class of contents, — the class to which the apostolic
clairas raost fully apply. But many questions of Old-Testa
ment hermeneutics and criticism may doubtless be raised to the
prejudice of the irapUed apostoUc views upon such questions.
The inspiration given to the apostles furnishes thera with no
claim to the title of infallible interpreters and critics ; it does
not promise an unfailing intuition of the facts upon all the
grararaatical, historic, geographical, and archseologieal inquiries,
involved in scientific interpretation. Their views upon critical
inquiries, so long as their doctrine remains accordant with the
great central facts and truths of the gospel, can constitute at
most only contents of Sacred Scripture belonging to the third
class. It cannot be denied, however, that the work of separat
ing those truths which the inspired intuition of the apostles

206 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
discerned in the Old Testament from the erroneous views which
they had upon matters of criticism, often cuts very deep. The
apostles did not pay the sarae regard to limits in interpretation,
to accuracy of definition and care in research, which are de
raanded of us. This fact is due to their historical position and
to the nature of their work. It does not, however, invalidate,
it rather raagnifies, the significance of their claims to divine
insight into the substantial truth of the Hebrew Scriptures, in
its witness to, and connections with, the truth of the gospel.
Their fallible impressions as to critical questions are matters
of human inheritance : their insight into the one great truth,
with its varied forms of manifestation, is a raatter of divme
gift. They claira the divine gift : we cannot altogether disclahn
the fallibility of the irapressions.
The inquiry into the extent of the New Testament which is
covered by the apostolic claims to revelation and inspiration
leads us, then, to distinguish several classes of contents. To
two of these classes the clairas apply, either with entire and
strictest cogency, or only with secondary and derived force.
To that class, however, whose relations to the contents of
Christian faith are most remote, we can discover no intention
at all that these claims should apply.
To further objections against the foregoing distinctions we
may propose this inquiry: When we are providentially com
pelled in our use of all Sacred Scripture, aud in our estimate
of its nature, to raake so raany other distinctions, why not
make these also ? If we distinguish, by acts of judgment and
means of research, between canonical and uncanonical books,
between genuine and spurious texts, between true and false
interpretations and applications, why may we not distinguish
between essential contents of faith and contents only remotely
connected with the system of faith, or between elements of
absolute divine truth and other elements of human weakness
and error ?
Besides the claims which the New-Testament writers make
as to contents of truth, certain other clairas raust be exanuned
which apply more directly to the form of uttering these con
tents. The use of the words "i3T and prjpa, and of the other cognate
words and terms in the Old Testaraent and in the New, forms
in itself no sure basis for any theory of verbal inspiration, ^¦
gestio verborum, or even divine guidance in verbal forms. These

VERBAL INSPIRATION OF THE APOSTLES. 207
words and terms in Scripture have that concrete significance
which requires that the attributes ascribed to them should be
understood as belonging to the contents of truth which they
hold. Of this statement we have already had sufficient proof,
especially in the chapter on Prophetism. But the reraarkable
phenoraena of the language of Sacred Scripture, as well as cer
tain special claims made by the writers of the New Testament,
require further recognition. The phenomena of language will
be examined in their place. The clairas of the apostolic writers
to a certain inspiration in the expression of truth are not
numerous, but they are decisive.
In a raeasure at least — so we are inforraed — the words of
apostolic teaching, as well as the truth they convey, are in
spired. Not only is the reception of the contents of Christian
truth, the a-o<^ia and yvwa-K of the gospel, declared (1 Cor. xii.
8) to be the subject of inspiration, but also the utterance of
this truth, the Xoyos o-o^tas and the Xo-yos yvwa-ewq. All these
charisms, however, are represented as distributed to the cora
raunity of believers. In this very passage, inspired speech in
declaring the contents of the gospel, even in its highest-known
degrees, is attributed to the coraraunity of believers. Such
verbal inspiration is the charisra of skUl in choosing the forras
of utterance in which to present the truth of Christ. It be
longed to Stephen, Apollos, and raany others besides the apos
tles ; yet it belonged in unusual degree to the apostles as a part
of their necessary endowraent for their special work.
As containing a definite claim to divine inspiration for the
forms of speech in which the contents of truth taught by the
apostles were uttered, 1 Cor. ii. is the locus classicus : to such
an extent, indeed, is this true, that the passage has been made
almost the sole basis for a distinctive theory of inspiration.^
In this passage Paul, according to his custora, bases his claira to
authority for the apostolic teaching upon the fact that its con
tents of truth have been revealed within the apostles by the
Holy Spirit (verse 12). The apostles have within thera "the
intent and disposition of Christ" (Alford) ; or rather, they are
possessors of the intelligence of Christ, whose iraraanency is
such that " their vovs is no different spiritual faculty from the
voSs Xpto-ToS " (Meyer). Such knowledge it is not possible to
receive through the avenues of the senses (verse 9) ; nor can it
1 See Atwell's Pauline Theory of the Inspiration of Holy Scripture, London,
1878,

208 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
be possessed at aU by the man who is governed by senses, appe
tites, and sensuous desires. Indeed, no uninspired man can
have this knowledge (verse 14) ; since both its source and its
object are in the recesses of the being of God, who reveals it
only to the " spiritual " (-TrvevpaTiKoi) by his Holy Spirit (verse
10). Among such "spiritual" ones does the Apostle Paul
reckon hiraself to be nurabered. This knowledge, thus derived
by revelation, has its appropriate forras of speech, which are
both negatively and positively designated. Negatively desig
nated, they are in contrast with the excessive show of rhetoric
and logic with which the teachers of huraan philosophy per
suade their pupils to their views (verses 1, 4). Positively
designated, they are raarked by that pre-erainent adaptation of
the forras of speech to the contents of knowledge, which Paul
and the other apostles were wont to exhibit (ii. 13). Spiritual
forras of speech were fitted by these speakers and writers to
spiritual contents of truth. Nor were those simple and unpre
tentious forms of speech in which the apostles presented to
their hearers the riches of divine grace in Christ, themselves
a rhetorical invention of the speakers. The speakers were
taught to use such forras of speech by the sarae Holy Spffit
who revealed to thera the contents of truth (verse 13). This
claira of inspiration, in adapting the language to the contents
of truth, corresponds not only to the first irapression made
upon us by reading the apostolic speeches and epistles, but also
to the deeper and raore intelligent conviction which is reached
through critical investigation of the verbal characteristics of
the. New Testaraent.
The above claim is not, however, the claim to a divine and
infallible suggestio verborum which covers the entire contents of
the New Testament. In general, the apostles seem to have laid
no stress upon the precise words of either their oral or written
teaching. The phenomena of their language, as well as their
free handling of the language of the Old Testaraent, prove our
stateraent true. From such a theory of verbal inspiration,
moreover, we are excluded by those limitations of the claim
which are iraplied in this very passage. For, first of all, the
claira is one which raay be made by any Christian who has
attained a certain rank (that of a TrvevpariKO's) in the things oi
Christ. All such believers speak a substantially similar lan
guage, in which the spiritual forms of utterance are adapted
to the spiritual truths uttered. Moreover, this claim is here

VERBAL INSPIRATION OF THE APOSTLES. 209
limited to the subject in hand, which is designated as the mys
teries of the blessings of Messiah's kingdom. The speakers are
also represented as reaUy using such spiritual forms of speech as
their own ; though in respect to the differences which separate
them from the embellishments of rhetorical artifice, and so make
them worthy of the name spiritual, such forras of speech are
also of divine origin. This ascription of divine origin to the
spiritual language of the New Testament does not exclude
the historic processes whicli have formed this language : it rather
includes them. Nor does it exclude the personal preparation
of their speech which the apostles made by reflection, nor
their personal peculiarities in the use of this divinely taught
form of utterance.^
Especially must we insist upon the truth that the inspired
characteristics of apostoUc forms of speech are primarily ethi
cal characteristics ; they are those characteristics by virtue of
which the speech is caUed spiritual. The claim of inspiration
in expression has, then, no relation whatever to other portions
of New-Testaraent -writings than those the contents of which
are distinctively spiritual. In accordance -with this view we
find Paul (Eph. vi. 19) asking prayer that the morally right
kind of utterance might be divinely bestowed upon hira for
fitly making known the mysteries of the gospel.
As in the case of the Old Testaraent, so in that of the New,
we find little said by the authors as to the characteristics of
their work in writing. With the Hebrew prophet, the im
mediate proclamation of his raessage from Jehovah was most
absorbing ; -with the apostles, the oral preaching of the gospel.
Yet the inference by which we pass from the claims of the
apostoUc preaching to those of apostolic writing is iraraediate
and complete. The inference by which we pass from apostoUc
clairas, or from claims common to Christians in general, to
writings adjudged sacred by the Church, as bearing the marks
of apostolic influence, or as being otherwise the results -of
Christian as distinguished from apostolic inspiration, is more
indirect and incomplete. By such inferences, however, are
we, for the most part, compelled to transfer these recorded
clairas of the apostles to the writings of the New Testaraent.
The different claims of the apostles apply to all that written
instruction in the truth of Christ, Kar iiox^v, which comes from
1 These elements are, indeed, confessed in the use of the word SiSaxrois. (See
Meyer's comment on the passage.)
VOL. I. 0

210 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the apostles at first hand. They are also indirectly applicable
to every other simUar writing which has the impress of apos
tolic influence, and according to the manifest degree of that
influence. So much of these claims as belongs to the Christian
comraunity in general may be applied to still other writings of
the New Testament.
We find, accordingly, certain expressions of confidence in the
divine origin and authority of apostolic teaching that have refer
ence directly to the writings in which the expressions occur.
The form of address in the Epistles sometimes expresses this
confidence. Paul writes as he preached ; he -writes, that is, as
a called apostle of Jesus Christ who has a special commission
with respect to the gospel (Rom. i. 1 ; 1 Tim. i. 1). Nor is the
claim which is involved in the written title abated by his asso
ciating others with him in his formula of address (2 Cor. i. 1 ;
Gal. i. 2 ; 1 Thess. i. 1 ; 2 Thess. i. 1). The writer of 1 Pet. i. 1
also designates himself an apostle in the heading of the Epistle,
and thus shows his design to stamp its contents -with apostolic
authority. Certain asseverations of di-vinely imparted veracity
in declaring the truth of Christ apply especiaUy to that truth
as declared in apostolic writings. The assertion of Paul (Rom.
ix. 1) that he speaks the truth in Christ, and -with a spiritually
enlightened conscience, applies, indeed, only to the following
declaration of his self-sacrificing interest in the welfare of his
nation : it is an example, however, of his entire ethical attitude
toward all raatters of siraUar concern. In the same Epistle
(xv. 15 f.) he ascribes to his di-vinely bestowed apostoHc office
the boldness with which he had -written portions of it. Else
where (1 Cor. xiv. 37 f.) he clairas for the contents of prac
tical truth which he has just written to his converts the lofty
title of a coramandment of the Lord. Upon these written
words of his, Paul "here stamps the seal of apostolic authority,
and upon this seal Christ raust stand " (Meyer). The Christian
ethical rules which he lays down in his First Epistle to the
Thessalonians, he declares (iv. 2-8) are not to be practically ,
rejected ; since the source of their contents is God, who has the
right to coraraand the law of duty, and who has given his Holy
Spirit for the keeping of the sarae law. Another injunction in
an Epistle (2 Thess. iii. 14) he enforces by bidding the church
to withdraw their fellowship from those who disobeyed it.
From the nature of the case, the writings of the New Testa
ment, unlike those of the Old, find no recognition iu the Bible

THE APOSTOLIC ORDINANCE INSPIRED. 211
ilself as Sacred Scripture, by the application to them of this
title in its technical signification. The term ai ypa^at in 2 Pet.
iU. 16 presumably includes certain writings of the New Testa
raent which are here, by the very designation, placed in a
certain sense upon a par with the sacred Hebrew writings.^
They thus receive recognition as sources of reUgious doctrine ;
and this recognition forras a kind of anticipatory pledge of the
fuller recognition given thera in the formation of the Canon
of the New Testament. The writer of this passage, raoreover,
definitely refers to certain epistles -written, according to the
wisdom given to him, by " our Taeloved brother Paul," and co
ordinates them -with the rest of the Scriptures. But we cannot
answer the questions : To what epistles of Paul is reference
here made ? and. How many and what other -writings of the
New Testament were then extant, or beginning to be received
as authoritative Scripture? Nor does 1 Tim. v. 18, where the
customary phrase ^ ypatjir] \eyei is foUowed by two quotations, —
one from Deut. xxv. 4, and the other apparently from Luke x.
7, — recognize as Scripture the Third Gospel. To a citation
from Scripture the apostle simply adds the quotation of a
proverb, which was used by Jesus hiraself because it expressed
the same thought as the citation.
The nature of that revelation and inspiration which belonged
to the apostolic office, and also the nature of that inference by
which we pass from apostolic clairas to writings only derived
frora apostles at second-hand, are Ulustrated by Acts xv. 23 ff.
(compare xxi. 25 f.). No apostolic ordinance could have been
more binding for a time than the epistle sent forth from the
so-caUed CouncU of Jerusalem. It was, perhaps, composed by
James, as the occurrence of the word xotp"" in its superscription
has been taken to indicate. Its contents are declared to be
injunctions which seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to the
apostles. Yet they are given in epitome as a matter rather of
historical information, and not in a form to convey to their record
the claims which belong only to the injunctions themselves.
The Synoptic Gospels, those wonderful pictures of the person
1 The reference of ac ypaijiai in this passage to the Hebrew Scriptures alono
cannot be maintained. The adjective Aoi^rai co-ordinates the writings of Paul
with other writings more closely resembling his than would be the case, in the
mind of the author of Second Peter, with the Scriptures of the law and the
prophets. Such a co-ordinating of the work of living men with the canonical
books of the Old Testament would require a more definite expression of their
common category. (See the comment of Huther.in Meyer's Handbuch, in loco.)

212 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and life of Jesus, upon which rests so largely the system of
Christian faith, make no direct claims to a place in Sacred
Scripture ; nor do they exhibit the tokens of any consciousness
of inspiration in their authors. Their most cogent claim to the
title of Sacred Scripture comes from the nature of theu con
tents, which are fragments of the apostolic teaching concerning
Jesus as Messiah and Saviour ; their claim to inspiration on the
part of their authors comes from the manner in which these
contents ^re set forth. The prologue of Luke discloses, in part,
the author's method of composition and his general relations to
his material. He recognizes two sources of this material, the
one of ,pripiary and the other of secondary authority (viz., those
who are the subject, of the verb -n-apeSoa-av, and the ¦n-oXXoi); and
he proposes to himself to improve upon the preceding accounts
in respect, to completeness (Trao-tv), accuracy (dxpi^Ss), and ar
rangement (Ka^e^s).! He has apparently no consciousness of
any special divine guidance in his purpose to -write the Gospel,
and, no expectation of inspiration in the execution of his pur
pose.^ None the less may the very purpose of the Evangelist
to write his complete, accurate, and orderly Gospel, be consid
ered as a gift from God. And the absence of the prophetic or
apostolic consciousness of receiving the Spirit raay make the
execution of his work in historical composition aU the more
trustworthy, since the place of such conscious inspiration is
taken by the conviction that the success of his enterprise
-will depend largely upon his ovm efforts.
At the iclose of the Fourth Gospel (xx. 30, 31) the author
gives us iraportant and direct information respecting the nature
of his literary work. His words imply that in his composition
he had raade a selection of certain portions from a large amount
of avaUable material, and that this selection had been made
upon the ¦ ground of a given principle which was distinctly
present to his self-consciousness. His testimony as to the
large number of acts and sayings of Jesus extant at that
time, accords -with the contents of -the other Gospels, and -with
the other indications of history. Of those deeds of Christ
which were pre-eminently signs (miraculous tokens by which
God produces confidence and authority for his messengers), and
1 See an article by the author in the Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. xxvi. p.212f.; and
Holtzmann, Die Synoptischen Evangelien, Leipzig 1863, pp. 206 f., and 246 f.
^ The use of the words eSofe Ka>oi, as Meyer says, " sohliesst an sich die Inspira
tion weder aus noch ein; " but the et Spiritui JSanotoot some late MSS. renders the
following clatise au absurdity (AJfoid).

THE CLAIMS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 213
which were known to hira on account of his apostolic connec
tion with the Redeeraer, he had chosen only a part. Of his
own preparation frora the Divine Spirit for this work of selec
tion, the -writer, as becoraes one having a calra confidence in his
apostolic caUing and dignity, raakes no raention ; but we raay
indubitably assume that such preparation was given him in
accordance with the promise of his Lord. Moreover, the final
purpose of this portion of Sacred Scripture, as we are informed
by the -writer, was constantly and self-consciously before him in
the work of composition. That purpose was to produce the
faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and to im
part the salvation which consists of life in his name. In this
respect also, the -writer is placed in self-conscious accord with
the pronuses of Christ ; in accord also with that view of Sacred
Scripture which lays the emphasis upon its etliical qualities,
and which raakes its inspiration consist primarily in fitting the
soul of the author to apprehend truly, and comprehend firraly
and broadly, the raoral and religious contents of revelation.
Thus are we led by the stateraent of an apostle back to the
position frora which we began our exaraination of the clairas of
the Bible. The doctrine of Sacred Scripture, so far as deter
mined by the tenable claims of the -writings theraselves, begins
and ends with the person and word of Jesus Christ. His word
authenticates, his proraises aver, his Spirit produces, the reality
of those revelations of di-vine truth and of that presence of
the divine afflatus in human souls upon which this doctrine
must rely for its support. Nor are we shaken from this position
by the unique claims of the writer of the Apocalypse ; who, in
a composition reminding us strongly of Ezekiel and Daniel,
declares that he received the contents of his prophetic vision at
the fourth remove, so to speak, from their original divine source.
The things of the near future which he discloses, God gave
as a revelation to Jesus Christ, who signified thera by sending
through his angel to his servant (Rev. i. 1); the witness of the
writer, is, therefore, of the word of God and of the testimony
of Jesus Christ.

We are now in position, as the result of critical and exegeti
cal research, to draw certain conclusions regarding the nature
of Sacred Scripture as a whole, so far as its nature can be
determined by the claims, either direct or indirect, which are

214 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
found) within the Bible itself. The clairas which belong more
particularly to the different portions of Sacred Scripture, or to
the different divisions under which we have conducted the
general examination, have already been indicated in sufficient
detail. 1. The loftiest and most convincing claim which the writmgs
of the Bible make to the title of " the Sacred Scriptures " (at
ypa<j)al KaT iioxi^v) arises from the relation in which they place
themselves to the person and work of Christ. WhUe, on the one
hand, his infalUble word authenticates the divine origin and
permanent authority of the Old Testament, and his unfailmg
promises lay the basis for ascribing a like origin and authority
to the New Testament , on the other hand, both the Old Testa
ment and the New authenticate his word, declarative and pro
phetic, as the very truth of the very Son of God. The book
witnesses to the person ; the person sanctifies the book.
It is this sarae correlation between a book and a person which
constitutes both the organic unity of the Bible and the com
pleteness of that view of Christ which is given to the Church
through the Bible. It is also this correlation which, more than
any thing else, both embodies and evinces the divine origin and
authority of the Sacred Scriptures, so far as they are, either in
law, type, prophecy, history, or express doctrine, a -witness to
Jesus as the Christ. But by no means all Scripture puts forth
or possesses, in equal degree, this pre-erainent proof of its vahd
claira to the appropriate titles (ayios, lep6?, and OeoirvevcrToi). The
proof which the Old Testament in general exhibits dififers widely
from that exhibited in the New. The Messianic truth of the
Old Testament is found there as the higher development^ of
every organisra are, so to speak, contained in its lower stages.
Between the two Testaraents there is, with respect to the truth
of Christ, an identity of absolute contents and an analogy of
forra ; so that the form of the Old Testament covers these
absolute contents, while it is also typical of the form in which,
in the New Testaraent, the absolute contents are uncovered or
revealed. Considerable portions of the Old Testament, how
ever, neither put forth, nor, so far as we have any evidence m
the Bible, possess, any claim whatever to belong to tliis body ot
Messianic truth. Such portions can never attain, then, to that
position, as respects the doctrine of their origin and authontyi
which belongs only to this body of truth. Certain relatively
small portions of the New Testament stand only in remote and

SUMMARY OF THE BIBLICAL CLAIMS. 215
uncertain connections with the truth of Christ ; the closeness
of the connection of each portion with this truth (kot iioxnv)
cannot fail to influence our view of its origin and authority.
The chief witness of the Bible to its own divine origin and
authority is its own witness to the Redeemer ; the witness of
the Redeemer to the divine origin and authority of the Bible
is given to the Bible, in so far as it is a faithful witness to
himself. 2. The same origin, authority, and value cannot be ascribed, on
the basis of its own claims, to all portions of the Bible alike.
The distinctively Messianic contents, whether given in the form
of an ethical and religious preparation for Messiah, or of pro
phetic truth which announces beforehand the things of his king
dom, or of apostolic teaching which proclaims and administers
the gospel of his kingdom, put forth certain claims that distin
guish them from the remaining contents. This distinction ap
plies to the origin, the authority, and the value of different por
tions of the one body of Sacred Scripture. Of certain contents
of truth scripturaUy fixed in the Bible, the origin by revelation
from God through selected and specially inspired messengers
can be maintained upon the ground of the claims of its writers
and teachers, including Christ hiraself. Of certain other con
tents we can only say, that they are the product of such huraan
reflection and research as have received, in greater or less
degree, the divine iUumining through the truths and ideas
current at the time of their expression. Of certain others
still, we can say that they make and evince no claim to
being in any degree truths of revelation and inspiration, prop
erly so called. These various contents have necessarUy, there
fore, different degrees of authority and value. And to assert
for the whole body of Sacred Scripture the sarae derivation by
revelation and inspiration, or the sarae forraative authority and
constructive value, is to advance clairas contrary to the whole
tenor of Scripture itself.
3. The one claim to the title " Sacred Scripture," which is
most generally applicable to the writings of the Bible, is, so far
as appears from the views of its own teachers and authors, the
claim that arises from the nature of their contents. The highest
form of this claim is, as we have already remarked, that which
is made for those portions of Scripture which hold contents of
Messianic truth. But we may also say that the Bible through
out claims to hold, scripturaUy fixed, the contents of divme

216 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
revelation made to the community of believers on the basis of
a divine covenant with them. The central part of the law re
ceived through Moses is the revelation of that covenant which
institutes the long course of divine pedagogy for the nation, in
the di-vine effort to make them holy even as God is holy. The
prophets reveal the further conditions of this covenant, enforce
it by threats and proraises, and predict the establishment of a
new form of the corapact of Jehovah -with his people. The
apostles and Christ hiraself bring the final divine revelation to
the coraraunity of believers; the apostles, since they present
and unfold the truth of Him who is the complete revelation and
final word of God to men. Because the writings of the Old
and New Testaments contain these successive self-revelations
of God, which all culminate in Christ, and in him form one
organic and complete history of divine self-disclosure, and one
Uving and abiding work upon humanity of God as the Re
deemer, therefore they are themselves sacred, holy, and divine.
The truths of revelation which constitute one organic body of
revealed truth sanctify the vessel that contains them.
4. The scriptural doctrine of Sacred Scripture depends, there
fore, upon the scriptural view of the nature of revelation. More
precisely what this -view is, we shaU inquire hereafter. We
note now, however, the fact that with the -writers and teachers
of the Bible the primary consideration concerns the nature of
divine revelation; the secondary question, almost entirely,
however, lost out of sight, concerns the nature of the record of
revelation. The scriptural claims concerning divine revelation
and inspiration have to do in the first place, therefore, with the
substance of truth received, and with the souls who receive
this truth. The manner of utterance is of importance only m
the second place. These claims, then, only require us to ac
cept the contents of the Bible to which they apply, as revelar
tions of divine truth which came through inspired souls. The
form of preserving the truth, when once scripturaUy fixed, and
even the mental condition, whether inspUed or uninspired, of
the person in whose hands the truth thus becomes fixed, are
subjects upon which critical and other researches must furnish
the decision. The most important fact is this, — that the con
tents of revelation are secured in the writings of the Old and
New Testaments.
5. The contents of revelation are not, however, confined to any
one age, portion, set of authors, or manner of composition, of

SUMMARY OF THE BIBLICAL CLAIMS. 217
Sacred Scripture. For the one organic revelation is both ne
cessarily, and as a raatter of fact, presented in various forras
and different stages of divine self-disclosure. Not only proph
ecy and apostolic doctrme, but also law, history, poetry, and
pi^overb, enter into and partake of this revelation ; and to the
extent and degree in which each scripture shares in the sub
stantial truth of the one revelation, does it also share in the
claim to the sacred origin and authority which belong primarUy
to the revelation itself.
6. The primary subject of the one revelation which is con
tained in the Sacred Scriptures, both of the Old and the New
Testaments, is the community of believing souls. The self-dis
closures of Jehovah are to the people Israel through Moses and
the prophets. The reraoving of the veil so that the gospel shall
be apprehended truly, and coraprehended widely, is a divine
work that coraes upon all who wUl believe in Christ. The
apostles, however, as having been chosen by Jesus to be eye-
and-ear--witnesses, and as ha-ving been promised and given a
pre-eminent fulness of revelation, are constituted special organs
by which the comraunity of beUevers enjoys a knowledge of the
truth and will of God. Yet the ability and the obligation to
test the aUeged truths of revelation, by whorasoever brought to
them, are never taken away from the community of believers.
They form the basis for a true doctrine of Sacred Scripture as
canonical scripture ; they also give the right to regard the for
mation of the Canons of the Old and New Testaments as, in
some sort, a revelation of divine truth concerning those selec
tions of sacred writings which it is the divine wUl to preserve
for the use of the Church. Indeed, certain considerable por
tions of the Bible present, as their first, and, we may say in some
instances, as their only claim, to the title " Sacred Scripture,"
the bare fact that the Church has considered them such. If
Moses and the prophets and the apostles are divinely appointed
teachers of revealed truth, which is scripturaUy fixed in the
Bible, for the comraunity of believers ; then the coramunity of
believers itself has been, and in some sort must ever reraain,
the judge of Moses, of prophets, and of apostles.
7. For, moreover, the primary subject of inspiration, of the
divine gift of ethical and spiritual insight and foresight, is also
the community of believing souls. Under the old covenant, the
gift of the Spirit of Jehovah is to the nation Israel ; under the
new, to the Church of Christ. Only one form of inspiration ia

218 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
claimed as a basis for the inspired scriptures of the Old Testa-
ment, viz., prophetic inspiration ; only one as a basis for those
of the new, viz., apostolic inspiration. Both of these, however,
are in and of the reUgious coramunity. ApostoUc inspiration
is Christian inspiration, founded upon the basis of personal
communion with Jesus during his life and after his resurrection,
and raised to pre-eminent loftiness by the abundance and excel
lence of the same spiritual charisms in which the whole com
munity shares. These two forras of inspiration have certain
points of difference ; certain points also of reserablance, since
the apostles are classed araong the prophets. Indeed, the word
"prophetic" — in its widest significance, as designating one
who has communion -with God, and receives special disclosures
of divine truth through a moral consciousness clarified, ele
vated, and quickened by the Divine Spirit, and for the purpose
of coramunication to others — may be used to describe the
inspiration of all of the mspired teachers and -writers of the
Bible. But as to any special form of inspiration, given tb the authors
of the Bible as writers of Sacred Scripture, and given ad sen-
bendum or in scribendo, the Bible itself has -not in all its circuit
of truth a single word to say. Such inspiration none of its
writers claim for themselves or for each other ; of such inspua-
tion they make no mention at all. And just as little do they
tell us of any " verbal " or " infallible " inspiration of the writer
of Sacred Scripture, in the strict and techiucal meamng of
those terms. Indeed, the writer of Sacred Scripture is very
rarely brought to our attention by the Bible itself; and we
have no basis laid by its claims for any one theory (which shall
be applicable alike to all the contents) of the raental and moral
condition of its authors when in the act of writing. Nor are
clairas brought forward which of themselves serve to cover any
considerable portion of its contents, or which prove them to
have been regarded by the Bible itself as writings composed by
men inspired ad seribendum or in scribendo. The portions to
which the inferred claim of being inspired Scripture (in the
technical sense of the word "inspired") particularly applies
have already been pointed out.
9. The doctrine of Sacred Scripture, in its completeness aid
unity, cannot be derived solely from the claims of the Bible itself-
According to these elaims we can only infer so much of unity for
tho various writings of the Bible as shall prepare us to consider

•SUMMARY OF THE BIBLICAL CLAIMS. 219
the further claims which are put forth in the formation and
acceptance of the completed Canon of Scripture. The infer
ences which make it proper for us to ascribe to the Bible as a
whole any of those claims which, as they are presented in its
various writings, apply only to certain portions of the Bible,
are chiefly these four : the inference from the use of ^ 7pa<^'? for
the entire Old Testament; the inference from the word of
Christ, which, as being both retrospective and prospective, bmds
together both the Old and the New Testaments ; the inference
which coraes frora the apostoUc use of the Old Testament in
the -writings of the New ; and the inference from the unity of
substantial truth inherent in the contents. Such inferences,
however, do not suffice to authenticate the applicabUity of any
of the clairas to the entire body of Sacred Scriptures, much
less to all portions of that body alike. We find, then, on the
basis of its own claims, that the Sacred Scriptures of the Old
and New Testaraents consist of a group of writings, of various
origin and of different degrees of authority and value ; which,
however, when taken together, give us, scripturaUy fixed, the
contents of divine revealed truth regarding God as a Redeeraer
of raen through Jesus Christ.
10. The special claims which we have already in detail ex
amined, and the one lofty and inclusive claim which has just
been stated, raust now be exarained in the light of the phe
noraena of Sacred Scripture. The claims of the Bible as to its
own nature must be tested by the facts of its construction and
history. And, when it is clearly seen how far the claims and
the facts accord, we shall have the right to conclude that a true
doctrine of the nature and authority of Sacred Scripture has
been inductively established. We pause in the transition frora
claims critically examined to facts criticaUy established, that we
may reflect for a moment upon this thought : How unlike the
clairas which have been put forth for Sacred Scripture are the
more substantial claims which it puts forth for itself ! And yet
how vastly more reasonable are these than the former ! The
word of God concerning God^s Word is easier to receive on faith,
and yet incomparably grander, than the word of men concerning
Eis Word.

Paet II.
CRITICAL.

THE PHEE"OMEH"A OF THE BIBLE.

HoXvp.epw'; Kal iroX-vrpo-n-ws iroAat o Oeo'S XaX-rjO-a^ rots Trarpda-iv iv rots
irpoi^ijTats. — Heb. i. 1.
Per ea quae erant secunda ad prima vooans, hoc est, per typica, ad vera; et per
temporalia, ad aeterna; et per carnaUa, ad spiritalia; etper terrena, ad coelestia.
iBBKAEUS ; Con. Eaer. IV., xiv. 3.

CHAPTER I.
INTKODUCTOET.
An inductive examination of Sacred Scripture properly be
gins with the clairas which the Bible raakes for itself. This
exaraination cannot, however, confine itself to these clairas ;
for, although it raay raake certain assumptions concerning the
authority of biblical religion, and especially concerning the au
thority of Jesus Christ, it cannot assume that the self-made
clairas of the Bible are indisputably true. To make the latter
assumption would be equivalent to denying the necessity for
a real induction. Moreover, these claims, both direct and in
direct, are by no raeans all the phenoraena which the bibUcal
writings in-vite us critically to examine. Indeed, the claims are
not of theraselves the most iraportant of the phenoraena. The
biblical writings are very Uttle occupied with making clairas for
theraselves or for one another. We have already seen how
difficult it is to find a sufficient araount of clear and direct
teaching in the Bible as to its o-wn origin and nature to serve
even as a foundation for any theory of Sacred Scripture. The
Old and New Testara-ents are not occupied in telling us what
they are, but in teUing us other facts and truths of the reUgion
which they record.
Furthermore, the process of critical examination, when once
applied to the claims of the Bible, discovers in its writings
many other subjects for a simUar critical examination. The
question, What are the claims of the Bible ? is at once changed
into the larger question. What is the Bible ? And to this larger
question no answer can be given in the form of a scientific in
duction, -without critical examination of other phenoraena of the
Bible. It was, indeed, with this larger question in view that
we attempted to answer the narrower one. The critical exam
ination of the clairas of the Bible is chiefly valuable in order
to understand what the object really is for which the claims are
made. And, of course, no claims for the Bible can permanently 223

224 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
maintain themselves which contradict a fair critical estimate as
to what the Bible really is : this is true, whether the claims are
made by the Bible for itself, or by other writers in the supposed
behalf of the Bible. We must, then, carry our critical exammar
tion through the entire circuit of facts which the object of ex
amination has to present : we must examine, that is to say, m
the light and by the means of modern criticism, all the impor
tant phenomena which are displayed by the bibUcal book
And, since we have already examined in the same way the
claims which are made for theraselves by these books, the order
of our exaraination -wUl require that we test the claims by the
phenoraena. When this has been thoroughly done, then, and
then only, can a satisfactory inductive theory of Sacred Scrip
ture be attained.
To examine absolutely all the phenomena of the Bible would
be both unnecessary and impossible. It would be impossible,
because the nuraber of the individual phenoraena is so great,
the disputes over most of thera are so intricate and difficult,
and the raeans to be eraployed so raultiforra, that a score of
ordinary lifetiraes would not suffice for such a task. The result
of an atterapt at such exaraination would be the bewilderment
and irrationality which always corae frora the faUure to select
and classify the materials of induction. No such attempt is,
however, necessary : for only certain classes of the phenomena
are iraportant enough to call for a separate and detailed treat
ment ; and, by reducing the phenoraena to separate groups or
classes, we can raake a few examples stand in the place of a
countless number. We shall therefore consider the phenomena
of the biblical books as related to the doctrine of Sacred Scrip
ture, under the following five classes of contents ; viz., the so-
called scientific, the miraculous, the historical, the predictive,
and the ethico-religious. In the discussion of each class the
question kept constantly in view will be this : What do the
phenoraena displayed by this particular class of contents (now
under examination) teach us as to the origin and nature of
Sacred Scripture? In the answer to this question we shall
have constantly to resort to the field of Biblical Introduction;
and in this field the materials for research, although by no
means always satisfactory and in some cases disappointing on
account of their meagreness, consist in the accumulations of
many years by many workmen. But wliUe using the materiails
furnished by modern criticism in Biblical Introduction, we shall

THE ORDER OF THE EXAMINATION. 225
never lose out of mind our peculiar point of view. This point
of view is selected and fixed by the main inquiry. It is always
as thro-wing light upon the doctrine of Sacred Scripture that
we consider and pronounce upon the subordinate inquiries of
Biblical Introduction. It is always frora this point of view,
and as leading toward the solution of the chief inquiry, that
the particular exaraples are selected, and the particular in
quiries of criticism are pursued.
But the critical examination of those kinds of phenomena
which may be grouped under the five classes of contents will
not suffice to lay the basis for an inductive theory of Sacred
Scripture. For, after the nature of the separate classes of
contents has been examined, and the relation of each to the
general inquiry pointed out, the further question arises : Who
gave to the world, in the case of each literary unity contained
in the Bible, this particular form of the contents ? We have
to ask not simply. What is the nature of the contents of the
Bible? but. Who were the authors of the biblical books?
How intiraate and rautually influential the two questions are,
nothing else can make so clear as the examination itself. To a
complete inductive doctrine of Sacred Scripture no inquiry is
more important than that which concerns itself with the au
thorship and composition of the biblical books. The inquiry
into the authorship of the books is naturally followed by an
inquiry into their language and style. This latter inquiry is
pecuUar, as compared with those preceding, in that it has to do
more specifically with the form of Sacred Scripture ; this form
is the form of language written, as, of course, the very title
Scriptura implies.
When the above-mentioned critical inquiries hav© been ara
swered, with respect to the different classes of contents and the
different books, as composed by their different authors in the
linguistic forra which belongs to each, two further inquiries
must be raised regarding the Bible as a whole. The first of
these inquiries concerns the process by which the different
books came together to make that whole which is called, ^Ae
Book, the Bible. The second of these inquiries concerns the
preservation and purity of the text in which this collection of
books is transmitted to us. Both of these inquiries — and
especially the former — have very iraportant relations to a
true inductive theory of Sacred Scripture. It is, indeed, only
in accordance with a true doctrine of the Canon that we can
VOL. I. P

226 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
frame a theory which shall apply to all those writings (con
sidered collectively) which are called by the term Sacred Scrip.
ture. The phenomena* of the text, moreover, are such as at
once and forever to settle certain subordinate inquiries regard
ing the origin and nature of the Bible.
After an answer has been sought and found to the critical
questions indicated above, then, and then only, shall we he ui
condition to attempt the statement of the doctrine desired,
The induction which comes at the close of this varied and
difficult process of inquiry will be, if the process be satisfeo-
torily conducted, a true and valid induction.
Whatever advantages the proposed method of inquiry may
have, — and it certainly has many advantages, — it is not free
frora at least one or two objections. The principal objection
arises from the difficulty of deaUng with the phenomena of the
biblical books in separate classes. That needs only to be stated
at present, which the course of the inquiry wUl make constantly
more and more evident ; viz., the miraculous, historical, pre
dictive, and ethico-religious contents of the Bible are inthnately
and inseparably connected. Moreover, the question of the
authorship, and manner of origin, of the separate boohs is a
question which is reciprocally related to all the classes of con
tents. How, then, shall the consideration of these classes and
the question of authorship be so separated as to be made the
subjects of separate investigation ? The practical answer to
this question is not so difficult as might at first be supposed.
Selected examples, which faU most obviously under some one
of the separate classes of contents, are readily found ; certain
capital examples may profitably be more than once referred'ta,
according as they are considered for their alleged miraculous,
historical, or ethico-religious character; and the consideration
of all the examples falling under each chapter can keep those
considerations which belong to the other chapters duly in mind.
It will thus be possible to exaraUie a great variety and number
of the biblical phenomena, both in themselves and also in theu
relations to others of the sarae or differing classes, but espe
cially in their relation to the one final purpose which selects
and arranges them all. In this raanner the order and method
of a treatraent, designed to be both comprehensive and pro
gressive, may be relieved of any suspicion of either repetitious-
ness or artificiality.
As to the weight which must be aUowed to critical studies of

THE ASSUMPTIONS INVOLVED. 227
the Bible, when compared with the direct or indirect claims
of tho Bible, the case can appear clear only after the examina
tion is closed. We do not begin the critical examination of
the phenomena by assuming that aU the claims of the biblical
writings -with regard to their own precise origin and nature are
indisputably correct. To assume this would be to draw back
at once frora the very examination proposed. The claims of
the biblical writings are facts ; and, regarded in the light of
certain assumptions as to the vaUdity of Old-Testament reU
gion and of Christianity, and as to the authority of Christ, they
are very iraportant facts. But there are other facts which must
also be taken into the account. How far the facts or phenomena
which critical investigation wiU bring to light must modify the
claims, is the inquiry now before us. In making it, the clairas
raust stand upon their own raerits ; they must verify thera
selves, or subrait to be modified and corrected by the facts.
But it may come to pass, that whatever modifications take
place wUl, in part, consist of expansions and enlargements of
the claims; and that whatever corrections in them are made
will not affect their substantial validity as to the matters iu
which we are most interested.
It would be impossible, however, to conduct such a long
series of critical investigations touching the phenomena of the
biblical books without sorae guidance frora assuraed principles
of inquiry. For not even the raost candid and searching criti
cisra, when applied to Sacred Scripture, can wholly dispense
with assuraptions regarding the nature of religion and the
authority of Christ. We shaU not once make the pretence of
denuding our rainds of all convictions concerning biblical truths
in order that we may the more thoroughly criticise the biblical
phenoraena. It is only in the Ught of these truths that the
phenoraena can be considered aright. The same postulates
which we have already employed wUl enter into the subsequent
critical researches. The spiritual being of God, the reality of
the supernatural, the vaUdity of divine self-revelation, the exist
ence of spiritual potencies, the communion of God with man by
inspiration, the final authority of Christ upon the ethico-reU
gious matters which it was his raission to teach, — these are
truths frora the influence of which it is absurd to deraand that
bibUcal criticisra shaU set itself free. It is rather the assurap-
tion of such truths which gives both its chief interest and its
mam direction to all critical inquiry into the origin and nature

228 TIIE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of Sacred Scripture. The pretence of freedom from bias by
these truths ill conceals the desperate bias from the false ethico-
religious opinions wlUch lead to the denial of such truths.
And the history of raodern criticism has already shown, what it
will yet more clearly reveal, that a really candid and compre
hensive exaraination of the phenomena of the biblical books is
made only the more difficult for the critic who denies the fun
damental truths of the religion wluch the books contain.

CHAPTEE II.
HE DOCTEINE OF SACKED SCEIPTURE AS EELATED TO THE
SCIENTIFIC CONTENTS OP THE BIBLE.
In the stricter and more modern conception of the term
science," especially as applied to the phenomena of physics
nd natural history, the Bible must be said to be almost wholly
evoid of scientific contents. This is by no raeans because the
writers of the Old Testaraent, or the readers whora they ad-
ressed, were without interest in the conteraplation of nature.
Tor is it wholly because they were relatively unskilled in the
nowledge of its phenomena and laws, when compared with the
ther peoples of a like antiquity. It is rather to be explained
y the following facts : viz., that the Hebrews shared in the
jnorance of these peoples ; but especially that they regarded
ature itself alraost wholly from the supernaturalistic point of
lew, and that the final purpose of aU their sacred -writings was
3 purely ethical and religious, rather than intellectual and
peculative or theosophic. We might therefore suppose, upon
lerely a priori grounds, that the revelation given to man in
lie Sacred Scripture would be able by sUence and reserve to
scape all conflicts between itself and the physical and natural
eiences. The supposition would not, however, be borne out
y the history of bibUcal interpretation ; for this history shows
s that conflicts have actually arisen wherever the huraan raind
as corapared its researches in nature with the stateraents of
icripture, and that the relative intensity and magnitude of the
onflicts have varied in nearly direct ratio with the researches
hemselves. The truth of this stateraent is evinced by the cor-
espondence of the different eras, which raark the relations of
libUcal theology and the sciences of nature, with the general
ras of herraeneutics and of the doctrine of Scripture at large.^
is a special example, we may notice how the views of Philo
^ See especially D. O. Zockler, Geschichte der Beziehungen z-wischen Theologie
Jid Naturwissenschaft, Giitersloh, 1877, 1, pp. 67 ff. 229

230 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
respecting God and the world are a recognized factor in his
entire influence upon Christian views.^ The discussion of the
relations which the biblical utterances maintain toward the
discovered facts and laws of the physical universe, and even
toward the hypotheses of investigators as apparently supported'
by those facts and laws, is rauch too deep-rooted and of too
long continuance to be disraissed by the siraple dictum : " The
Bible is not given to teach science, but religious truth."
Moreover, the nature of Sacred Scripture, and the conception
which science is bound to hold concerning its duty and mission,
are such that, between the two, points of contradiction or of
coincidence raust inevitably exist. For both science and the
Bible are bound to consider that in which the reality of both
the natural and the supernatural is concerned. The point of
view frora which each considers its facts raay be different : the
facts considered raust, however, be to a large extent the same.
The very least that the Bible can be raade to claim for itself, is
this, that it is the record, in the main authentic, of a divine self-
revelation. It must therefore convey or assume certain truths
as to the characteristics and perraanent relations of the super
natural and the natural. The very conception of revelation
and inspiration involves the belief that the course of nature
and the course of history are penetrated with the supernatural.
It involves also a certain doctrine as to the method and final
purpose of creation. But science also claims the description
and explanation of the course of nature as its particular domam;
it rightly regards history as resting upon and intermingled with
this course of nature ; it even attempts the delineation of the
method of creation by a theory of evolution, and defines or
denies the rational raeaning of so vast a work. It foUows, then,
that the harraony of science and the Bible cannot easily be
secured by relegating each to exclusive control in an entirely
separate domain. Some manner of adjusting the claims which
both these forms of teaching truth make upon human reason
and belief is for every doctrine of Sacred Scripture an inevita
ble necessity.
It may be perfectly true, as Reusch claims,^, that the Bible
never has the express design of giving scientific information;
and that this concession, instead of being newly captured from
theology by the onsets of modern science, is as old as Peter
1 Compare Zockler, Ibid. I., p. 53 f., and Siegfried, Philo, p. 25 f.
2 Bibel und Natar, Bonn, 1876, p. 21.

CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. 231
Lombard,! qj. even as Augustine. It raay also be true, as Kurtz
declares,^ that the Scripture never "anticipates huraan science,"
nor " deals with the problems, the solution of which belongs to
empirical investigation." And j'et both these writers join them
selves to the great crowd of other writers in the attempt to con
struct elaborate and satisfactory hypotheses of reconcUiation.
Such an hypothesis in some form is not, indeed, usually raade
necessary for the student of the Bible by the raere observation
of natural phenomena. In the earlier stages of science the
sense of contradiction between itself and the Bible does not
emerge. It is rather when science strives to realize the highest
ideal of its mission, and grasp the phenomena together under
some general law, or to extend the sphere covered by second
causes through exercising its right of rational explanation, that
it first seems to conflict -with the statements or views of Sacred
Scripture. In the days of Linnceus and his followers, species
were considered as "siraple curiosities of nature," "to be inven
toried and described " : ^ with the advent of raorphology, the
sciences of botany and zoology began ; they began, raoreover,
at the same time to contest the current interpretations of the
Mosaic cosmogony.
It is evident that the results reached by comparison of these
two classes of conflicting statements and claims wUl depend
upon the general point of view taken by the investigator. This
point of view will itself largely depend upon the conceptions
current as to the nature of scientific truth, and as to the right
doctrine of Sacred Scripture. With those who reject entirely
the claims of the Bible to contain a supernatural revelation, the
question of reconcUing its claims with those of the physical
and natural sciences is, of course, a raere superfluity. On the
other hand, a class of theologians and biblical critics — now
much reduced in number — has always existed, who have been
equally ready to deny, to ignore, or to pervert in use, the truths
of these sciences, according to their conception of the best
service thus to be rendered to the dogmas of their own ortho
doxy. Thus Delitzsch did not hesitate to believe that the
body of man, as well as the bodies of all the beasts, underwent
after the fall an entire change in physical constitution ; al
though, as Keerl ^ and others have pointed out, an entire change
1 Sent. li. dist. 23. 2 Bibel und Astronomic, Berlin, 1858, p. 397.
'2 See Natural Science and Eeligion, Asa Gray, p. 57 f.
* Einheit der biblischen Urgeschichte, 21 fi.

282 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
in plant-life, the nature of sunUght, and the relations of the sun
to the earth, seems involved in this belief. And yet Keerl hun
self felt that he was justified in lengthening the period of the
rotation of the earth's axis, so as to raake his interpretation
of the day in Gen. i. accord with the geologic periods ; while
Keil was even ready to assert the creation of the earth in six
days of twenty-four hours each, and, in carrying out his view,
to deny the antiquity of the earth as evinced in the geologic
strata, and even the antiquity and distance of the fixed stars as
involved in the very nature of light.^ In the view of this latter
author, creation is, like miracles, only a matter of religious
faith : " natural science has supplied no certain conclusions as
to the origin of the earth." ^
Now, neither of the two above-mentioned classes of thinkers
can be expected to make candid and thorough work of examm-
ing the relations which exist between the truths of the sciences
and the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. For such a work of ex
amination impUes a confidence in the fact, that nature and the
Bible both furnish revelations of God, and that the human mind
has already attained the substantial truth as to the deliverances
of both these revelations. And, as a matter of experience, no
other spirit than one which is born of this confidence will pre
vent the frequent contemptuous rejection of real truth, or the
wUful assertion of only seeming truth, on the one side or the
other, — a raanner, indeed, of conducting so grave questions,
which is, on whichever side it occur, alike unseemly. Espe
cially does the theologian who insists upon opinions Uke those
raentioned above, as though they were necessary assumptions
of religious faith, need to be rerainded, that it is neither right
nor wise to underraine the very foundations of all rational the
ology in his zeal to defend a dograa of the scientific infallibility
of sorae section of Scripture. Rational theology cannot subsist
without the assuraption that nature is a divine revelation. In
this chapter, as elsewhere in the entire discussion, the truth and
authority of Christianity as a supernatural revelation is assumed.
To this assumption must be added another, which applies espe
cially to the contents of this chapter. The world, as a system
of second causes, furnishes a divine revelation, which, ivithin
certain limits, is also authoritative in moral and religious truth,
and which may be, and has been, interpreted aright by the
1 See Commentary ou the Pentateuch, by Keil and Delitzsch, pp. 40 ff.,59, nota
2 Ibid., p. 52, note.

ASSUMPTIONS OF SCIENTIFIC INFALLIBILITY. 233
sarae human soul to whose understanding the revelation of
Scripture is addressed. It can readily be shown that this as
suraption, with regard to so-called nature, is itself erainently
biblical; it may, indeed, when rightly conceived, rise to the
dignity of a real assumption of religious faith.
Further than this it is not, however, necessary that we should
extend our postulates. We may not take for granted the sci
entific infallibUity of the Bible. Such infallibility is indeed
necessary for the maintenance of certain theories of the nature
of Sacred Scripture. If the theory of verbal inspiration, or
the strict theory of so-called plenary inspiration, is to be vindi
cated, this and many further assumptions must be made. It
can scarcely be asserted, for instance, that the dogma of the
scientific infallibUity of Genesis is arrived at simply by im
partial investigation of the Book of Genesis. Such a dogma is
one form of the general assumption that Scripture, in order to
be sacred and inspired, must be also in every respect infallible.
But it is precisely this general assumption which we must bring
to the test of criticism in this and all the succeeding chapters
of this part of our work. And we have already seen that the
claims of the Bible itself by no means substantiate such an
assumption. How, then, can the assuraption be made the
instrument, either by misrepresenting science or by misinter
preting Scripture, for torturing the two into a happy recon
ciliation ?
It is certain, then, that we cannot escape the difficulties of au
adjustment by making a final and complete separation between
the sphere and claims of science and the Bible. This general
stateraent is pre-erainently true of certain doctrines. The
complete theory of creation is both a religious doctrine and a
raatter for rational inferences based upon facts scientifically col
lected and interpreted. The doctrine of creation as a religious
doctrine is fundaraental; the fixing of its religious elements
aright was indispensable to the planting and growth of true
religion araong the Hebrews and over the whole earth.i Nor
can this religious doctrine take on any definite form without
assuming relations either of coincidence or of conflict with the
conclusions of the physical and natural sciences. To a certain
extent, then, the very form in its particulars becomes also a
matter of religious doctrine. But, on the other hand, it is
equaUy true that the more distinctively religious elements,
1 Compare Dorner, Glaubenslehre, I. p. 460.

234 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
both as expressly given and as implied in the form of the
doctrine, differ greatly in importance frora those which belong
merely to scientific accuracy in details of form. We may,
then, at least make unhesitatingly the distinction, known to
Thomas Aquinas, between matters that belong ad substantiam
fidei, and others which belong only per accidens ad fidem.
Nay, more : we may unhesitatingly admit the existence of
many imperfect, faulty, and even erroneous, impressions in
the Old Testaraent concerning scientific matters that are not
organically connected with the truths of faith, just as our Lord
and the disciples have admitted that such impressions exist
there concerning certain ethical and religious matters. There
may be in Scripture many statements on matters of scientific
research, and also much in the details of the form in which
specifically religious truths are comraunicated, that is scien
tifically incorrect, and yet the sacredness and inspiration of
Scripture not suffer thereby. In raany cases the real difficulty
will be the difficulty of ascertaining the valid conclusions of
science and the right interpretation of Scripture, rather than
of adraitting that either one of the two may be mistaken in its
judgraent of truth.^ In such cases the danger of committing
the substantial verities of religion to an opinion either way has
been for a long time manifest to the most thoughtful.^
If inexactness and mistakes in scientific matters are found to
exist abundantly in Sacred Scripture, an explanation may also
be found which shall both satisfy the facts and save a valid and
sufficient doctrine of its origin and nature. Speaking from
the historical point of view, we raay say that such errors arose
from the ignorance of the writers : the views of nature which
they held were of necessity inexact and mistaken. But, speak
ing from the theological point of view, we may say with equal
truth, it did not accord with the divine wisdom and love^to
reveal these scientific truths to the writers of Scripture, or even
to prevent the writers from expressing the infalUble revela
tions which were coraraitted to them, in forras raade erroneous
by their ignorance. We ought, then, on historical grounds to
expect errors in scientific matters, if there is, indeed, to be any
such thing as a fallible huraan element in the Scriptures. And,
as Harless has declared, we ought not on dogmatic grounds to
expect "the knowledge and description of nature," — "Mt
1 Compare Eeusch, Bibel und Natnr, pp. 35-49.
2 See Augustine, De Gen. ad lit. 1. 19, 39, II. 18, 38.

BIBLICAL IDEA OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 235
because it could not have been given, but because it would not
have been given." ^ The theory that errors in matters of
science are on a priori grounds probable in the Bible, and the
willingness promptly to admit them as often as they are shovra
to occur, -will save the investigator from much effort to do
violence to either one of these two divine self-revelations.
It must also be admitted, that the writers of the Bible show
an almost complete disregard of that point of -view from which
science must contemplate the phenomena of nature. They had
little or no conception that the universe could be regarded as a
self-contained system of raaterials, forces, and laws. They had
little disposition to dwell in secondary causes even so long as is
necessary to recognize their reality. The presence and activi
ties, immediate and unchecked, of the one primal Cause, they
discover in all the beings and activities of so-called nature.^
But science, even when not intentionally atheistic or material
istic, designedly recognizes as little as possible any forces or
causes lying outside its o-wn sphere ; especially is it loath to
believe that this sphere is constantly interpenetrated and in
formed by the one primal Cause. It is, then, with reference to
the relations of the natural and the supernatural, that science
and the Bible come into most serious conflict. Ahd vain have
been all the atterapts to separate the two spheres so as that
the forces belonging to each shaU seem to have no chance of
commingling. The writers of Scripture constantly present the
supernatural as dominating, vivifying, controlling, and energiz
ing the natural ; and, with respect to this great congeries of
truths, their doctrine is reUgious doctrine. We have, moreover,
less hesitation in saying that this doctrine is true doctrine, re
vealed by inspiration of God, and that these -writers are fitted
to teach it to the votaries of the modern sciences, than we felt
in making the above-mentioned concessions concerning the
probable fallibility of the sarae writers in scientific raatters.
Let us, then, briefly set forth the doctrine of the relations of
God and nature, so far as the eleraents of the doctrine are
most distinctively religious, and at the sarae time Uable to come
into seeming conflict with the physical and natural sciences.
And if this setting-forth is to give just force to that view of
nature which all the modern sciences concur in establishing, as
1 Christliche Ethik, 1849, fourth edition, p. xiv.
2 That is, writers of Scripture have the so-called " Gottes-he-wusstsein" fully
developed, but they have no corresponding development of the so-called " Welt-
he-wusstsein."

236 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
well as to that idea of God as the Creator, Preserver, and Lord
of Ufe and history, which the Scriptures teach, then it mnst
pass beyond the point of view reached by the writers of the
Bible. It must recognize whatever is true in the modern scien
tific conception of the cosmos. The biblical idea of the super
natural is in all its distinctive religious-elements forever grandly
true ; the biblical exhibition of this idea makes little or no
account, however, of the conception to which, in most of its
details, neither the Hebrews nor the other nations of the earth
had as yet attained. But this modern conception of nature is
itself suited to be filled full of Ufe by an inspiration from the
indwelling of the supernatural. For science, instead of having
excluded God frora the world, has really made known many
new points for his entrance, and much that is new concerning
the raanner of that entrance.
The doctrine of God as Creator of the universe is a reli
gious and a biblical doctrine. But science is not simply power
less to deny this doctrine: it rather leads up to and enriches its
affirmation. Of this doctrine the fundamental element is this,
that God and his eternal idea of the world is the logical Prius,
or ground, of the world's substances, forces, and laws.' The
very being of nature can neither be conceived of, nor its phe
nomena exhibited, as constituting a whole complete in itself.
The quasi-metaphysical truth of an original divine creation out
of nothing is not, indeed,^ expressly taught in the -writings of
Mosaisra , ^ nor should we expect such teaching from the nature
of those writings. They, neither in form nor in thought, cor
respond to the later stage of speculation, when the doctrine of
creation proper was asserted in opposition to highly developed
theories of the eternity of matter, or of its origin by emanation
frora Deity. The narrative of Gen. i. 1-ii. 3 leaves these ques
tions behind itself: it proceeds at once to enuraerate in order
the steps by which God produced all things, as they now exist,
frora a condition of darkness and chaos.^ The indications
which Schultz * finds in Ps. cxxxvi. 6 ff., Eccl. Ui. 11 and vii.
1 See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, I. p. 462.
2 This doctrine is, as -will appear more clearly hereafter, not taught by the use
of the -word N"13, nor by the i^roper interpretation of Gen. i. 1. To speak of an
interpretation -which refuses to take the declaration, " in the beginning God cre
ated the heavens and the earth," as teaching the metaphysical conception ol a
creation out of nothing, after the manner of Keil, who represents it as invented
to get rid of true doctrine, is extremely invidious.
3 Compare Schrader, Studien zur Kritik, etc., p. 53.
< Alttestamentliche Theologie, Frankfurt, 1878, p, 527 f.

BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF CREATION. 237
29, of an attempt to deal with the phUosophical questions that
concern the doctrine of creation, are not sufficiently clear to
form a marked contrast with the tone of the earlier writings.
And, as the same author says, the " nothing " upon which the
earth is, according to Job xxvi. 7, suspended, is not-that out of
which the earth is conceived of as created, but the boundless
abyss of space over which it seems to hang. The Old Testa
ment, however, teaches that conception of the relation of God
to all other persons and tlnngs which, on occasion of the pres
ence of heathen phUosopliies or theosophic speculations like
those which influenced some of the Apocrypha (i$ apoptfiov (jXijs
KTto-as TOV Koapov, Sap. Sal. xi. 18) readUy develops into the doc
trine of creation out of nothing. This form of thought which
is only suggested by Rom. iv. 17 (koXwv to. pr] wra is wra) mani
festly shapes to itseK the words of 2 Macc. vii. 28, and Heb.
xi. 3 (cis TO p.r] iK t^aivopevwv to /SXeTTopevov yeyovevaC) .'
The raore positive and religious form of the same doctrine of
creation, which deduces all things from the wise and loving will
of God, is as certainly biblical as it is eminently rational. Not
only the formation of the idea of the world, and the realizing of
the idea in the successive products of the world's unfolding, but
also the original coming into being of the raaterials and forces
in and through which the idea is to be reaUzed, are to be as
cribed to the divine will. That idea of creation proper which
distinguishes itself, as a free, intelligent, and gracious act of
God, frora pantheistic views of developraent and emanation,
and from materiaUstic views of an uncreated material substance,
is fundamental in the Old-Testament religion and writings.
The word of God is dorainant and creative : he has but to speak,
and it is done ; to command, and his wiU is executed (compare
Gen. i. 3, 14 ; Ps. xxxiii. 6, 9). And although, as has been
said, it is not the intention of Gen. i. 1 f. to assert the doctrine
of creation out of nothing; its entire form of representation,
which sets forth the original chaotic mass, the Tohu-va-Bohu,
as plastic and obedient to the divine word, assuraes that this
mass — aS well as the subsequent forms of being and life
superinduced upon it — is utterly dependent upon God. In
accordance with the sarae idea of creation, God is called (Gen.
xiv. 19, 22) the founder and possessor (nj'p) of heaven and
t This interpretation of Heb. xi. 3 must be adhered to in spite of the opinion
of Bleek, Delitzsch, Schrader, and others, that the intention of the author is sim
ply to ascribe to the world a " supersensual ground " in God.

238 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
earth. It would be quite contrary to the prevalent teachiu(»
and spirit of the Hebrew writings to consider the poetical rep
resentations of Job xxxvUi. 28 f. as intended to set forth the
phUosophical doctrine of creation by emanation from Deity.
In this conception of creation as the "absolute miracle," i as
an effect produced by divine free-will without any mediation of
secondary causes whatsoever, there can be nothing at which
science should take offence. For, preceding this act, there are
no secondary causes to be considered, no forces of nature to be
co-ordinated or overcome. The very existence in fact and form
of so-called nature, with all its original substances, forces, and
laws, is conditioned upon this creative act. Neither does it
admit of scientific representation or explanation: of it nothmg
raore can be said than — to accept for this purpose a doubtful
interpretation — is said when it is declared, " In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth." The doctrine of crea
tion is entirely unaffected by any discoveries or theories as to
the nature of raatter, and as to the relation of the physical
forces to the atoras of which it is coraposed.
In accordance with this doctrine of creation proper is the
biblical conception of the relation of the visible and physical
universe to time. The Bible does not, indeed, attempt to solve
the perpetual antinomy which cleaves fast to all human thought
Avhen dealing with the conception of creation and the idea of time.
It makes no effort to reveal to men whether or not we must
adopt the seemingly necessary but self-contradictory statement
of Augustine, Mundus non in tempore sed cum tempore factus est,
It assuraes, however, that which is in the biblical conception
necessary to the thought of the dependence of the whole visible
universe upon the divine wUl ; it assumes that this universe is
not eternal, is not even in its most original substances and
forces coeval with its Creator and Lord. Before it came into
existence — and the simplicity of the bibUcal language admits
of a " before " when as yet there is no measure of time, —
Jehovah was forever the same in his power, wisdom, holiness,
and grace (compare Ps. xc. 2 ; Prov. viii. 22 ff.). To this con
ception the physical and natural sciences, even when helped by
the philosophy which is esteeraed raost favorable to them, have
nothing to oppose : they are powerless for correction or re
proof. That the present order of the universe must have had
a beginning in time, they with one voice concur in asserting;
1 So Kothe, whose remarks compare: Zur Dogmatik, pp. 94 ff.

BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF CREATION. 239
they even, and rightly, believe themselves able to demonstrate
this truth. Beyond this they can, when contradicting tho
scriptural doctrine, only fall back upon crude assertions like
the following: "The gaseous condition of tho solar system,
which preceded its present condition, must [sic] bo considered
as only one member in tho infinite chain of phenomena : it has
not happened once alone, but an infirute number of times, and
wUl happen just as often again." ^
The creative acts of God are not, however, limited to the
caUing into original existence of the world's substances, forces,
and laws.^ Creation is represented in the biblical doctrine as
consisting of repeated and successive acts of the divine will.
But it foUows necessarily from the very conception of the uni
verse as an orderly whole, that these successive creative acts
should be conditioned upon the preceding creation. Creation
as an act of divine free-will is most readily adraitted by the
theories of science, if it can be confined to one original constitu
tion of raatter, and endowment of it with its forces. Thus is the
idea of the supernatural relegated to a most remote antiquity,
and so conveniently disposed of as to give freer play to the activ
ity of merely natural forces. But this doctrine of creation as
confined to a single divine act, which was that of Augustine,
is neither favored by the biblical representations, nor — if the
truth raay only be adraitted — by the researches of the sciences.
There can be, indeed, only one act of absolute creation by which
the first being and forra of the universe is constituted. All sub
sequent creative acts raust take this original act into the ac
count, and be, indeed, based upon and conforraed to it, if the idea
of the divine mind in its completeness and unity is to be realized.
These creative acts, which are subsequent to the original act,
will then be ' supernatural, in that they are creative; they will
also partake of the natural, in that they are conditioned upon
what is already in existence by the original divine aet. Fault
may, indeed, be found with the narrative of Gen. i., because it
makes and maintains no firm distinction between the natural
and the supernatural. As co-ordinate with that exercise of the
divine -wisdom and omnipotence which calls into first being the
light (verse 3), and originates in the heavens their light-giving
bodies (verse 14), and as constituting a part of the one great
} See a book called Eibel und Natnr, by F. H. Thomassen, Kiiln und Leipzig,
1878, p 125.
2 Compare Dorner, Glaubenslehre, I. p. 478 f.

240 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
history of creation, we are told that God said, " Let the earth
bring forth grass " (verse 11), and "Let the waters swarm with
swarms, with living beings " (verse 20). In these latter cases
the conception of creation is raade with chUdlike simphcity to
correspond with the present experience of natural processes.
The annual production of the grass by the earth was, to the
Hebrew thought, no less a divine creative work than its first
origin from the ground. And yet in 2 Sam. xxiu. 4, the grass
is represented as growing by sunshine and rain ; and iii Job
xxxviii. 25 f. Jehovah is spoken of as having prepared the store
of waters and the channels for their overflow, to cause it to
rain, and by the rain to cause the grass to grow. But that the
writers of the Bible did not clearly distinguish the natural from
the supernatural, or rather overwhelmed the former by the
latter, is far from proving them wrong in their general concep
tion of creation as due to successive acts of the divine will.
For the utmost length to which the physical and natural sci
ences have gone, or show any indications of going, in revealmg
the efficiency of so-called natural causes, does not diminish the
demand raade upon the supernatural to account for the world's
present order by successive creative acts. At the first appear
ance of life upon the earth, science has no tenable theory to
substitute for the doctrine of a divine creative act. This act
was undoubtedly conditioned upon all the pre-existing sub
stances, forces, and laws of the raaterial universe. This asser.
tion is, however, a very different thing frora the claim that
physical substances, forces, and laws are adequate to account
for the origin of life. And thus it is that the Bible represents
each stage of creation as dependent upon the preceding, and yet
as the result of a creative divine word. It particularly insists
upon the truth that God is the Giver and Lord of life. But
especially when, in the order of creation, the appearance of man
is reached, does the need which science feels of a cause outside
of all natural causes raake itself abundantly felt. It is not
simply true, as Dorner ^ has declared, that to hold that "man is
only a product of animal existences, or of still lower forms of
nature, is a frivolous materialistic view : " it is also true that the
corabined work of all the natural sciences can present no faithful
picture of him as such a product. These sciences have done
little toward adequately explaining even his brain and remaining
bodily structure solely by secondary causes, while they have
1 Glaubenslehre, I. p. 479.

GOD THE AUTHOR OF LIFE. 241
not gone a step toward presenting by these causes alone an ade
quate account of his spiritual nature. When, then, the Bible
represents man in liis total being as the product of special crea
tive activity (Gen. i. 26 f. and U. 7), and as the offspring of
God (Acts xvii. 28, tou yap koI yei/os i(rp.ev), it has as yet nothing
to feUr upon these doctrines from the discoveries of raodern
science. And yet the same representation acknowledges that
the creative act was also in the case of man conditioned upon
so-called natural substances and forces (compare Gen. ii. 7, iii.
19, and vi. 3 ; Ps. civ. 29 ; Eccl. iU. 20). Nor is this truth to be
depreciated because of the simple and naive form in which it is
indicated. And all along the imraense distance frora the first appearance
of life upon the earth to the first appearance of raan, numerous
openings for the entrance of divine creative energy appear.
For science is still a long and weary way from proving that
aU the species and genera of animal life have had their origin
solely from pre-existent forms by natural descent. It has
indeed been well estabUshed that the forraer conception of
species wiU not hold good throughout ; it has also been raade
highly probable that forras for which theology would otherwise
have assuraed a creative act are descended from comraon an
cestors ; it has been raade likely that further researches raay, in
some noteworthy degree, still extend the range of phenomena
; ; which can be accounted for by second causes. But until
modern science is far better able than it at present seems
likely to be, to fill up some of the monstrous gaps which
appear between the tribes and famUies and genera, and be-
' tween many of the cognate species, of the animal kingdom, it
-- can scarcely complain if those who have no unconquerable
" prejudice against the supernatural, account for the admitted
'¦''-' phenomena by referring to the divine wisdom and love in crea-
>J tive work. Nor can this doctrine of creation by successive
ii divine acts, leach of which is conditioned upon so much of
; ; nature as at the time exists, be considered to contradict the
5 5 unity and causal order of the universe. This unity is one of
if. rational and ethical connections as well as of physical causes;
;,; this causal order admits of that upon which its own very exist-
jj ence is founded, viz., the causal activity of the divine will.
i.i. The ground of the world's order-, and not the source of its
jjj disturbances, is the will of God.
': j Moreover, we .are .quite ab a loss tb account for each human
VuL. J. Q

242 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
being, considered as a true personaUty, without assuming as one
eleraent in our account the supernatural in the form of creative
energy. That many eleraents of raan's complex being belong
with that which is purely natural, we must freely admit. And
this, as we have seen and shall further see, is the doctrme of
the Bible. Whether these eleraents are so like those of some
of the higher aniraals that raan should be considered by anthro
pology simply as belonging to the animal kingdom, or should
be, in the language of Quatrefages,^ constituted apart as the so-
called '¦'¦ human kingdom," this doctrine does not decide. One
of the most cautious of American scientists^ has well said,
" Man, in short, is a partaker of the natural as well as of the
spiritual." And the evolutionist may say with the apostle,
"Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which
is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." The close
connection of man with the other aniraals is raore than once
hinted at in the narrative of Genesis (compare ii. 19 and 7),
but his original difference is also plainly taught. The beast of
the earth, and man, belong to one day of creation, but to sep
arate and differently enacted works (i. 24-28). And iu the case
of each individual that which is spiritual, and which cannot be
derived frora any combination of natural causes, — the causes
which concern the laws of human transmission of life and
heredity being included, — is to be ascribed to its supernatural
source. The constant presence and power of the supernatural m and
over the natural is, raoreover, made known by the doctrine of
God, the Preserver. The physical universe is every moment,
and by virtue of its very constitution, dependent upon God,
the Absolute. This doctrine does not deny the real existence
and efficiency, as second causes, of physical substances and
forces: it rather assumes this existence and efficiency.^ The
sarae dispute which the philosophy of the physical sciences
carries on, as to whether all the so-called second causes are
not to be considered as forras in acti-vity of the one Unknown
Cause, theology takes up and carries on in different form.
But whatever of real existence and efficiency belongs to these
1 The Human Species, New York, 1879, p. 24.
2 Professor Asa Gray, Natural Science and Eeligion, p. 55.
3 The denial of the reality of second causes is at present nowhere made mote
vigorously than by Herbert Spencer and his followers, who at the same time are
readiest in the claim to explain every thing intelligible by these same causes.
(See their fallacy exposed in Herbert's Realistic Assumptions.)

GOD THE AUTHOR OF PARTICULAR EVENTS. 243
causes, belongs to them only as they are held in being and
interpenetrated with the force of the divine will. As in the
case of human agency, the human will by its innervating force
energizes the physical forces in the midst of which it depend
ently operates, so does the force of the divine will in a sphere
without limit, and -with an absolute dependence of all physical
forces upon itself, energize them without destroying their
reaUty. The rather is the energy of this supernatural force
the condition of tbe very existence and activity of the physi
cal forces. It follows, then, that that ascription of results in
nature to the divine power, which the Bible constantly makes,
is as true in fact and in philosophy as is the ascription which
science makes of the same facts to natural causes.
The doctrine of God as the Author of the particular events
of nature, and especiaUy of aU life, teaches, in still another
forra, the presence and power of the supernatural within the
natural. For God is not simply the creator and preserver of
the universe. The supernatural is also the co-ordinating force
which uses the substances and forces of nature in order to
realize the divine idea, in order to accoraplish the divine plan
of the world. To this conception of God as the co-ordinating
force to whose activity of thought and will the particular events
in nature are due, science has no insuperable objection to pro
pose. The structural forces of nature, the cheraical and -vital,
are within their restricted spheres examples of co-ordinating
force. But each event, even in the so-called natural order, is
to be fully accounted for only on the ground of some cause
which must be itself a cause with thought and will, and which
must so control the second causes as to unite them in that
special event.
And what is more or less completely true of each event in
cluded wholly within the sphere of physical causes, is pre
eminently true also of those events in history which include
also causes of another order. The co-ordinating force in his
tory, the weaver of its web, the author whose thought and will
must also be taken into the full account of every thing which
happens in history, is the Personal Absolute " whom faith calls
God." 1
How intimately inwrought into all the conceptions of the
Old Testament are the foregoing elements of doctrine con-
1 See, for a more detailed statement of this truth, an article by the author:
Bibliotheca Sacra for October, 1880.

244 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
cerning the relations of nature and God, the foUowing brief
suraraary will make sufficiently clear .^ In all the teachings
of the Bible we shall find the subject considered almost purely
from the ethical and religious, that is, from the supernatural
istic, point of view.
Between the supernatural as Creator and Lord of life, and the
order of nature and living beings which he has made, the Spirit
of God and the Word of God are used as raediating concepts.
The term " Spirit " indicates in this use the general vivifying
and informing power of God ; whUe the term " Word " is an
expression for a definite divine purpose as determining the
special forms which wisdom and grace would impress upon
creation.2 " By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host " (Ps. xxxiii. 6).
The Spirit of God, that is, " the moving force of his o-wn life,"
is the source of all life, the inner spring to the being of all that
lives (Gen. i. 2 ; Ps. xxxiii. 6, civ. 30, cxxxix. 7 f.) ; this Spkit
is represented (Job xxvi. 13) as adorning the heavens with
stars, and (xxxiii. 4, compare xx-vdi. 3) as imparting life to
man. In Isa. xlviii. 13, heavens and earth spring into being
at the call of Jehovah. The withdrawal of this divine breath,
which is in all things, is their death (Ps. xc. 3, civ. 29) , if this
indwelling Spirit of Jehovah were removed, all fiesh would
relapse into that which without this Spirit it constitutionally
is, raere unorganized and comraon dust (Job xxxiv. 14 f.).
The life which he has given depends, then, every moment, upon
him (Gen. vi. 3) ; and this not simply in the way of his provi
dential care (Gen. viii. 1) and his constant impartation of life
as strength for self-defence (Ps. xviii. 31 f.), but also because
he is the Lord of life, the Author of the spirits of aU human
kind (Num. xvi. 22, xxvii. 16). It is in accordance with this
conception that the gift of offspring is represented in Genesis
(xvii. 15 f., xviU. 10, xxv. 21, xxx. 2), and constantly throughout
the Bible, as due to a divine volition. The element of human
generation is, however, also represented as an act of human m-
telligence and freedom ; ^ and the dependence of the child upon
1 Compare, especially, H. Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, pp. 525 ff.; apd
Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, II. pp. 387 f. and 442 f.
••i " Der Geist belebt und kraftigt, das Wort bestimmt und entscheidet." (See
Ewald, Lehre der Bibel von Gott, I. p. 19; and compare H. Schultz, Alttesfar
mentliche Theologie, p. 629.)
8 This truth is implied in the Hebrew word JJI'. (See Keil on Gen. iv. 1|
Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, I. p. 215.) '

CONNECTION OF GOD WITH NATURE. 245
the parent, in the strongest sense of race-connection, is duly
icknowledged (Deut. v. 9 f. ; Ps. li. 5 ; Job xiv. 4). Especially
ire we taught by passages like Ps. cxix. 73, cxxxix. 13, 16 ;
Job X. 8 f. ; Jer. i. 5, xxxvUi. 16 ; Isa. IvU. 15 f., that the
majesty of God as Creator and as Providence is to be recog
nized in the. birth, at the divinely appointed raoment in history,
of every rational soul. On the other hand, he has allotted to
each soul his tirae, and the book of the Lord is the book of life
(Ps. xxxix. 4 f., Ixix. 27 f.) ; he cuts the thread of human life
(Isa. xxxviii. 12) ; he summons the soul from man when He
wUl (Job xxvu. 8).
The connection of God with the most purely physical phe
nomena of the universe is intiraate and uninterraitting ; for God
is not forever separated by his creative act from the universe
which he has made ^ (corapare Gen. i. 26 and 28, ii. 7). The
original order of nature and the will of God coincide (Gen. i. 20,
21, 24 f.) ; nothing is kno-wu to the writers of the Old Testa
ment concerning an order of nature which is independent of
God, or, indeed, concerning a universe which is not by its
very constitution and idea constantly under the impress of
the divine force, wisdora, and love. The constant relation of the
physical universe to the cUvine goodness and grace is the therae
of the noble descriptions of nature given in Ps. civ. and cxxxvi.
Of the forraer Humboldt ^ says, " We are astonished to find in
a lyrical poem of such a Umited corapass, the whole universe —
the heavens and the earth — sketched with a few bold touches."
The Old-Testaraent doctrine is far, however, frora entangling
the conception of God in that of the universe ; it even speaks
of the latter as though it were in rebellion against the divine
authority, and needing to be subdued by the divine power
(compare Ps. xcui., civ. 6-9 ; Job xxxviii. 8 ff.). So strenuous
at times does the representation of the separateness of the phy
sical universe become, as to threaten the doctrine of the divine
immanence (see Job ix. 4-13, xxvi. 11).
In general, God is conceived of as wearing nature like a
garment (Ps. civ. 1 f.) ; so that its laws are the expression
of his power and wisdom (Prov. viii. 22 f. ; Job xxvui. 23 ff.),
and the scope and province of its forces and laws are to exe
cute the divine behests (Amos iv. 13 ; Job xxxvU. 12 f.). And,
1 The narrative of Gen. ii. 4-iii., although not so much a story of creation as an
introduction to the actual history of humanity, agrees in this conception with the
narrative of Gen. i.-ii. 3.
s Cosmos, New York, 1863, II. p. 58 f.

24G THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
being constantly under divine control (see Ps. xix. 5 f.), these
forces manifest his glory (Ps. xviU. 7 f., vUi. 1 f.); yea, "the
heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
his handiwork " (Ps. xix. 1 f.) ; the phenomena of nature are
theophanies. The whole order of nature is the expression of
the divine omnipotence and freedom in justice and grace. It
is, therefore, repeatedly declared, — as for instance in Jer. iii.
3, V. 24, xiv. 22 ; Ps. civ. 13 f., — that it is God who gives rain
and fruitful seasons, or withholds them ; he is praised (Ps.
civ. 14 f.) for raaking the grass to grow, and furnishing wme
and oil to gladden raan. To him is ascribed (Joel i. 18-
20 ; Job xxxviii. 39 f. ; Ps. cxxxvi. 25, cxlv. 15) the supply
of the animals with their needed food. And yet all which
is known of God in nature is declared (Job xxvi. 14) to be
but the barest outlines, the meagre sketch (nisj?), of the divine
doings.^ And all these results, accompUshed by the supernatural m
the sphere of so-called nature, are to be interpreted as designed
for the sake of God's moral kingdom. That God rules the
elements of nature for the punishment of the wicked, for the
destruction of the enemies of Israel, and for the chastisement
of Israel itself, is frequently asserted or implied.' Natural
phenomena are to hira as instruments of thought, as weapons
of offence and defence in the cause of righteousness. Storms
fulfil his purposes ; so the plague, the locust, and war ; so heat,
drought, cold, and moisture. Whether the Hebrew writers
have perverted this element of their general doctrine so as to
teach or iraply the error which our Lord rebuked (Luke xiii.
2 f.), it is not now the place to inquire. But science cannot
deny that their conception of God as the Lord of life and
destiny, as the WUl by whose force the purposes of justice
and grace are carried out in history, is true to the facts and
phUosophy of history. We, on the other hand, cannot truth
fully affirra that it is the coraplete conception, or that it
gives also to the second causes their real place and office ui
history. We do not need proof to show how completely all the views
of the Bible concerning the meaning, reality, and explanation
of the events of history, — and especially of the history of
1 See Oehler, II. p. 443, and compare TJmbreit and De -Wette.
2 See Gen. -vi. 3, vii. 1 f ., xix. 24 f . ; Exod. xiv. IG ff. ; Isa. xxxi. 3, xliii. 1 U
slv. 7, 18.

MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE. 247
Israel, — are controlled by the supernatural factors. Some of
the proof is involved in the relation of the divine names to the
developraent of the national life, and has already been briefly
discussed.! The very constitution of the law, history, and
prophecy of the Old Testaraent is dependent upon the Old-
Testament idea of God.
The Hebrew conception of man's relations to nature raay be
briefly described as follows. Man's primitive condition is re
garded as one of peaceful relationships : ^ this we conclude from
the description of the life in paradise, and from the contrast of
this description with Gen. iii. 17 and v. 29. A comparison
pf Gen. ix. 2 with i. 29 and ii. 18 f. seems to imply that raan was
not originally carnivorous, but lived on friendly terms with all
the animals. To this view of his original condition science
makes strong and well-founded objections, in the face of which
it is difficult to establish, as in agreement with reality, a literal
interpretation of the account. According to the writers of the
Old Testament, this ancient relation to nature will be restored
in the completed kingdom of redemption. According to Zech.
xiv. 20 f., holiness -wUl then change even the most external mat
ters ; according to Joel iii. 18 f. and Ezek. xlvii. 6 f., a stream
of renewing influences will flow forth and abroad from the reli
gious centre of Judaism. Nothing injurious from the animal
kingdom shall, we are assured (Hos. U. 18), annoy the people
of Jehovah in that day ; for even the very nature of the wild
beasts -will be changed (compare Isa. xi. 6-8 and Ixv. 25). This
renewal of nature is conditioned upon moral causes ; when, and
because, the earth shall be fuU of the knowledge of the Lord,
then and therefore shall there be peace in the aniraal kingdora,
and they shall not hurt nor destroy in all God's mountain
(Isa. xi. 9). When the iniquity of the people is forgiven, then
there shall be no more complaint of sickness (Isa. xxxUi. 24).
This expansion of the conception of all nature as the product
of an almighty wiU, which orders all things in conforraity with
a wise and righteous purpose, is, throughout, bibUcal. The
prophecy of science is not yet ready to utter its voice as to
what will be, nor have its powers in projecting principles upon
the future yet grown so as to declare what must be, the order
of nature in the time of the perfected raoral kingdora. They
v/ho uttered these prophecies apparently understood them as
1 See Part I. chap. iii.
2 See Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, II. p. 387 i.

248 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
though they were to be fulflUed in every letter of their text.
But so much of them as it is the mind of the Spirit to, use
for furthering the divine kingdom, does not suffer, if the letter
of their representations should prove scientifically faulty or
inexact. The same intense monotheistic supernaturalism controls all
the biblical descriptions of nature.^ It is, as says Humboldt,^
" characteristic of the poetry of the Hebrews, that, as a reflex
of monotheism, it always embraces the universe in its unity."
These descriptions, therefore, whUe wanting the bright, fresh
feeling of the Greeks, excel in depth of insight.^ The phe
nomena of nature are penetrated with the vision which beholds
all things in Gpd. To tlus ethical and reUgious quality is due
the humane spirit of the Torah toward animals, as evinced in
provisions like those of Exod. xxii. 29 f., xx. 10 ; Deut. xxii,
1-4, 6 f., xxv. 4 ; Lev. xxii. 27, 28 ; and to the same quality
the prophetic complaint over the share of nature in man's smful
sorrows, as recorded in passages like Jon. iv. 11; Joel ii. 22;
Jer. xxiii. 10, iv. 25, ix. 10, xii. 4, xxvU. 6 ; Zech. viu. 12. But
as the lower animals have shared in the consequences of human
sin, so shall they share — as we are taught, Ps. xxxvi. 6, 7,
1. 9 f. — in the divine grace and in Messianic salvation. The
purpose of Scripture in promulgating these conceptions and de
scriptions of nature is as distinctively ethical and religious as
are the descriptions and conceptions theraselves. The relation
of God to nature is taught, and the descriptions of her phenom
ena are given, in order that men may know and praise and
serve him as the Lord of nature. In every thing the religious
and not the purely scientific motive has control. As it is writ
ten in Amos v. 8 : " Seek ye the Lord, that ye may Hve, —
him who formeth the seven stars and Orion, and changeth
the darkness into morning, and darkeneth day into night ; who
summoneth the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon
the face of the earth, — Jehovah is his name."
As might be expected, we find the New Testament nearly
sUent upon the more definite elements of the conception of
1 Of such descriptions the following are among the more characteristic: Ps.
viii., xix., Ixv., Ixxiv. 15-17, civ., cxlvii., cxlviii.; Job xx^i., xx-viii., xxxvu.,
xxxviii.-xli.; Hos. xiii. 7, 8, xiv. 6-9; Isa. x. 14, xxx. 23 f., xl. 4 f. The most
lengthy description of an animal is that of the crocodile (Job xli.).
2 Cosmos, II. p. 57.
3 See Zockler, Geschichte der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Natur
wissenschaft, I. p. 24.

ATTITUDE OF JESUS TOWARD NATURE. 249
nature, as nature is in itself and in its relations to God. The
mission of the New-Testaraent writings is such as to lead to
the assumption of aU the true elements of the Old-Testament
doctrine, and then to the unfolding of the connected religious
truths, without any consciousness of scientific difficulties, or
consequent desire to solve them. It is, therefore, the distinct
ively reUgious eleraents of the so-called Mosaic cosraogony
which the New Testament accepts as valid ; it is by these ele
ments that its doctrine of creation is connected with that of
the 01d.i This doctrine it expands, however, by the Christian
conception of Christ as the creative Logos. The doctrine of
God as the original source and immanent ground and final
purpose of creation is no less forcefully reiterated, Rom. xi. 36
(oTi it avTOv Kat 8t' avTOv Kai eh avrov to. ¦n-dvra), because the personi
fied life-giving power of God (the Spirit or Word of Jehovah)
is now kno-wn as the one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
are all things, and we through him (eh Kuptos Tijo-oCs Xpta-rds, 8^
OV TO. wdvTa Kal ¦^pei's Si avTofu, 1 Cor. vUi. 61 ; compare Col. i. 15, 16,
and John i. 3). This Christian doctrine of creation is one
which the most advanced point of view reached by the mod
ern sciences enables the investigator neither to descry nor to
refuse. The doctrine of a palingenesis of nature, which is to accora
pany the establishraent of the corapleted Messianic kingdora,
belongs to the New Testament as weU as to the Old (see Matt.
xix. 28). At that time all nature, in the sense of the entire
irrational creation (ktio-is), will be free frora the consequences
of huraan sin (Rora. viU. 19 f.) ; since Christians, as well as the
ancient people of God, expect new heavens and a new earth in
which righteousness has a firra and lasting habitation (2 Pet.
ui. 13; compare Rev. xxi. 1).
The attitude of Jesus toward nature is so gentle, free, and
noble, as to constitute in itself a system of unwritten doctrine.
Such of his express teachings as contain in any way allusions
to natural phenomena — notably sorae passages frora the Ser
mon on the Mount, and certain of his parables — prove his
observations to have been of that quick and penetrating, yet
quiet kind, which belongs to those whose spirits are most akin
to the spirit of nature. The beauty of the flowers has been
noticed (Matt. vi. 29), and the soul of the observer touched
1 See Acts xiv. 17, x-vii. 24^28; Eom. i. 19 f., xi. 36; Eph. iii. 15; Heb. ii. 10,
xi. 3 f.; John i. 1-4; Col. 1. 13 ff.; and compare Dorner, Glaubenslehre, I. p. 460.

250 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
with a feeling almost like grief or compassion, at the thought
how quickly that beauty fades or is ruthlessly destroyed (verse
30). In accordance with the fine instuict of the Hebrew reh
gion, the divine care for the animate and inanimate creation is
made the occasion of praises and of exhortation to a life of
gratitude and trust (verse 25 £; compare x. 29). The unity of
God's work, and the supremacy of the ethical to the material
and aesthetic interests, are aUke taught in many of the parar
bles. The world of nature is God's world; in it, and even
amidst its raost grim and dreadful phenomena, its most dev
astating experiences, the child of God may walk as in his
Father's house. It is just those implied views of nature that
characterize the discourses of the central figure and only m-
fallible teacher of the Bible, which most completely escape even
the suspicion of any conflict with the assured discoveries of
science. In contrast with the elevation and rare development of view
which is shown by all the more distinctively religious elements
of the biblical doctrine of nature, must be placed the simple
and crude conceptions which are held as to the existence, char
acteristics, and concatenation of second causes. The phenom
ena of nature are throughout the Old Testament apparently
conceived of in the most primitive fashion; and to attribute
this appearance merely to the use of popular language, without
acknowledging the presence of those conceptions to which the
language is due, is not more justifiable in the case of the Bible
than in that of other ancient writings.
The Hebrew conceptions of physical phenomena were similar
to those of neighboring nations in antiquity. The popular
belief that the sky is a solid expanse (^'fi , arepewpxi, LXX.) was
expressed in its very title, and corresponded to the behef of
the Greeks as found in Homer, Pindar, and even in some of the
philosophers.^ In Amos ix. 6 it is called a vault ; and in Isa.
xl. 22 , Ps. civ. 2, it is compared to a curtain stretched out over
head. Since it is both pellucid and firra, it resembles a mirror
(Job xxxvii. 18) or the light transparent blue of a sapphire
(Exod. xxiv. 10). It was popularly supposed to be set upon
the tops of the mountains as upon supporting pillars (see Job
xxvi. 11 and 1 Sam. ii. 8), and to have openings like doors, or
windows, or canals, through which the water falls as rain upon
1 As, for instance, Empedocles. Corresponding Greek epithets are niivi"

INTENSE MONOTHEISM OF THE BIBLE. 251
the earth; ^ although the true state of the case was not un
kno-wn, at least in later times, as to the nature of the rain,^ and
even as to the suspense of the earth without visible support
(see Job xxvi. 7). Above the firmament was an exhaustless
store of water,^ — a conception connected with that of the
nature of the sky itself, and also with the ancient conception
of an ocean-stream flowing around the entire earth.
The simplicity and unscientific character of the Hebrew con
ceptions of the animal kingdom is manifest in the classifications
of the Mosaic cosmogony and of the Torah. The purpose of
the writers is in every case to serve the ends of morals and
religion rather than of accurate scientific knowledge : in serving
these ends they employ such means of information as are at
their hand.
We must, then, approach the detaUed consideration of any
point seemingly in dispute between the Bible and the natural
and physical sciences, -with the following presumptions, which
are conclusions from the preceding examination.
The view which the Bible takes of nature is intensely mono
theistic and supernaturalistic. The phenomena which science
classifies according to the way in which they exhibit the quali
ties of second causes, the Bible ascribes to their source in the
wise and gracious -wUl of the Primal Cause. If it be true, as
we are assured on credible authority, that " the whole progress
of physical science tends, in respect to divine action, to con
sider that mediate, general, and in a sense indirect, which has
been thought to be immediate and special ; " * it is equally true
that the permanent tendency of revelation and Scripture is to
attribute to the immediate divine action what physical science
considers as "raediate, general, and in a sense indirect." The
Bible does not deny tlie truth of the scientific point of view,
from which " aU appears to have come to pass in the course
of nature, and therefore under second causes ; " although this
comprehensive statement is very far from being verifiable by
science. But when science confesses, "What these are, or
how connected and interfused with first cause, we know not ; " ^
revelation receives from the hand of science a coraraission to
become its teacher. Concerning the being and qualities of the
1 Compare Gen. i. 7, vii. 11; 2 Kings vii. 2, 19; Job xxxviii. 25; Ps. Ixxviii. 23,
cxMii. 4.
2 Compare Gen. ii. 6; Job xxx-vi. 27, 28; Jer. x. 13; Ps. cxxsv, 7.
' Gen. i. 7; Ps. cxlviii. 4, compare xxix. 3, civ. 3.
* Asa Gray, Natural Science and Eeligion, p. 69. ^ Ibid., p. 76 It.

252 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
supernatural, and concerning the religious elements of belief
as to the relations of the natural and the supernatural, the
declarations of Sacred Scripture may be presumed to teach true
doctrine. And this presumption has strength in direct propor
tion to the strength of the organic connection which exists
between each such element and the distinctive central truths
of Scripture.
The view which the Bible takes of nature coincides with
that of science in sorae of the most iraportant elements of their
coraraon ground. The point of -view is different, but certam
ideal characteristics of nature are descried from either point of
view. That the world has been forraed and exists as a cosmos,
an orderly and progressive systera, both science and Scripture
declare. But Scripture is as far frora possessing the scientific
conception of the world as a self-contained whole, as science
itself is from the abUity to raake this conception good.^ The
power which pure religious ideas exert to purify the various
subordinate eleraents of the conception of nature, and thus to
make it correspond to the ideal forms under which science
shows that nature has been created, appears often in the Bible ;
especially in the case of the Mosaic cosraogony. Certain de
ductions from the true religious idea of the world necessarily
correspond to the inductions of science. Revelation makes
known this idea in its unfolding into these forms of deduction.
It is to be presumed, then, that the Bible wiU be scientifically
exact so far as certain general elements of the scientific con
ception of the world are concerned. It -wUl, however, arrive
at these elements by deduction frora its religious idea and as
iteras of revelation included in that idea ; whereas science will
arrive at the sarae elements by scientific induction on the basis
of an experience of nature.
The view which the Bible takes of nature is the view of men
who were relatively lacking in exact knowledge of phenomena,
devoid of scientific conceptions, and without scientific means of
acquiring this knowledge or these conceptions. The writers of
Scripture could, then, be kept frora manifold erroneous impres
sions and statements upon such matters, only in a supernatural
way. Were they so kept ? So far as the answer to this qnes-
1 The statement of the author jtist quoted (see p. 67), — that " nature ... is a
system of flxed laws and uniformities," — is not more verifiable in the sense in
tended, than the other statement of Dawson (Nature and the Bible, p. 31): "Tli^
uniformity of nature as under natural law, expressing the will of the unchange
able Creator, is as certain a dogma of Scripture as it is a result of science."

PRESUMPTION AGAINST SCIENTIFIC INFALLIBILITY. 253
tion depends upon the assumptions of faith, we have no right to
say that they were. So far as it depends upon historic proba
bilities, we have every reason to presume that they were not.
So far as it depends upon the facts, — and to the facts an
ultimate appeal raust be taken, — we have abundant reason
to assert that they were not. The presuraption in favor of
any passage in the Bible is in the inverse ratio of its atterapt,
— should any such attempt anywhere exist — to deal with
scientific questions.^ Moreover, in cases where the handling
of scientific questions is indirectly concerned in the establish
ment of religious doctrine, we cannot expect that the writers
vrill be kept from all error. The rather will their liability to
error be in the direct ratio of the remoteness of these questions
from the central truths of such doctrine. In other words, both
substance and form of truth may be expected only so far as
they are concerned in the main purpose of revelation, and with
a certainty of expectation conditioned upon their closeness of
organic connection w^ith the infaUible contents of revelation.
Both form and substance of representation raay be expected
to share in the errors of the tirae, so far as they are distinc
tively not thus connected with such contents, but derived in a
purely human way from observation or tradition. The human,
fallible, and erroneous elements will be permeated, and to a
certain extent transfused, but not necessarily freed from their
fallibiUty and error, by the presence of revealed truth concern
ing the supernatural.
We proceed now to illustrate and enforce the foregoing con
clusions by several selected exaraples. And araong these, as
being both first in occurrence and chief in iraport, must be
placed the so-caUed Mosaic cosmogony (Gen. i. 1-ii. 3).
The relative antiquity, the noble simplicity in style, the lofti
ness and purity in theological conceptions, of this masterpiece
which meets our sight at the very opening of the Bible, are
acknowledged by all, both critics and casual readers.^ Its
literary quality has won the praises of writers Uke Herder
and Jean Paul Richter. And since modem science began to
make more serious work of theories of world-building, the
elaborate presentation of the relations between this simple
ancient cosraogony and these coraplicated modern theories
has provoked the painstaiking, not only of theologians like
1 Compare Eeusch, Bibel lund Natnr, pp. 21-34 and 262 ff.
* Compare Dillmann, Die Genesis, p. 1.

254 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Bosizio,! Delitzsch,2 Ebrard,^ Godet,* Keeri,^ Keil,^ Kurtz,'
Reusch,8 F. W. Schultz,^ John Pye Smith,io Zockler," and
many others, but also of scientists Uke Cuvier,^ Dana,,^ Daw-
son,i* MiUer,!^ Pfaff,i« Quenstedt," and Andreas Wagner.^s
The general accord of this narrative, in its religious doctrine,
with that of the entire Bible (as that doctrine has already been
exhibited), is undoubted ; and as well the fact that the purpose
of the narrative is distinctively not speculative nor scientific,
but religious. " It has throughout," says F. W. Schultz (p. 86),
" only one thing, the founding of the kingdom of God, in its
view." In the light of this great final purpose, not only its ex
press statements and its implied inferences, but also its silences
and omissions, and even its lapses and errors (as judged from
the scientific point of view), must all be interpreted. This
purpose, then, invites us at once to distinguish between the
items of true doctrine which the passage intends to teach, and
the forms of conception, whether scientificaUy exact or erro
neous, in which the doctrine is conveyed. Of- the more impor
tant eleraents of doctrine designed to be taught, the foUowing
may be especially distinguished : ^^ —
(1) The universe is dependent for its existence and present
order upon the will of God. That God is the Creator and
Lord of all, is a truth in which science, pliUosophy, and religion
unite for their common foundation, and upon which all the
1 Das Hexaemeron und die Geologic, Mainz, 1865. (Jesuit priest.)
2 Commentar uber die Genesis, 4 Autl., Leipzig, 1872.
' Der Glaube an die heilige Sehrift und die Ergebnisse der Naturforschung,
Konlgsberg, 1861.
1 !^tudes bibliques, first series, second edition, Paris, 1873.
5 Die Schbpfungsgeschichte, etc., Basel, 1861; Die Einheit der biblischen Urge
schichte, 1863.
' Genesis und Exodus, Leipzig, 1861.
' Bibel und Astronomic, 4 Aufl., Berlin, 1858.
' 8 Bibel und Natur, 4 Aufl., Bonn, 1876.
9 Die Schopfungsgeschichte nach Naturwissenschaft und Bibel, Gotha, 1865.
i» The Eelation between the Holy Scriptures and Some Parts of Geological
Science, fifth edition, London, 1854.
11 Theologia Naturalls, Frankfurt, 1860; Die Urgeschichte der Erde und des
Menschen, Giitersloh, 1868.
12 Discours sur les Edvolutions du Globe, re-edited by Hofer, Paris, 1850.
13 Manual of Geology, New York, 1874.
14 Nature and the Bible, New York, 1875.
15 Testimony of the Eocks, and other works of this author.
18 Schopfungsgeschichte, etc., Frankfurt, 1855.
1' Sonst und Jetzt, Tiibingen, 1856.
18 Geschichte der Urwelt, 2 Aufl., Leipzig, 1857. (In this brief list, only some
ot the more recent and elaborate works are mentioned.)
19 Compare P. W. Schultz, Die Schopfungsgeschichte, pp. 94 fi.; Eeusch, Bibel
und Natur, pp. 75 ff.

MEANING OF THE WORD "CREATE." 255
other truths and experiences of salvation depend. This primal
truth, however, is not taught (Gen. i.) in the form of the asser
tion that God created the world out of nothing. The word
Xll is, indeed, in the Kal used only of the divine activity : as
thus used it is never joined with an accusative of the material,
and always expresses tbe production of somewhat new, whether
in the kingdom of nature (Num. xvi. 30) or in that of grace
(Exod. xxxiv. 10 ; Ps. li. 10). But, on the other hand, its use
even in this very passage cannot be confined to the act of abso
lute creation (compare i. 27, v. 1, and ii. 7) ; and in other pass
ages (Amos iv. 13 ; Isa. xUii. 7, xlv. 7, 18) it stands in parallelism
with n»^^ (to make), and ¦»?; (to fashion), or with mn (to renew)
(Ps. civ. 30). Moreover, the claim that it is the express inten
tion of Gen. i. to teach the doctrine of God's relation to the
world under the form of a creation out of nothing, cannot rely
upon the very sentence (Gen. i. 1) which forras its chief sup
port. For, of the three interpretations of this difficult passage,
that adopted by Bunsen, Ewald, Schrader, Herraann Schultz,
and Dillmann, is perhaps the least difficult, in view of the con
struction of the language and the exegesis of the entire chapter.
We read, then, as the opening declaration of the Bible, " In the
beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, — and
the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep, and the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of
the waters, — then God said. Let there be light." ^ The doc
trine that all things, even the original materials of the world,
are the product of the divine will, is, then, rather implied
ihan expressly taught in the Mosaic cosmogony. Nor is this
fact of negative significance alone : it serves to emphasize the
distinguished simplicity and purely religious and practical (as
contrasted with what is theosophic) nature of the narrative.
We have already considered the other items of this general
relation of God to nature and man, in so far as they contra
dict all atheism, materialism, deisra, and dualisra, — not, how
ever, with express intent to enter into philosophic controversies,
but in the siraple and even naive fashion which befits so ancient
a docuraent in its work of laying the foundations of the prac
tical religious life.
1 The justification of this translation cannot, of course, be given here; but
compare Dillmann, Die Genesis, in loco ; H. Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theo
logie, 530 f.; and for an answer to the objections growing out of the length of
the sentence, see Schrader, Studien zur Kritik, p. 48 f ., and compare Gen. ii. 4 f.,
and V. 1-3.

256 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
(2) The divine qualities of power and wisdom, as evinced m
the divine work of preparing the world of physical substances
and forces, of living creatures, and of moral subjects made in
die divine image, are prominent in the thought and narrative
of the author. The almightiness of the divine word is shown
in that this word is immediately followed by its perfect result
(i. 3, 6 f.,9, 11 f., 14 f., 20 f., 24 f.) ; the perfection of the divine
wisdora is shown in that each such result, as well as the total
product of creation, raay be inspected and pronounced to be
"good " (verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). An adequate actuali
zation of the divine idea is thus pnoclairaed. The six days of
creation are, then, not needed as tirae in wliich the divme
volition may reach its full result ; nor is the doctrine of a
creation which not only takes place in time, but continues
through tirae, here taught in the sense in which F. W. Schultz ^
and others would find it. None of the time of the six days of
creation is regarded by the author of G«n. i. as necessary for,
or indeed, in strictness of speech, as occupied by, the divine act
of creation.
(3) The divine qualities in their creative acti-vity penetrate
every detail of creation. The arrangeraents of things inorganic,
and of the Uves of all organized beings, are, one and all, due to
God. No contrast is intended which shall restrict the divine
activity, when we are told of one act of creation that it was
iraraediate, and of another that it was mediate. And just as
truly as the prophet intends no distinction of fundamental rela
tion to God, when he speaks (Isa. xlv. 18) of Jehovah that
" created " the heavens, and ^'¦formed " the earth ; just so truly
does this author intend no such distinction when he makes
Elohim coramand the light to be, and the earth to bring forth
the grass. The resting of God cannot, therefore, contradict
that specifically bibUcal view of the relation of God to his
creation which raakes him always the Creator and Preserver
of his universe. The distinction between God's works in crea
tion, and his sabbatic rest, is one between the divine activity in
producing all the past forms of creation, and that activity which
concerns the moral government and redemption of man.^ The
supremacy, transcendency, and iraraanency of God are implied
alike in all his creative works and in his sabbatic rest. No
forra of matter or of life is, then, to be considered as exempt
from this relation of dependence upon God^; much less can it
1 Die Schopfungsgeschichte, p. 96 f. s Compare F. "W. Schultz, Ibid., p. l"*'

THE COSMOGONY AND THE SABBATH-IDEA. 257
be personified as a nature-god, or worshipped in implied in
dependence of its real Creator.
(4) The divine institution of the Mosaic sabbath is the doc
trine, which, although not in itself of equivalent importance
with the foregoing truths, nevertheless, on account of its his
torical value in connection with the founding of Mosaism, gave
distinctive shape to the Mosaic cosraogony. This doctrine is
itself revealed and taught in this narrative. The division of
tirae into weeks rests upon a natural order, and existed for an
indefinite period before this account of creation was promul
gated. A tradition of creation among the Hebrews, in certain
features like, and in others unlike, the cosmogonies of the other
nations, also preceded the writing of Gen. i. 1-ii. 3. But the
account of Genesis, in substantially its present form, must be
held to be contemporaneous with, or shaped upon the ground
of, the institution of the sabbath-feast araong the Jews.^ It is,
then, the hebdomad rather than the hexaemeron which pri
marily determined the shaping of the account. The eight or
raore works of creation which the writer found existent in the
traditional accounts, he gathered up into the six days of his
narrative, in order that the six days of work and the one day of
divinely appointed rest might appear in creation itself. It was
not a revelation of the number of geological periods in which
the work of framing the universe actuaUy took place, that he
supposed himself to have received or designed to convey, but
rather a divine command for the institution of the sabbath rest.
From this point of view, then, the entire narrative culminates
in the declaration, "And God blessed the seventh day, and
hallowed it." ^ The Mosaic conception of God, and the Mosaic
institution of the sabbath, contribute elements of doctrine which
blend themselves in the form of the Mosaic cosmogony. The
nuraber of the days is to be insisted upon as an enforcement
of one command of the Decalogue (compare Exod. xx. 8-11).
But that otherwise the precise order of the works, or the nuraber
of days in which they should be conceived of as consumraated,
was not held important in Old-Testaraent doctrine, we find
proof in the variableness of its own conception of these detaUs
of creation. Thus in Gen. U. 4 ff. there appears a different, if
not a contradictory, account of the order of creation. In Job
1 See Dillmann, Die Genesis, p. 12.
2 Compare Eeusch, Bibel und Natur, p. 127 f.; and F. W. Schultz, Schiipfungis-
geachichte, p. 344 f .
VOL. I. K

268 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
xxxviii. 4-7, the existence of the stars before the founding of
the earth is presupposed. These passages, and as weU Prov.
viU. 24 f. ; Ps. xxiv. 2 ; Job xxvi. 7-10, and even that later
description which most closely follows this of Gen. i., — viz., Ps.
civ., — show no anxiety to accord in these matters with their
great original.
Besides these more strictly religious doctrines, and yet as
deduced frora them and so sharing in the marks of revelation
which they bear, are certain general conceptions in which the
narrative of Gen. i. either coincides or contrasts with the con
ceptions of science. Among such are the following : —
(1) Man stands at the head of creation, being last in tune
but first in excellence, and sharing both in the natural and in
the supernatural. The conception of the Mosaic cosmogony
agrees with scientific discoveries in raaking raan appear last
upon the earth, and only after, though in close conjunction
with, the higher orders of aniraals. The Mosaic cosmogony
tells of a sixth day, which includes the seventh and eighth
works of God (i. 24-28). Geology teUs us of a cenozoic time,
which is divided into two ages, — the tertiary, or age of mam
mals , the quaternary, or age of man.^ The point of view which
science holds is ordinarily, however, the merely anatomical or
physiological : it is wont, therefore, to insist upon man's con
nections with the natural. But when it has tried to take the
other side of man's complex nature also into the account, and
is then asked after his total origin, it is forced to say, " I do not
know : " ^ its declaration contrasts with, but does not contra
dict, that of Gen. i. 26, which asserts, " God created man in his
own image."
(2) Man, so far as the purpose of the Bible is concerned,
raay be regarded as the centre of creation. The Mosaic cos
mogony so regards hira. Its order of creative acts has not only
its culmination, but also its focus, in man. The earth must not
more surely bring forth vegetable life in preparation for the
animal life, which, according to the conception of Genesis, was
wholly to be sustained by it, than must all aniraal life be brought
forth in preparation for raan (compare Gen. ii. 18 f.). Sun,
moon, and all the reraotest stars were created for man, to rule
the day and night for hira, and to give him light ; in this office
1 See Dana, Manual of Geology, ed. 1874, p. 141, 766 f.
2 See Quatrefages, The Human Species, p. 128; Asa Gray, Science and Eeligion.
p. 100.

THE UNIVERSE AN ORDERLY WHOLE. 259
they serve the divine moral purpose as well as in the office of
hosts of the Lord who raade thera (corapare Job xxxviU. 7 ;
Isa. xl. 26). From the bibUcal point of view, one of these two
offices can scarcely be called more poetic or prosaic than the
other.i Frora the merely scientific point of view, man appears
far otherwise placed than at the focus of creation. And yet
these two points of view, the biblical and the scientific, are
not so rauch necessarily contradictory as they are actually in
contrast. That the forra in which the Mosaic cosraogony con
ceives of man as having come into this central position, may
be, in its details, scientifically erroneous, does not prove the
conception itself untrue.
(3) That the universe has been constituted by God, through
successive acts of creation, an orderly and progressive whole,
is also a conception held firm in the Mosaic cosmogony. And
this is also the conception arrived at by the inductions of the
natural and physical sciences. Frora lower to higher, and by
the fitting of each new form into the place already provided for
it, the work of creation moves to its resting-place. The cos
mos is perfect as a divine idea , it moves in actuality forward
toward its goal by successive stages. Only when sin has inter
rupted the natural order, does a pause in order take place.
The perfect cosmos shall corae in that perfected kingdom of
rederaption, whose narrative is the entire Bible. With this
conception, rauch that science holds true of the order of nature
either coincides or contrasts, according to the manner in which
its details are wrought out. Of that imraense conflict araongst
the forras of aniraal life, of those countless ages of growth
and increase, succeeded by ruin and coraparative chaos, which
geology has brought to view, the Mosaic cosmogony plainly has
no information. To the thought of its author, such a method
in creation might have seemed contradictory to the conception
of divine wisdom and order. But science has shown that this
method of order out of disorder lies in the divine path frora
the lower to the higher, from an earth waste and void to a
world redeemed by Christ.
That arrangement of the materials in this ideal course of
creation which is given by the Mosaic cosraogony is, however, as
faulty scientificaUy as the materials are meagre. The arrange
ment, and the amount of material to be arranged, are only such
as were in accord with the author's ignorance of scientific mat-
1 Compare Job ix. 6 and xxx-viii. 6, with xxvi. 7.

260 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ters. The general conception of order is a deduction from the
religious belief of Mosaisra. Understood in this way, it is at
every step siraple and natural to a raind inspired by revelation
of religious truth, but ignorant of the truths of science. The
visible universe begins to become the fit habitation of the king
dom of rederaption when the word of God first summons the
light into being. For light is the indispensable condition, not
only of all existence, but also of the very cognizance of that pro
cess which the writer is to describe. Before its appearing, all
definite existence is but potential ; since there is only a wide and
dark expanse of waste and irapetuous waters (Qinn), brooded
over by the divine life-giving Spirit. This watery mass, still
undivided, but now Ulurained with the newly created Ught, the
word of God then separates into its two parts, and fixes sep
arate by the firra and pellucid expanse of sky. And as the
heaven had been divided from the earth, so now is the earth
itself divided by the collecting together of the waters into the
sea, and the dry-land called earth (y}^) in the more restricted
sense of the word. This earth is thus prepared at once to re
spond to the creative coraraand of Jehovah, and spontaneously
bring forth every known kind of vegetable life. The light,
which had until now been conceived of as everywhere equaUy
diffused above the earth, is now conceived of as stationed at its
centres of supply ; there has been light, but now God says,
"Let there be lights."
The creation of the heavenly bodies upon the fourth day,
separated thus from the creation of light, is the only real sur
prise in the order of the Mosaic cosmogony. Many occult
reasons, both scientific and theosophic, have been assigned for
this order. A prophecy of the raodern scientific theory of
world-building has been detected in it by all the more confident
modern harmonists. But, according to DUlraann^ and others
(Tuch, Ewald), the creation of sun, moon, and stars occurs
here, because, as possessed of the power of motion and fitted
for activity, they belong to a higher order of beings than sta
tionary vegetable forms.^ Considering the traditional accounts
which the author had to handle, and the conceptions, religiously
true but scientifically inexact, which control his handling of
these accounts, this order may be said to be not so surprising.
According to these conceptions, the creation of the heavenly
luminaries could not take place until a firmament was con-
1 Die Genesis, p. 13. 2 Compare Judg. v. 20; Job xxxviii. 7; Isa.xl.2C,

ORDER OF THE EIGHT CREATIVE WORKS. 261
structed in which to set thera ; it would not be Conceived of as
taking place except in the order of the service which these
lurainaries were to render to the world as the dwelling-place
of raan. The lights are for the earth, and for man as dwelling
on the earth (verses 14-18). They could not, then, be created
earlier than the third day. But since the author was to com
bine the eight works of creation so as to make the sabbath
week, two works were allotted to the third day. The two
works which naturally and almost necessarily went together
were the making of the dry-land, and the command to it to
bring forth its products of vegetable life. Moreover,, by this
arrangement of the fourth day, the entire balance of the two
great halves of the creative works — the opera distinctionis
and the opera ornatus of Thomas Aquinas ^ — is secured and
maintained.^ From this point forward, the author of Gen. i. introduces the
aniraal creation upon the earth, in an order which corresponds
to his general plan and to his conceptions of its relations to
raan ; until he reaches the crowning divine work, the one for
which aU the preceding narrative has been arranged, and to
wluch all the subsequent history and doctrine shall recur.
Since, then, the details of time and order, in which the nar
rative of Gen. i. 1-ii. 3 was so arranged as to embody the true
reUgious conceptions of its author, are necessarUy dependent
upon the knowledge of nature belonging to his age, we raay
anticipate in thera not a few scientific defects and errors.
Among the specific difficulties which modern science finds with
the Mosaic cosmogony, the following are the more important.
The difficulties which belong to its general conception, and
occasion contrasts with, rather than contradictions of, scientific
truths, haA'^e already been sufficiently noticed.
(1) The Mosaic cosraogony does not recognize that close
relation in origin of the various forras of life, and that gradual
unfolding of higher and yet higher forms, which modern science
proclairas. All the forras of plant-life are introduced together
in verse 12 ; all the forras of fishes and birds in verse 20 ; all
the forras of land-aniraals in verses 24 f.
(2) The Mosaic cosmogony does not recognize that slow and
uninterrupted progress, requiring countless ages for the suc-
1 Summa Th., I. quaes. 74, art. 1; and for the same view from the scientific
standpoint, see Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 769.
2 Compare F. "W. Schultz, Schopfungsgeschichte, p. 343 f.

262 TIIE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
cessive steps of its procedure, which science shows to have been
the method of creation. Even admitting that the "six days" of
creation may be interpreted as six periods of indefinite length
(an admission which will soon be examined critically), the time
thus gained is not represented as in any sense filled or occupied
by creation. But the very substance of the scientific repre
sentation requires this imraense lapse of time in order that it
may be occupied -with the unfolding of the various forms of
Ufe. (3) The correspondence of the Tohu-va-Bohu of Gen. i. 2,
and the cosmogonic period when the heavens and the earth
were "in the condition of a gaseous fluid," is specious. For,
according to the Mosaic cosraogony, the heavens were made
frora the earth-raass, which was at that time unillumined ; and,
moreover, the term Dinn (a mass of raging waters) has no re
serablance to a " gaseous fluid." ^ The appearance of light is,
then, the first step toward order frora the original dark and
watery chaos ; whereas light belongs by its very nature to that
condition of the earth-mass with which the hypothesis of science
begins. (4) The production of all the various great types of plant-
life is represented by the Mosaic cosmogony as taking place
before the existence of sunlight upon the earth (verses 11 f.).
This difficulty cannot be escaped by pointing out that some of
the lower forras of plant-life may possibly have existed without
sunlight; for the very description is manifestly designed to
cover all the forras faraUiar to the experience of the author and
necessary to the sustenance of man and beast (compare i. 11 f.
and 29 f.). The design of the description is further manifest
in the phrase which concludes this perfected work. Nor can
we say that the great age (the carboniferous) in which the
luxuriance of plant-life was distinctive is here characterized by
a few bold touches ; for this age must have been subsequent
both to the fourth, and to a part of the fifth day of the Mosaic
cosraogony. (5) The separation of all plant-life frora the animal-life which
the Mosaic cosmogony assigns to the fifth and the first part of
the sixth days, is in opposition to the conclusions of modern
science. The impossibility of separating the lower grades of
vegetable from those of animal life, even by the analysis of
1 This is certain from the etymology of the word (Din, to roar), and from its
use elsewhere: compare Gen. viii. 2; Ezek. xxvi. 19; Jon. ii. 5; Ps. xiii. 1.

CREATION OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 263
scientific methods, is declared by Professor Gray to be a settled
opinion in science. ^ And even Dawson adraits that the usual
explanation of the difficulty, how an entire aeon could elapse
between plants and animals, is " a straining of the records ; "
while the same harmonist entirely shirks this difficulty himself.^
Nor is the stateraent of the Mosaic cosraogony relieved of its
scientific inaccuracy by holding either one of the two views of
the scientists upon the question, whether vegetable or aniraal
Ufe appeared first upon the earth.
(6) The creation of the heavenly bodies, which the Mosaic
cosmogony seems to make subsequent to the present distinction
of sea and land upon the earth's surface, and even to the pro
duction of the various forras of plant-life, is necessarily assigned
by science to an antiquity imraensely raore reraote than either.
That the words of Gen. i. 14 — " And God said. Let there be
lights in the firmament" — may be made to refer to the raerely
phenomenal change by which the heavenly bodies are now first
made visible from the earth, is not exegetically defensible ; nor
does it essentially change the scientific objections. For the
difficulty with respect to the relations of sunlight and the per
fection of plant-life still remains. The supposition that the
work of the fourth day coincides with the claims of science
includes, moreover, the supposition that the most far-reaching
and as yet unproved form of the theory of La Place (the form
which includes in one process of evolution all the reraotest
fixed stars) was either known to the writer of Genesis, or else
revealed through his unconscious agency. The coraparison of
the V, of verse 14 with the use of the same word in the pre
ceding verses (3 and 6), and the fact that the article is want
ing before n'isa, prevent us from understanding these words
as expressive of any tlUng less than a divine creative act.
(7) The cUfferent steps in the creation of aniraal forras
(verses 20-25) correspond with the representations of geology
and palaeontology, in certain of their larger outlines ; but this
correspondence is still only such as belongs to the true nature
of the narrative, — a correspondence growing out of the partial
agreement of the deductions frora true religious conceptions
and the inductions of scientific research. Beyond these liraits
we find again the sarae inexactness in scientific matters which
the earlier part of the chapter shows.
For answering these and other objections, to which the
1 See Nature and Eeligion, p. 10 1. 2 gee Nature and the Bible, p. 105.

264 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Mosaic cosmogony has been summoned by the loud-soundinc
voice of modern science, various methods have been proposed.
The statement and criticisra in detail of these several methods
does not fall within the corapass or intent of our present work.
They raay be classified and presented, however, in accordance
with their raore distinctive principles, as the following four
forras of the general hypothesis of reconcUiation.
Of these four forms the first attempted was, naturally enough,
the hypothesis of literalism.'^ Of this hypothesis the general prin
ciple is, that the Bible is to be literally interpreted and under
stood as the infallible word of God, and that the discoveries of
science are to be adraitted only so far as they allow of present
or prospective accord with biblical stateraents. Long before
the objections to the Mosaic cosraogony were felt in their more
raodern force and shape, we find atterapts to account for newly
discovered facts in nature, by causes the knowledge of which
can be derived only from the biblical writings. How great
difficulty the Copernican system found in raaking its way, be
cause of its seeraing contradiction of the biblical narratives, is
too well known to need raention. Even as early as Tertullian
we find the position of the petrifactions of those marine shells,
which were discovered in places of high altitude, attributed to
the Noachian deluge. The geological theories of Descartes and
Leibnitz, and of Burnet, Woodward, and Silberschlag, accounted
in the sarae way for rauch in the present forraation of the entire
earth, and in the disposition of its fossUs. The interpretation
of the Bible adopted by the advocates of this theory at the
present time has this advantage, that it is not necessarily led
into unmixed incongruities of modern science and ancient doc
trine by the effort to make the statements of Scripture scien
tifically exact. But alas ! when the task of answering the most
valid clairas of science is laid upon these advocates, their inter
pretation of nature does not equally commend itself to an en
lightened and fair judgraent. For their answer consists in
denying, both in general and in special, the claims and proofs
of science ; and this in order that they raay raaintain the in
fallibility of Scripture in scientific matters. They sometimes
contemptuously ask of science the question, " What is the evi
dence you have to present ? " whUe, at the same time, they are
1 The so-called iiltere Aus;iMchun(iswelse,a.e.aox(\.\ng to the language of F.w.
Schultz (see Schopfungsgeschichte, p. 296); according to that of Keusch, tlie
theory nach der buchstdblichen Deutung der seeks Tage (Bibel und Natur, p. 213{.).

THE HYPOTHESIS OF RESTITUTION. 265
obviously quite without power to appreciate the answer when
it is given. And no wonder; for this answer is — to quote
the words of a devout scientist — " no less than the whole
science itself." ^ In the opinion of these advocates, all the
species of plants were really created on the third day of
twenty-four hours ; all the species of aniraals, on the fifth and
sixth days. The fossils are all due to the catastrophe of the
Flood in the days of Noah, or to other catastrophes which
have succeeded in upheaving the earth's strata since that great
epoch. What the geologists have to say of different fauna and
flora belonging to different periods, is all the fancy of the
geologists. As we have already seen, the denial of the an
tiquity of the solar system, or of the fixed stars, is not impos
sible "with some harraonists. But manifestly the terms "har
raony" and "reconcUiation" can be applied to such writers
only as a grira satire. And, in fact, Bosizio, Beith, and, above
all, Keil, reraain almost the only distinguished advocates of so
untenable a view.
The hypothesis of restitution is the second of the principal
forms in which the reconciliation of Genesis and geology has
been attempted. Of this hypothesis it is an essential feature
to introduce between the first two verses of Gen. i. an interval
of time sufficiently vast, so that to it may be assigned not only
all the astronomical period of creation, but also the earlier and
longer geological periods during which occurred the formation
of the earth's strata and the deposit of its fossUs. The first
verse, then, is intended to describe the original and priraal act
of creation; the second, the condition of the earth countless
ages subsequently, and after one or more great catastrophes
had already taken place. As to the cause of this catastrophe,
the advocates of this hypothesis divide in opinion : sorae, like
Chalmers and Buckland, are content to assign causes which
correspond to those of present experience; and others, Uke
Boehme, Oetinger, F. von Meyer, Stier, and Keerl, mingle
with these reasons theosophic speculations concerning the fall
of the angels, and the effect of this faU upon the physical con
dition of the earth. The raore faraous recent advocates of this
theory, in one form or another, are the theologians Hengsten
berg, Kurtz, and Delitzsch, and the zoologist Wagner. As to
the more special relations of the " days " in Genesis to the more
recent geologic periods, the opinions of these writers differ:
1 Le Conte, Eeligion and Science, p. 2.35.

266 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Kurtz,^ for instance, alleging that it is the irpwTov ftSSos of most
atterapts of reconcUiation that they make the days and the
periods correspond ; and Keerl ^ maintaining that the Mosaic
cosmogony must correspond with the assured results of geology,
or it cannot be considered an original and trustworthy record
(Urkunde) of revelation.
But the objections to the entire hypothesis are insuperable
and conclusive. In that forra of it which includes angeUc agen
cies as furnishing reasons to account for the Tohvrva-Bohu of
Gen. i. 2, it is especially indefensible. Even so ardent aa
advocate as Keerl is forced to admit that it lacks any direct
proof from the Bible ; and the indirect proof which it obtains
from the doctrine of the fall of the angels can claim only cer
tain passages found in the deutero-canonical books of 2 Pet.
ii. 4; and Jude 6. It assuraes that God cannot be the direct
author of that condition with which the Mosaic cosmogony
begins, but that the position and construction of verse 2 in
dicate the intent of the -writer to suggest another cause than
the divine activity for the production of chaos. The interpre
tation, therefore, makes a wide gap between the first two verses
of Gen. i., and " fills it with a wild horde of evU spirits and
their demoniacal works." But one of the chief elements of the
superiority of the biblical narrative to the cosraological myths
of surrounding nations consists in just this : that the original
condition which is assuraed as the ground or subject of the
divine activity in the following creations, is itself to be referred
to the creative divine will. "Moreover, this form of the opimon
that the primal condition of the world is the result of a Kara^ok-ri,
or dejection of pre-existent beings to a lower scale of existence,
is traceable to the sources of North-German demonology.^
And in no form does the hypothesis raeet the difficulties in
volved, but rather occasions new and graver ones. It cuts off
the close connection between verses 2 and 1, and assumes that
nn;n — "the meaning of which has never been doubtful to
any one acquainted with Hebrew" — may be equivalent to
"became." It destroys the unity of the narrative, and the
1 Einheit des Pentateuchs, Konigsberg 1844, p. 54 f.
" Einheit der biblischen Urgeschichte, pp. 6 f. and 115 ff.
8 See P. W. Schultz, Schopfungsgeschichte, p. 303 f.; Diestel, Geschichte des
A. T., p. 727; Tholuck, Vermischte Schriften, II. p. 230. This form of the gen
eral -view must not, however, be confounded with that of Origen, who made not
the destruction, but the original construction, of the physical universe a con
sequence of the fall of the angels. (See De Princ. III. 5, 4.)

THE HYPOTHESIS OF CONCORDANCE. 267
proof which the narrative gives that the writer had a lofty and
inspired conception of creation. It is irreconcilable with the
declaration elsewhere made (Exod. xx. 9 ff., xxxi. 12-17), that
God made " the heavens and earth " in six days. It makes the
entire narrative only an account of some comparatively petty
transactions in geologic relations, which preceded the appear
ance of raan. And how dangerous it raay becorae, as an
attempt at "reconciliation," to the very life of religious doc
trine, may be seen in the modification which Pye Smith made
of the theory of Chalmers: the Tohu-va-Bohu of the Mosaic
cosmogony, instead of representing the universal star-dust from
which all worlds carae, was taken to raean only a local and
partial displacement of the earth's crust.
In the third place, we must notice the inadequacy of all the
various forras assuraed by the general hypothesis of concordance.
"Moses was a Neptunist," says Quenstedt; and Wagner speaks
of him as one of the oldest geologists of the world. The one
postulate of this hypothesis is the possibUity of making the
eight divine works of Genesis accord throughout with the order
and the substance of the established periods of geology. That
this hypothesis is in every forra inadequate, is shown by its
utter faUure to reraove or relieve a single one of the seven
chief difficulties raentioned above. But it is also shown by the
untenable nature of its indispensable pre-requisite in exegesis :
viz., the "days" of Genesis raust be interpreted as at least
admitting the raeaning of long and indefinite periods of time.
To prove that the word D'l' might have in Hebrew this required
meaning, would be quite a different thing from proving that it
does have this meaning in Gen. i. But not even the proof for
the first position can be made satisfactory to careful exegetes.
The use of Di' with 3 to denote the time when, forras no analogy
to the case here alleged.^ In Ps. xc. 4, where we are told that
a thousand years are in Jehovah's eyes like (the day of) yester
day when it is past, the force of the comparison depends upon
retaining the customary raeaning of the word " day." Nor can
the fact that the seventh day, which is that of the divine rest,
must cover an indefinitely long period, be brought in proof of
this rendering ; for it is the seventh day in which God ended
1 Compare Gen. ii. 17, iii. 5; Exod. x. 28; 1 Kings ii. 8; 2 Sam. xxi. 12. The use
of DV in Gen. ii. 4, which Delitzsch has made a proof of his -view, is only similar to
the use in the above-mentioned passages: Kurtz has, in reply to Delitzsch, alleged
that, if the use iu Gen. i. were strictly paraUel -with that in Gen. ii. 4, the two
passages would be involved in a contradiction.

268 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
his work and began his rest (Gen. ii. 2 f.), and not the long
period through which that rest extended, that is paraUel to the
other six days of creation. This day, presuraably of the same
duration of twenty-four hours as the other six days, God blessed
because in it he had rested (ii. 3). Nor does the prophetic use
of the phrase, " the day of Jehovah," correspond to the use of
the word Di' in the Mosaic cosraogony, which is not prophecy,
but the narration of accoraplished fact. And that this word is
not intended by its author to have another than the customary
use, seeras clear frora the following considerations.^ The very
idea of a long period required for creation is foreign to the
biblical conceptions (corapare Ps. xxxiii. 6). The connection
of the narrative with the institution of the sabbath favors the
literal construction. The fact, first asserted by Kurtz and
afterward demonstrated by Delitzsch (so Oehler), that the form
ula — "there was evening and there was morning, one day"
— corresponds to the Babylonian instead of the Hebrew usage,
and that, therefore, the first whole day began with the light
and closed with ensuing darkness, favors the same construction.
The division of the entire day into two equal periods of light
and darkness, closed by evening and morning, is utterly incon
ceivable, unless the writer intended to indicate a succession of
days corresponding to those of the week as known in ordinary
experience. The conception of the days following the fourth,
in which the sun is given to rule the day, and the moon the
night, corresponds only to the Uteral interpretation. For, what
manner of long periods, determined by sunlight and succeeding
darkness, could either represent the thought of the author, or
satisfy the claims of geologists ? And, instead of arguing that
the fifth and following days of creation raust be understood as
long periods, because the first three days could not have been
deterrained, even in the writer's thought, by the successions of
sunUght, we are the rather to argue that the first three days
are not intended to be understood as long periods, because the
fifth and following cannot be so intended. Nor did the suc
cession of darkness and light in the accustomed order and
1 The desperate attempts to which the determination to reconcile the days of
the Mosaic cosmogony with the periods of geology will force one, may bo sceuw
the case of Keerl. This author maintains (p. 123) that the day is the timo ot im
mediate activity, the night of silent development; and that (p. 191) the earth is
night as distinguished from the surrounding photosphere, which is called day.
The physical and moral night on earth are to be placed in the same category, and
have the same cause, viz., the Devil and his angels.

THE HYPOTHESIS OF IDEAL CONSTRUCTION. 269
interval occasion any difficulty to one who did not look upon
that order and interval as necessarily determined by the rela
tion of the earth to the sun.
The hypothesis of ideal construction still remains to be very
briefly noticed. According to Reusch,^ this theory understands
the six days of the Mosaic cosraogony " not as six successive
periods, but as six chief elements, logically distinguishable, of
the creative activity of God." "Six divme thoughts or ideas"
are thus actualized in creation. This principle, although com
bined with certain elements of the theory of concordance, is
substantially adopted also by F. W. Schultz, who endeavors to
show (§ 33) that the " analogy of prophecy " must be appealed
to in order to understand the use raade in Gen. i. of the term
" day." This analogy is the more exact, according to Schultz,
because in the case of the cosmogony alone do we have what
purports to be an historical account, but what must be, if
correct, wholly dependent upon revelation. It is, then, not the
consciousness of the prophet, — for in this case the writer is a
true seer looking backwards, — but the spirit of revelation,
which raust have given the form to his words. That the ideal
elements of the Mosaic cosraogony are indeed, to a large extent,
the essentiaUy true and perraanent conceptions of revelation,
must be faithfuUy maintained ; but that those very elements of
time and order which occasion the conflicts with science are
derived frora the historical tradition of the Hebrews, and from
the consciousness of the writer of Genesis (unacquainted with
and mistaken in matters of science), raust also be conceded.
The ideal theory, then, fails to account for precisely those
conceptions of the author of Gen. i., which are the causes of
contention and the sources of difficulty.
We conclude, therefore, from our entire survey of the Mosaic
cosmogony, that the coraplete reconcihation of its details with
scientific truths has never yet been accoraplished. Nor do we
hesitate to conclude further, that its future accoraplishraent is
by no raeans probable, or even possible. For the case is not
one of those where the candid mind requires delay, and increase
of light frora either side, before forming an opinion. The more
the light comes frora both sides, — that is, the raore faithful the
exegesis of Gen. i. 1-ii. 3 becomes to the plainest requirements
of hermeneutics, and the raore time geology and palseontology
1 See Bibel und Natur, fourth edition, p. 256 f. In the second edition of the
same work, the author maintains a modified form of the theory of concordance.

270 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
have to strengthen their conclusions, already sufficiently valid
— the more plain appear the contradictions in details of form
between the biblical and the scientific account of creation.
And the history of the controversy they have occasioned con
firms the conclusions of our critical investigation. The course
of this history has in the main accorded with the prevalence of
each one of the four hypotheses of reconciliation, in the order
in which they were named above. But this order itself leads
to the reconcihation of the conflict in the only possible way.
"By all these (later) views," says Diestel,^ "it is indirectly ad
mitted that the contest with geology is to be given up." The
pure literary quality and noble religious doctrine of the Mosaic
cosmogony, its agreement with science in certain fundamental
conceptions of the nature of the universe and of the course of
natural developraent, are raore than ever apparent; but ite
pardonable deficiency and even error in the detaUs of scientific
forra are without hesitation to be conceded.
In the light of the foregoing facts and truths we are prepared
to ask this question : Does, then, the narrative of Gen. i. 1-
ii. 3 contain a divine revelation ? The answer to this question
will depend on the conception which we attach in this case to
the term " revelation." That the Mosaic cosmogony was not
placed by divine inspiration within the raind of its writer,
devoid of lustorical connections, faultless in form and details of
conception, we raay affirra without a doubt. Its historical con
nections with other national cosmogonies, and with preceding
traditions of a cosmogony araong the Hebrews, are made evi
dent by its internal structure and by the external proofs of
comparative history .^ With the other cosmogonies the Mosaic
has points of correspondence, and more important points of
difference. " The Tohu^va-Bohu of the Bible," says the Roman-
Catholic theologian Reusch, in reliance upon the concurrent
stateraents of Liiken, Stiefelhagen, Dillmann, and many others,^
" has its counterpart in aU the heathen mythologies. ... The
dark night and the mass of water are universally the princi
pal features in the more definite description of this chaos.
The six days or six creative acts are found in several cosmogo
nies, from China in the East to the Etruscans in the West, aud
in essentially the same succession as in Genesis. Man is with-
1 Geschichte des Alten Testamentes, p. 727.
2 Compare G. L. Bauer, Hebraische Mythologie, I. p. 67 IT.; Wuttke, Kosmo-
gonien d. heidnischen -Volker; Lenormant, Les Origines de I'Histoire, pp. 37-57.
2 See Bibel und Natur, p. 146.

OTHER ANCIENT COSMOGONIES. 271
out exception rated as the last creature ; most of the heathen
mythologies recognize his formation out of the earth's soil, and
sorae also recognize the formation of woman out of one of the
bodily raerabers of man." Exceedingly suggestive are those
relations which exist between the biblical account and the frag
ments of Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony as brought to the
attention of scholars by the lamented George Sraith.^ And,
indeed, each ancient cosraogony has features in common with
the others, and at the same time peculiar national or tribal char
acteristics. Into each, two classes of eleraents, observations of
external nature and reflections concerning God, enter prorai
nentiy, and by their rautual or antagonistic working shape tho
whole conception of creation.^ The conception, for exaraple,
of a world-egg, as it is found in India, China, Egypt, Phoenicia,
Greece, and even araong the Finns, is taken frora the appear
ance of the heavens in the form of one-half of an immense open
egg ; whUe at the sarae time the handling of this conception in
the cosmogonies of the different peoples where it appears, cor
responds to the phUosophy and religion of these peoples. The
Indian cosmogony as found in the Law-book of Manu (i. 5 ff.)
begins, Uke the Hebrew, with darkness and indistinguishable
chaos ; then the All-Spirit rouses hiraself, and scatters the dark
ness with the bearas of the first light ; water is the first being
which he brings forth frora himself. But this cosmogony goes
on, with an utter lack of order in the subsequent creations, to
mingle spiritual beings and powers with raaterial substances,
gods, genii, virtues and vices with the Vedas, and with all the
objects of sense. The Persian cosraogony agrees with the
Hebrew in the significance which it assigns to the word of God,
and in its division of the different creative works into six peri
ods of tirae, but differs frora the latter most in the impressions
made by its phUosophy of dualism. A detaUed examination
would show that it is in those great reUgious truths, and in the
conceptions of nature and God cognate to thera, that the
superiority of the Mosaic cosmogony appears. The traditional
basis which the cosmogony had araong the Hebrews was, then,
itseff so far the result of revelation as it was perraeated and
shaped by the peculiar reUgious conceptions of the Hebrews.
Moreover, the Mosaic cosraogony contains a revelation, in
that the author of that form which it bears in Sacred Scripture
received from God by inspiration, and conveyed by his narra-
1 In his Chaldean Account of Genesis. 2 See Dillmann, Die Genesis, p. 3 ff,

272 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tive, new and important religious truth. The traditional cos
mogony of the Hebrews preceding this account, probably told of
eight or more separate works of creation. But this author has
fused and moulded the ideas of the traditional cosmogony
according to the idea of God which entered into his own ex
alted monotheisra, and as well according to the sabbath-idea.
He seeras also to have intended a syraraetrical arrangement of
the two groups of three days, each group closing with a day
that contains two works; and to have designed to place the
fourth, fifth, and sixth in parallelism with the first, second, and
third (so Tuch, Delitzsch, DiUraann, and others); although the
latter feature of his plan is soraewhat a matter of doubt. It
is certain, however, that in and through the narrative of Gen.
i. 1-ii. 3, the Leader and Lord of Israel gave to the nation
and to the world a new, lofty, abiding, and effective manifesta
tion of truth. The revelation of truth concerned himself as
Creator and Lord of the universe, and as the Redeemer of the
people, whose acknowledgment and service he required, for then
good, in the sabbath-rest. The narrative of the Mosaic cos
mogony contains, therefore, a divine revelation in a twofold
raanner. The cosmogonies of the other nations originated in
their observations of nature as interpreted by philosophic and
reUgious conceptions. They contained an element of revela
tion in the most general and lowest sense, because even they
are not wholly devoid of that knowledge of himself which God
has vouchsafed to all mankind. The traditional Hebrew cos
mogony, upon the basis of which the Mosaic was constructed,
contained special elements of revelation ; because it was shaped
by the truth which God constantly made known to the nation.
The Mosaic cosmogony in its present forra contains yet other
and higher eleraents of revelation ; because its truths and con
ceptions are those which belong to a raore advanced stage of
revelation, and because those truths and conceptions were re
ceived by one spiritually illuinmed, by an inspired mind.
The sarae principles of revelation which are evinced in the
relations of the Mosaic cosraogony to the conclusions of the
physical and natural sciences, will secure a correct understand
ing of all the seeming conflicts between the Bible and those
sciences. In the narrative of the Noachian Deluge, elements
of religious doctrine, and of conceptions which concern the
relations of God to nature and to man, are raade dominant over
other elements derived from ancient tradition ; and the same

THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. 273
naive disregard and ignorance of those considerations on which
science most fixes the attention pervades the shaping of the
narrative. This narrative differs essentially, however, from
that of the cosraogony of Genesis, in that it appertains to an
event in huraan history. The discussion of the relations which
it bears to the myths and traditions of floods which abound
among other nations belongs rather to the criticism of the his
torical contents of the Old Testament. This flood is in origin,^
progress,^ result,^ and entire intent, thorouglUy ethical ; it is a
divine transaction in judgment and mercy. Moreover, the
adoption of the ancient tradition of this event, as the Hebrews
possessed it in coraraon -with several of the surrounding nations,
and also the shaping that the tradition recei^'ed by the author
of Genesis, are in accordance with the ethical and religious
purpose which this author follows throughout lus entire history.
What particular ones of the nuraerous national myths and tra
ditions of great floods so far accord with the narrative of
Genesis that they raay be brought into coraparison with it, is
a raatter of great doubt. To these myths and traditions Dill
mann * — it would appear correctly — assigns two chief sources ;
viz., the attempt by a subsequent generation to account for the
almost " trackless " disappearance of various lost races from the
earth, and the dim recognition of the fact that certain lands in
Asia had been frightfully devastated by water.
The difficulties which the sciences of geology and palseon
tology find with the Noachian Deluge arise almost wholly on
the supposition that its apparent intent to describe a universal
submergence of the earth corresponds accurately with the event
itself. The Bible ascribes the Flood not simply to the divine
action, but also to two great classes of second causes : the open
ing of the windows of heaven by Jehovah causes the rain to
descend ; the breaking-up of the fountains of the great deep
(Di'nn) lets the flood burst forth upon the earth. That no
great geologic change could at this time have taken place in the
crust of the earth, is manifest both from scientific observations
and frora the tradition itself. When the earth is dried, —
1 Gen. vi. 5-8, 12-18, vii. 1. 2 yiu. i^ 15 f. s viii. 20 f., ix. 1 f., 8-17.
* See Die Genesis, p. 143. The Arabs, according to Dillmann, have no tradi
tion of thia flood; and the Phoenician myth of the contest of Demarus with
Pontus belongs to a different circle of conceptions. Many witnesses, although
lor the most part recent, seem to show the remnants of the same tradition among
the Syrian peoples. But of all the others the Babylonian tradition, as derived
through Berosus, is the most accurate and worthy of consideration in this con
nection. VOL. L S

274 THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCRIPTURE.
a process for which a few months, reckoning from the time
that the raountains flrst appear, is sufficient, — no considerable
changes in its surface are noted. The raountains and hills stand
in their places as usual (vii. 19 f., viU. 4) ; a freshly plucked
olive-leaf can be found not far from the ark (vUi. 11) ; and the
procession of vegetation in its accustomed forms is resumed in
the subsequent history. That both the tradition itself, and the
author of Genesis, who seems to have coraposed his narrative
frora two or more substantially accordant forms of the tradi
tion, supposed the submergence to have been universal, is mani
fest from Gen. vii. 19, 21, 22, 23 (compare vi. 17 and viii. 17).
But the difficulties thus occasioned as to the supply of water,
the effect of the Deluge upon the lands submerged, the accom
modation and care of the aniraals in the ark, and especially
their collection by Noah, are enorraous ; they require for an
answer nothing less than the assumption of a series of most
stupendous miracles. And, further, these required miracles are
just such in the sphere of meteorology, physical geography,
astronomy, and biology, as are to be admitted only with the
utraost caution and on the highest order of evidence ; they are
also plainly not contemplated by the biblical narrative. Nor
«.re any of the usual atterapts to raitigate this deraand upon the
miraculous at all successful. For instance, the assumption of
Reusch 1 that only those animals which could not otherwise be
rescued were received into the ark, virtually asserts the inaccu
racy of the view taken of the Flood by the author of Gene
sis (corapare vi. 17, 19, "to destroy all flesh wherein is the
breath of life from under the heavens;" vu. 4, "every hving
thing which I have raade ") : it does not, however, have the
advantage of satisfying in any degree the scientific objections.
But that the " earth " in the thought of the author was not
the earth as known to modern geologists and geographers, the
entire narrative makes evident. As Dillmann has pointed out,
the fact that less than twice the tirae (viz., about two and a half
months) required for the water to subside fifteen cubits, so as
to uncover the tops of the mountains, is then required for it to
subside from that point downward, so as to leave the earth dry,
seems to indicate that very high mountains could not have been
known to the writer (corapare viii. 5 and 14). Moreover, there
are raountains more than two railes higher than the highest
peaks of Ararat, which, even on the assuraption that these are
1 Bibel und Natur, o. 319. 2 pig Genesis, p. 144.

ORIGIN AND UNITY OF THE RACE 275
the highest points of land intended by the narrative, are them
selves regarded as covered only to the depth of fifteen cubits.
If, however, such matters of geographical and biological
information may be regarded as wholly unknown to the tradi
tion and to the author of Genesis alike, the substantial accuracy
of the narrative, as well as its moral significance in the place
which it occupies in Old-Testament history, may be maintained.
And upon the occurrence of this great and memorable deluge
in Armenia, as well as upon its significance in the development
of the race, the considerations of ethnography, geography, and
biblical criticism agree. At least, the scientific objections do
not then hold against whatever bibUcal criticism may deterraine
to be the truth in the case.
The scientific questions that concern the origin, unity, and
antiquity of the race, are the reraaining questions which have
raost numerous and important points of contact with the repre
sentations and doctrines of the Bible.^ These questions are all
1 The question of the length of life in antiquity is scarcely one upon which the
Old-Testament chronology and science can be said to be in conflict. For, on the
one hand, physiology is not likely to make out a case either against the physical
possibility of so great length of life in man, or against its moral probability, if the
interests of the divine kingdom should seem to require such a prolongation of the
term of years now deemed natural. And, on the other hand, the historical nature
of these genealogies and their attendant dates must flrst be established; not to
mention that theology has in all ages been relatively ready to concede the inaccu
racy of the earlier Old-Testament chronology in the form in which it has come
down to us.
The question of the relation of death to sin in the human species is much more
a religious and ethical doctrine than it is a question of zoology and physiology.
That man is, as an animal, naturally subject to accident, disease, and death, these
sciences can demonstrate; but in doing tliis they concur with the representations
of Gen. ii. 7, 19, vi. 3. The doctrine of man's mortality wliich asserts that as a
consequence of sin he lost the posse non mori, which would otherwise have be
longed to him, these sciences neither teach nor refute. The command of Gen. ii.
17 does not necessarily mean that, if man did not sin, he should never die. But
iii. 22 seems to annex the possibility of immortality to a continued life in parar
dise. Nor does the declaration of iii. 19 assert the impossibility of man's immor
tality, but only the naturalness and ine-vitableness of death in the unchecked
course ot nature. Man, who is by nature mortal, had by sin cut himself off from
that immortality which would have been his in obedience through partaking of
the tree of life (ii. 9; see Dillmann, Dia Genesis). The exact execution of tbe
divine threat of ii. 17 did not require that the penalty of death should be imme
diately consummated; for, as Oehler says (I. p. 242), the issue is placed fore
most in the threat after the manner of prophetic proclamations. Driven from the
garden, and so cut off from the tree of life, raan is henceforth in the realization
of those penalties, the consummation of which is actual death (Dillmann). The
doctrine of the connection of physical death and sin is asserted in the declaration
concerning man, that "on account of his erring he is flesh," — i.e., mortal, perish
able (Isa. xl. 6; compare Ps. Ixxviii. 39). But after the narrative of Genesis the
connection of physical death with sin in the race is, as a doctrine, almost entirely
overlooked iu the Old Testament. In Num. xvi. 29 f. and xxvii. 3 the violent

276 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
so intimately interwoven that they cannot be considered apart.
They are so related to each other as to relieve the teachings of
Scripture frora the charges of ethically important error upon
any one of them. They are also so related, that those views
concerning the origin and unity of the race, which are elements
of Scriptural doctrine, are precisely the views which are either
most defensible by, or least clearly opposed to, any valid con
clusions on scientific grounds.
The origin of the race is a religious doctrine. That the form
of this origin which the Bible teaches only contrasts with, but
does not contradict, the established conclusions of geology and
biology, we have already seen. We are, then, forbidden to foist
the hypothesis of Darwinian evolution into the Mosaic cosmog
ony ; ^ we are also not called upon to show how any complete
theory of evolution is compatible with the biblical conceptions,
because science has as yet given us no such theory.
The unity of the race is also a religious doctrine. Mosaism
in its list of the nations (Gen. x., corapare i. 26, ix. 6) preserves
the consciousness of that blood-relationship to which an appeal
is made in Acts xvii. 26 (it evos aiparos), and which is to be
ideally consumraated in a spiritual union of all nations withm
the kingdora of God (corapare Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18).^ This
religious doctrine is alone of chief importance to our concep
tion of Sacred Scripture ; the ethnological exactness, from the
modern scientific point of view, of the genealogies of Genesis
(compare Deut. xxxii. 8 f.), is relatively unimportant. The
doctrine of the unity of the race is, however, highly favored,
rather than contradicted, by the researches of raodern science.
The antiquity of the race is not a religious doctrine ; or, at
least, the length of tirae which man has been upon the earth,
be it raore or less, is a matter relatively unimportant to the
reUgious teachings of the Bible. We have Uttle reason, on
the ground of the necessary assumptions of faith, to expect
frora the Old Testaraent an accurate knowledge of the time
when the history of the race began upon the earth, especially
since Christ hiraself declares his own lack of knowledge as to
death of individuals is ascribed to their heinous transgressions ; and in Ps. xc.
7-10 the bre-vity of life in a single generation is referred to the Divine anger at
sin. I As is done, for instance, by the author of The Bible and the Doctrine of Evo
lution, London, 1873; who even discovers that Gen. i. 20 is designed to teacU the
truth of an evolution of birds through the ichthyoid reptiles.
2 See Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, I. pp. 81, 215.

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE RACE. 277
the time when one of the great aeons of this history shall close
(Matt. xxiv. 36 ; Mark xiU. 32). The interpretation of Gen.
iv., v., X., xi., and the discussions of biblical chronology in gen
eral, are historical and critical inquiries. And until biblical
criticism has prepared its results from these inquiries, the testi
raony of scientific researches to determine the antiquity of man
cannot be satisfactorily compared with the statements of Scrip
ture. The question as to the meaning and substantially historic
character of the bibUcal chronology precedes the question as to
the possibility of adjusting that chronology with the claims of
modern science. It cannot be denied, however, that a distinc
tively biblical system of chronology — be that system the so-
called " long," " short," or " rabbinical " — seems to make the
advent of raan upon the earth not longer ago than from four
thousand to six thousand years before Christ. What, then,
are the objections, urged by the discoveries of recent tiraes,
against so " short " a chronology as the longest of these ? The
answer to this question can, of course, be only very briefly and
iraperfectly discussed. In considering the evidence we should
constantly keep in raind this truth : the unity and the antiquity
of the race are connected in such manner that to raaintain the
former seems to require a great modification of the Old-Testa
ment view regarding the latter. But the unity of the race is an
important ethical and religious doctrine : the antiquity of the
race is a question of chronology. This relation between the
two questions is thus asserted.frora the scientific point of view
by Sir Charles LyeU : " So long as physiologists continued to
beUeve that raan had not existed upon the earth above six
thousand years, they raight, -with good reason, withhold their
assent from the doctrine of a unity of origin of so raany dis
tinct races." ^ The view of this author is undoubtedly the one
prevalent araong those competent to form an opinion.^
The various lines of proof which unite upon the question
of the antiquity of man raay be classified as the historical, the
ethnological, the phUological, the raore purely archaeological,
and the raixed archaeological and geologic.
The dates in history which can be fixed with confidence are
comparatively recent ; and yet they are too remote to make
tenable the view, that the various nations of antiquity were
1 Antiquity of Man, London 1863, p. 386.
2 Compare Prichard, Eesearehes into the Physical History of Mankind, V.
p. 552 f.; Genesis of the Earth and of Man, p. 117; Lubbock, Pre-historic Times,
p. 385 f.; Argyll, Primeval Man, p. 97 f.; Foster, Pre-historic Baces, p. 353 f.

278 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
descended frora one ancestor, and then distributed from one
centre in Arraenia, or to the east of Babylon, within the few
centuries between the oldest historical date and the earliest
calculated date of the Noachian Deluge. In Greece the era of
the Olyrapiads, 776 B.C.,. is the raost ancient trustworthy date.
Only a century or two previous to this did the gods, according
to Hecataeus of MUetus, cease to interraarry with mortals. The
oldest date araong the Toltecs is given by Foster,^ on the au
thority of the Abb^ Brasseur, at 955 B.C. In the great nations
of the remotest antiquity the dates accepted by the students of
their histories are rauch more remote frora our tirae. The date
of the Chou-King places the reign in China of Hoang-ti in the
year 2698 B.C. ; the authentic records of the Chinese Empire
are believed to reach back to the twenty-fourth century before
our era. George Smith thought he found in Assyrian history
a veritable date which lies as far back as 2280 B.C. The
great emigration of the Zend Avesta is believed by M. de Samt
Martin to have taken place more than two thousand years
before Christ. The dates of Egypt vary greatly, acording to
the estiraates of different Egyptologists ; Lepsius and Bunsen
placing the fifth dynasty about the fortieth century before our
era, and the very moderate estiraate of R. Stuart Poole assign
ing the beginning of the Pharaohs to about 2800 B.C. But
even this date is more than four centuries before Usher's date
for the Flood. Moreover we have, in the peoples of so remote
antiquity and so widely distributed, evidences of varied, dis
tinctive, and elaborate civilizations, which must have requued
a considerable tirae for their previous history.
The ethnological proofs for the antiquity of man are such
as not only to convince those whose views upon ethnology are
fixed after the type of Darwinian evolution, but also to make
it seeraingly irapossible to maintain the unity of the race, and
yet account by second causes for the divergencies of the races
within the time allowed by the biblical chronology. Either,
then, the unity of the race must be abandoned, or the variation
of its different races assigned to supernatural agency. The
different types — African, Asiatic, and European — seem to
have been as strongly marked in the remotest antiquity as
they are now. They appear upon the Egyptian monuments of
the fourteenth, fifteenth, and perhaps earUer centuries, before
Christ. The negro who kneels at the feet of Sethros I. is the
1 Foster, Pre-historic Races, p. 342.

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE RACE. 279
same as the negro of to-day. But the so-called Negroid race
seems to have been in existence previous to "iramense geo
graphical changes" which are connected with its wide and
otherwise unaccountable distribution.^
In close connection with these ethnological inquiries stand
the phUological, which present the proofs of the very ancient
and widely extended development of man, as shown in cognate
languages. And although it is far frora being true, as Max
Miiller has asserted,^ that the evidence of language " is the
only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical
periods," we have in philology strong corroborative evidence
for fixing within certain movable limits the probable age of
man. To the same effect is the impression derived from the com
parative studies of the antiquary. The impleraents, architec
ture, and other relics of human art, when corapared with one
another and classified in that loose and uncertain fashion of
which alone the case adraits, seem to imply an indefinitely long
period of previous growth, of attempts and failures, of suc
cesses and improveraents. EspeciaUy impressive is the fact
that the different types of art, which are found in the remotest
times and regions of the world, seem each one to have under
gone a long period of indigenous development. According to
Wilkinson,^ the art of Egypt was of native growth ; but scarcely
less so the art of Assyria and Greece. The same thing is true
of the art of Central America, if we accept the testimony of
Stephens and Foster, the latter of whom says,* " We seek in
vain for any analogies of art which would connect the civiliza
tion of this country with that of the Old World." The atterapt
to classify the different implements of stone, bronze, and Uon,
or the pieces of ruder and more finished ancient pottery, is,
however, far from successful. It is clear that the periods in
which each kind of implement was in use overlap each other to
an extent upon which antiquarians are not agreed among them
selves ; it is not yet clear to all that any marked and definite
" periods " can be shown to have existed. The antiquities of
Derbyshire show conclusively to Fergusson "how mixed the
contents of a single group of tombs are," and " how little cle-
1 See Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 387.
^ Cliips from a German "Workshop, I. p. G2; compare 10 f.
' See Note in Rawlinson's Herodotus, Book II. chap. 155.
^ Prehistoric Races, p. 330; compare Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central
Amtrica, II. p. 311.

2S0 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
pendence can be placed on any one class of objects to fix the
age of these monuments." ^ And Lyell, although speaking of
a " first stone period," and concluding that it must have been
of long duration, also avers the inabUity of geology to tell the
limits of its beginning or end.^
A most impressive and conclusive and yet most indeter
minate form of this evidence is that derived from the com
bined studies of archaeology and geology. Araong the various
iteras of this proof are the foUowing : The antiquity of the
tumuli of the Ohio and Mississippi river-valleys can be cal
culated only by the estimated growth of the forests which have
covered them. But an age of eight hundred or one thousand
years will suffice for the growth of the oldest of the present
trees, and there is no raeans of knowing how many successive
forests have perished before the present began.^ Little reliance
can be placed upon the calculations which have for their basis
the exaraination of the delta of the Mississippi, or of the allu
vial plain of the NUe. The skeleton said to have been found
near New Orleans by Dr. Fowler, at the depth of sixteen feet
under four buried forests, was assigned by its finder to an anti
quity of fifty thousand years. The estiraates adopted by Lyell,*
which relegate the potsherd found in the Nile mud at a depth
of sixty feet to a period twelve thousand years since, and the
"fragment of red brick," found at a depth of seventy-two feet,
to a period thirty thousand years since, are confessedly built
upon inadequate assuraptions, and would seem much better
calculated to satisfy the geologist who proposes them than to
convince any student of Egyptology. And yet Ebers regards
thera as warranting the assertion that civilization existed on
the Nile a hundred centuries before our era.^ The calculations
of M. Morlot, based upon an examination of the remains found
in the cone of silt deposited by the TiniSre, are indeed more
moderate, but scarcely more convincing.^ M. Morlot obtained
for the age of bronze in Switzerland an antiquity of at most
four thousand two hundred years ; for that of stone, an anti
quity extending backward from four thousand seven hundred
1 Rude Stone Monuments, pp. 10 ff. 2 Antiquity of Man, p. 378.
3 See Lyell, Ibid., p. 41; Foster, Ibid., p. 371 f., and especially the note (373 f)
containing the communication of Dr. I. P. Lapham on the Age of Forest Trees m
Wisconsin. 4 Ibid., p. 37 f. 5 Aegypten und die Biicher Mose's, I. p. 23.
0 See Quatrefages, The Human Species, p. 137; Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p.
389 f. Dawson (Story of the Earth and Man, p. 293) would reduce the age ot the
entire cone to four thousand or five thousand years.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 281
years to seven thousand years. But it has even been argued
by M. Uhlmann that the bones found in the lower layer of
this cone are not such as belong to the stone age. A like
uncertainty attaches itself to calculations based upon the ex
araination of deposits of peat or of forest raosses, whether
these deposits are found in the skovmoses of Denmark, the
peat-bogs of Ireland, or the deposits of the valley of the
Somme. The skovmoses, or formations of forest mosses in
hollows that have been excavated in quaternary clays, are
thought by Steenstrup to have been at least forty centuries in
accumulating ; and the fact that the amorphous peat at their
bottoms shows remains of arctic plants, and that the lower
layer of their forest-moss is composed of pine, undoubtedly
indicates considerable geographical changes since the forma
tion began. Proofs of those changes in physical geography
which have occurred during the forraation of the shell-heaps
(Kjokkenmodding) of the Danish Isles, in the Baltic, have led
to estiraates of their antiquity varying frora four thousand to
seven thousand years ; ^ of about the sarae order is the calcu
lated antiquity of the buried lake-dwellings of Switzerland, as
determined by the deposition of neighboring silt. All these
kinds of research tend to confirm the beUef that great geo
graphical and climatic changes have occurred since man dwelt
in Europe : they thus lead downward and backward to the con
clusions derived from the finding of fossil man.
The influence of the caution of Cuvier was so great as quite
to discredit the earlier aUeged discoveries of huraan fossils.
But man has now been coimected by indubitable proofs with
post-glacial flora, fauna, and geographical conditions. Of such
proofs not even an adequate mention can here be made.^ The
relics of huraan skeletons, Uke those of Cro-Magnon, the Nean
derthal cave, the remains in the cavern near Li^ge, and perhaps
that of Mentone, serve to connect man -with the so-called rein
deer period. Other reraains in deposits of the later, and prob
ably also of the earUer, Champlain period,^ make raan to have
been contemporaneous in Northern Europe with species now
1 See Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 372 f .
2 The dra-wings of extinct animals prove, of course, that the artists were con
temporaneous with the animals themselves. Such drawings are the mammoth
found by M. Lartet, carved upon a plate of mammoth-ivory; and the cave-bear
found by M. Garrigou, traced upon a pebble (see Quatrefages, Ibid., p. 146).
3 See Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 576 f . A human fibula was found in a cave
of Yorkshire with the remains of several species of these extinct animals : " at the
mouth of the cave there is a bed of stiff glacial clay, with scratched bowlders."

282 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
long since extinct ; such are the cave-bear, the cave-lion, the
cave-hyena, and even the raammoth, the rhinoceros, and the
hippopotamus. The river-border deposits of Araiens and Abbe-
vUle seem to confirra the testiraony of the caves and peatdepos-
its as to the presence of man at the close of the glacial epoch.
The evidence of his contemporaneous presence in North Amer
ica is much less conclusive : it may be said, however, to be in
creasing. Recent researches in the post-glacial gravels of New
Jersey appear to furnish evidence connecting him with that
remote epoch in this continent also.
But, if raan existed upon the earth when the glacial ice was
slowly retreating northward frora its raost southern hmits, how
reraote — we must still inquire — is this period of his early
remains ? To this question the researches of scientific investi
gators are unable to furnish a definite reply. The results
arrived at frora the study of surface-geology vary immensely;
frora those of Dr. Andrews upon the raised beaches of Lake
Michigan, which Dawson accepts ^ as enabling him to calculate
that not more than from five thousand five hundred to seven
thousand five hundred years have elapsed since North America
" rose out of the glacial waters," to those which assign a score
of thousands of years for the relatively recent accumulation of
sorae bed of forest-peat.^ Nor are the astronoraical calculations
for the date of the glacial epoch any more, but rather less, satis
factory. The causes, so far as they are astronomical, which M.
Adh^mar would place only soraewhat raore than eleven thou
sand years ago, Lubbock and CroU would place not less than
two hundred thousand years since ; to which estimate Lyell,
not-withstanding his usual capacity for iraraense numbers, has
consented to reduce his original preference for eight hundred
thousand years.
The question as to whether any traces of raan's presence
upon the earth reach back into the tertiary age is disputed
araongst geologists ; the more conservative and accurate judg
raent awaits the proof of affirmative claims, which have not as
yet been satisfactorUy sustained.
It should not be concluded, however, from this indefiniteness
1 story of Earth and Man, p. 295.
2 M. Porel, by making his assumptions favorable to a great antiquity, has con
cluded from the rate at which the sediment of the Rhone fiUs up the Lake oi
Geneva, that the post-glacial epoch was begun one hundred thousand years since.
But M. Arcelln, by use of the deposits of the Saone, has calculated the age of the
quaternary clay at the minimum of 0,750 years.

INSPIRATION AND THE SCIENTIFIC CONTENTS. 283
upon positive dates, that any considerable room for doubt as to
the general testimony of such researches is left within the
thought of scientists themselves. Professor Gray^ does not
overstate the case when he aUeges the agreement of all experts
in the opinion that the length of man's existence is not meas
ured by the generations of the biblical chronology. But, ac
cording to the conclusions already reached as to the relations
of science and the Bible, the doctrine of Sacred Scripture is in
no wise to be so conceived as to make its defence dependent
upon the accuracy of its writers in scientific matters. These
conclusions apply with more force and ease to the question of
the antiquity of raan, because this question is so loosely con
nected with the organism of revealed truth, is so purely scien
tific. On the general subject of this chapter we reach, then, the
following items of doctrine. There are, strictly speaking, no
purely scientific contents which can be recognized as entering
into the composition of Sacred Scripture. The intention of
the Bible is to teach us " how to go to heaven, and not how the
heavens go." In this sense we may declare that the Bible is
not scientific, for the revelation upon which its -writings rest is
not one of scientific information ; it does not concern priraarily
the discovery and concatenation of second causes. The state
ments of Scripture have, however, many most iraportant con
nections -with the subjects of scientific investigation ; and it is
inevitable that points of contact and coincidence, or of conflict,
should arise between science and the Bible. The Bible consid
ers aU effects of second causes in their relations to the primal
Cause, as expressions of his will, wisdom, and love. It is,
therefore, in the sphere of the relations which exist between
the natural and the supernatural, that the raost important of its
contrasts and conflicts with science arise. The doctrine of
Sacred Scripture is, that the second causes are called into ex
istence and sustained in being by the First Cause; they are
dependent upon God, and interpenetrated by God. This doc
trine also, to a certain extent, includes the manner in which
the relation of second causes and First Cause is maintained.
Upon these subjects a special revelation was made to ancient
Israel, and through her thinkers and writers to the entire
world. This revelation is accepted by Christianity as a basis
laid in the doctrine of the supernatural ; the revelation is as
1 Science and Eeligion, p. 7.

284 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
valid and potent in all its essential features, to-day and in the
presence of modern science, as it has ever been.
Moreover, we find in the Hebrew Scriptures certain concep- ,
tions of the order of creation and of nature in her relations to
God and man, which are far beyond the age of their origin;
and these conceptions correspond in a wonderful degree to
those which modern science has only recently attained. The
deductions of reUgion, the constituent elements of revelation
when unfolded into particulars, correspond with Certain of the
latest and highest inductions of science. The ethical and reli
gious purity, which the Hebrew traditions of the cosmogony
and of the Flood exhibit in the narratives of Genesis, is a proof
of the action of divine self-revelation upon those traditions. A
book which, while being of such an age, nevertheless opens its
narrative as does the Book of Genesis, makes upon the mind
the impression that its origin is in divine revelation. In gene
ral, the elevating effect of the ethical conceptions which shape
the Old-Testament narratives of natural events can be ascribed
to revelation alone.
But we cannot deny that many errors of fact and faults of
conception are to be detected in the sarae portions of Sacred
Scripture. The ethical conceptions of Scripture are not to be
thought of as necessitating a scientific accuracy in all its other
conceptions. Even the masterpiece of the Mosaic cosmogony
is in its detaUs at variance with several valid conclusions of
raodern astronomy and geology. But the points of variance
are not such as have an organic connection with the religious
doctrine. They rather originate in the faulty and unscientific
conceptions of the authors ; for these authors, Uke the rest of
the raen of their time, saw the material heavens and earth like
children. The spirit of revelation ordained the praises of Je
hovah out of the mouths of those who were sucklings and babes
in science. The separation of the substance of revealed truth
from the huraan form which it took to itself, from the inferior
forraal elements which grew out of erroneous human concep
tions, is not particularly difficult in the above-mentioned cases.
It is not a thing from which a Christian scholar, with the helps
of modern biblical criticism and modern natural science, needs
to shrink.
As to the kind and degree of inspiration which attaches itself
to this class of the contents of Scripture, we have little direct
information. The writers of the Mosaic cosmogony, of the nar-

INSPIRATION AND THE SCIENTIFIC CONTENTS. 285
rative of the Flood, of the ethnological tables of Genesis, —
whether original corapilers or redactors, — give no sign of direct
clairas to prophetic insight. The traditions from which their
accounts were drawn up were manifestly only so far forth in
spired, as we may use the word " inspiration" in a loose sense
to indicate that pecuUar spiritual insight which pervaded all the
best rainds of the Hebrew nation. But the shaping of these
traditions, as they appear in their final form within the biblical
narrative, is due to the power of revealed reUgious truth : it
therefore merits a more special use of the word " inspiration."
That the Spirit of Jehovah moved the final author of these
contents of Sacred Scripture to leave thera upon record, and
bestowed upon him the revealed truths they contain, and the
spirit of insight which apprehended and set forth these truths,
is a supposition of which the contents themselves are not un
worthy. And the fact that this supposition involves a doctrine
somewhat like that of an impulsus ad seribendum and assistentia
divina for the bibUcal -writers is not negatived by a frank ad
mission of their ignorance and error in scientific matters.

CHAPTEE III.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCRIPTURE AS EELATED TO TEE
MIRACULOUS CONTENTS OP THE BIBLE.
In no other class of the contents of Sacred Scripture are the
prepossessions with which their consideration is approached so
important and even decisive as in its history and doctrine of
miracles. These prepossessions concern, in part, the acceptance
or rejection of certain central doctrines of the Bible. To the
critic who denies the infallibility of Jesus Christ in morals and
in religious doctrine, who rejects the view of his person, incar
nation, resurrection, and divine offices, which is taught by the
New Testament and by Christian consciousness, and who dis
credits all the claims to supernatural characteristics made by
revelation itself, there remains, of course, no ground for admit
ting the possibility of a rairacle : there is, on the contrary, an
overwhelraing presuraption, ih the raind of such a critic, against
the credibUity of every alleged miraculous event. But with
one who must examine all evidence by the light of the afBrmar
tion of the above-mentioned doctrines, the case is far different.
This affirraation has already been made as furnishing appropri
ate postulates for our entire work. The main intent of this
chapter is, then, siraply to inquire : What views as to the origin
and nature of Sacred Scripture are derived from an examination
of its adraitted rairaculous contents ? It raight seem that the
abstract possibility and, to a certain extent, the historical credi
bility, of the Scriptural rairacles should be taken for granted by
us. The effect of prepossessions is, however, so peculiarly de
cisive in every subordinate inquiry touching the miraculous
contents of the Bible, that no writer can treat inteUigibly even
such an inquiry without making clear his proposed point of
view. Moreover, the abstract possibility of miracles, and the
historical credibility of the different classes of miracles in Scrip
ture, or of any individual miracle of each class, are two very
different questions. They are not, however, so different as not
to be mutually dependent.
286

THE SUPERNATURAL AND THE MIRACULOUS. 287
Of those prepossessions which most influence the critical ex
amination of the miraculous contents of the Bible, two principal
kinds may be distinguished. The first refers to the general
conception of the supernatural ; the second, to the more special
conception of the miraculous. Every investigator, that is to
say, wUl approach the evidence for the miracles of Scripture in
an attitude that depends upon the manner in which he con
ceives of the reality of the supernatural, and of the relation be
tween the natural and the supernatural. He will also approach
this evidence in an attitude that depends upon the manner
in which he conceives of the miracle in its relations to the so-
called course of nature. The evidence for the biblical miracles
will inevitably appear different to the supernaturalist and to
the mind which can take only the naturalistic point of view.
But among supernaturalists themselves a further difference of
prepossessions arises; inasmuch as some insist upon considering
the rairacle as a breach or suspension of the laws and forces of
nature, whUe others find no difficulty in conceiving of miracles
as consistent with its laws and forces.
We begin, then, by affirming again our coraplete confidence
in the claims of a true supernaturalism. This supernaturalism
does not admit even the possibility of regat^ding the physical
universe as a self-contained whole, or the course of nature and
history as at any step explicable solely by enuraerating its raa
terial substances, and physical forces and laws. It is the false
postulate of the physical universe as a self-contained and self-
developing whole which in a special manner precludes the can
did exaraination of aU evidence for the miraculous. Nor does
it make any essential difference with the logical result, in what
particular form this false postulate is held. The conceptions of
the Avorld which materialisra and pantheisra raaintain are not
more unfavorable to the biblical miracles than are deistic con-
, ceptions of God. Indeed, in sorae respects the latter are raore
unfavorable, as they certainly are raore unphilosophical, than the
former. The mind which admits that the so-called supernatural
interpenetrates and gives conditions to the so-called natural,
even though it refuse to distinguish the two by substantial dif
ferences, is readier to admit testimony for a miraculous event
than the mind which looks upon the supernatural as having
retired frora the universe, and left all its events to the self-
induced combinations of natural forces and substances. It is
only as the miracle is conceived of in its general relations to a

288 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
supernatural order, that it becomes tolerable to reason. To
admit the constant presence and power of the supernatural in
the physical universe, predisposes us to regard favorably that
evidence which seeks to evince its presence and power in the
particular forra of the miraculous. The rairacle, then, in order
to be believed, raust be brought into relations to a supernatural
system ; it must be one event which is to be ascribed to an
agency recognized, in some form of conception, as the cause of
other events. The miracle must not be an isolated event with
respect to its rational ground, if it is to be accepted upon any
supposable araount of docuraentary evidence. The suggestion
made by an English writer ^ upon the doctrine of chance is,
therefore, perfectly tenable : " It raight even be more easy for
a person thoroughly imbued with the spirit of inductive science,
though an atheist, to believe in a rairacle which formed a part
of a vast systera, as the Christian rairacles may be supposed to
do, than for such a person, as a theist, to accept an isolated
rairacle." The postulate of the existence of a personal God is not, then,
sufficient of itself to create a favorable predisposition toward
the evidence for raUacles. That predisposition can logicaUy
exist only in the raind, which, in addition to the bare behef in a
personal God, also accepts the true doctrine as to the relations
of the natural and the supernatural. To say after the manner
of Paley, " Once believe in a God, and miracles are not incredi
ble," is not an adequate statement of the difficulty; for we
must still inquire, — What are the relations in which this God
stands to the physical universe, — before we can admit even the
abstract possibility of miracles. In other words, the question
of the relations of the supernatural to the natural precedes the
question of the possibility of the miraculous ; and only on the
supposition that a special doctrine of those relations is adopted,
can we properly go forward to discuss this possibiUty. Instead
of the claim of Weisse, that faith in a personal God is suffering
from no other circumstance more than from being coupled with
faith in miracles, we must raake the opposite claim : faith m
miracles, as well as in the general reality of revelation, is suffer
ing from having been separated frora faith in a living G-od?
We have seen in the preceding chapter, that the Bible so
^ The Logic of Chance, by John Venn, London, 1876, p. 460.
2 Compare Wegscheider, Instit. Theol., § 12: "Persuasio de supernaturali M
miraculosa eademque immediata Dei revelatione conciliari nequit cum idea W
aeterni, semper sibi constautis."

THE SUPERNATURAL AND THE MIRACULOUS. 289
teaches the doctrines of supernaturalism as not to separate
God, at any step of the world's physical processes or of its
course in history, from any physical or moral event. The
supernatural underlies and penetrates the natural ; God is the
logical Prius and primal Cause of the world's original sub
stances, forces, and laws ; the Creator of each new form of mat
ter and life ; the Preserver whose eternal force maintains in real
existence all the second causes ; the Lord of life ; the co-ordinat
ing force, or Ruler and Disposer of all beings and events in
history and in the physical universe. It is no strange thing,
then, for the natural to be moulded by the supernatural; it
would not be unlike the past, if new creative and organizing
activities of the divine wUl should at any period raake them
selves manifest. Moreover, we have seen that the interests of
God's moral kingdom, and his activities in its behalf, are con
sidered by the doctrine of the Bible as giving the key to the
relations of God to nature. And this consideration brings
before us certain raanifestations of the supernatural which are
rnore closely allied to the miraculous than any of the preceding.
The term revelation covers, in the biblical doctrine and in our
thought, one entire class of these manifestations. The order of
nature constitutes one raeans of the divine self-revelation: in
so far as this order cannot be fully explained by the second
causes raanifest hi itself, it reveals, or raakes raanifest, "an
inner nature," "an immanent reason," "a plastic power of
organization." But above and beyond this order of nature in
the strictest sense, there is another form of the manifestation
of God : this form is that of making known new divine truth
by personal coraraunion within the huraan soul. But why, we
may ask, should it be held objectively impossible that physical
events, which are manifest in the order of nature but do not
originate within it, should be made the instruments of revela
tion ? There raay, then, be distinguished two possible ways of
revelation which are not simply in and through the usual course
of nature. It is an indispensable postulate derived from the
right doctrine of the supernatural, that the divine activity in
self-revelation is not exhausted, nor excluded, by the original
creation and subsequent preservation of the physical universe.
There have been repeated acts of divine self-revelation which
were somewhat more than events produced in the physical
universe by new combinations of second causes. These re
peated acts may be so arranged as to constitute a system oi
VOL. I. T

290 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
revelation, which is itself, as a system, not to be referred to a
combination of second causes. That this self-revelation may
come by way of immediate coramunications of truth to the
soul, we have no reason for denying. But why should they
who reject miracles, flatly deny that it may also sometimes take
the form of events occurring in the physical universe, which
manifest the truth to be revealed, and at the same time cannot
be accounted for by summing up the second causes which have
entered into them ? For, to make this unqualified denial is only
to affirra that nature must be regarded as a self-contained whole ;
that the reality and supremacy of the supernatural cannot be
admitted ; that the divine activity is exhausted by, or excluded
from, the world it has produced. It is, in fine, a complete
denial of the reality of the supernatural within the natural.
The close connection of a true doctrine of the natural and
the supernatural, especially in the form of revelation, with faith
in miracles, is evinced by a rational theology. Thus Dorner
maintains ^ that revelation is necessarily, as to its form, both
internal and external ; and that the two forms are reciprocally
dependent and interacting. The internal form is inspiration,
which is the subjective miracle ; the external form, or mani
festation, is revelation penetrating the established order of
nature, and is called miracle in the special sense. And Beck,^
with truth and yet not with full accuracy, considers miracle
and prophecy only two ways in the working of one and the
sarae cause ; the rairacle in the doraain of action, prophecy m
that of knowledge. Miracles are, then, to be defined as " single
manifestations of that new-creative organizing activity which
belongs to the immanent principle of revelation."^ Rothe* even
goes so far as to declare that " God cannot otherwise make him
self manifest than by miracles and prophecy ; " and the same
writer agrees with Martensen in alleging, "The concept of
sacred history is inseparable from the concept of the miracle."^
The prepossessions against the truthfulness of the alleged mk-
aculous contents of Scripture, so far as those prepossession^
concern the abstract possibility of finding a source or ground
for miracles, give way before the true doctrine of the super
natural, and especially of the supernatural in the process of
moral and reUgious self-revelation. Granted not only that
1 Glaubenslehre, I. p. 577 f.
2 Einleitung in das System der christlichen Lehre, Stuttgart, 1870, p. 168.
8 Ibid., p. 174. 4 See Zur Dogmatik, p. 82.
fi Martensen, Dogmatik, 2te Aufl., p. 33.

SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIONS TO MIRACLES. 291
there is a personal God, but granted also that this personal
God constantly manifests himself as the supernatural in nature,
and that he further manifests himself in a process of self-revela
tion in history ; and then we find no reason at all in him for
pronouncing miracles impossible. The rather do we establish
prepossessions favorable to accepting the historical proofs of
miracles. These prepossessions reach, however, only those
cases where the miraculous appears as a legitimate part of the
entire supernatural order, and especially of that order as it
manifests itself in a system and course of self-revelation. In
tliis way it raay even becorae true, that the knowledge of the
miracle in revelation, and of its religious significance, rests upon
the sarae ground as the knowledge of God in the world in
general.^ To taking the above-mentioned point of view, only a thor
oughly materiaUstic or pantheistic philosophy can offer any
sufficient obstacle. To it science, when confining itself within
its own sphere, has nothing whatever to oppose. The criticism
which begins its work upon the Bible with an opinion already
formed against the abstract possibiUty of the miracles, is born
of pure naturalism. Such is the point of view from which
Strauss,^ ZeUer,^ the author of " Supernatural Religion," * and
1 Compare Beck, Ibid., p. 171 f.
2 The animus dt Strauss upon the subject of the miraculous contents of Scrip
ture may be judged by this prominent sentence: " Wer die Pfaffen aus der Kirche
schaffen will, der muss erst das Wunder aus der Religion schaffen." (Das Leben
Jesu, fiir das deutsche Volk bearbeitet, p. xix.) Strauss endeavors to conceal
his real philosophical point of view, which is pantheistic, and accepts from Hume
the argument for the historical improbability of the miracle. See Ibid., p. 149 f.;
and compare Steinmeyer, Die Wunderthaten des Herrn, Berlin 1866, p. 2 f.
8 Zeller makes, indeed, a show of declaring in good faith that the position
of the school to which he belongs does not call in question the metaphysical
or theological possibUity of miracles, but rather discusses the historico-critical
inquiry, whether we have in the New Testament evidence, suificient and of the
right kind, to prove their occurrence. And yet he soon proceeds to announce his
belief in the impossibility of the miraculous on the grounds of the Kantian phi
losophy. " The miracle, and the historical consideration of affairs, exclude each
other." " Between faith in miracles, and historical criticism, there is no middle
ground possihle." See Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift, 1861, VI. pp. 363 f., 370 f.;
1862, VIII. pp. 108, 111, 116.
* This atfthor, undei; the pretence of a candid critical inquiry, conceals the
predeterminations of the baldest naturalism: it is criticism guided by the con
clusions of agnostic philosophy, which is really manifest in the whole discussion
(see especially Vol. I. pp. 61-77). The criticalYalue of much of the discussion may
be judged of by the note found on p. 28 of the first'volume, in which theaiithdr
cites various passages from the works of Ewald to'prove that " the gredt majority
of modern German critics reject the miracttlous altogether,'" while 'thOSe 'who
have not openly expressed this view "either resort to every iinguistio device
to evade the difficulty, or betray, by their ^hesitation, • the -feeUlekieSs' Of 'their

292 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
other critics approach the New Testament; from the same
point of view do Kuenen and the modern Dutch school almost
uniformly regard the Old. From such critics we cannot, of
course, expect a candid and yet searching examination of evi
dence ; concerning them there is no reason to reverse the
declaration of Miiller, that theology vrill refuse to tolerate them
(respuit, respuetque) fio long as she desires to be worthy of her

name

1

A consistent doctrine of supernatural revelation has, then,
nothing a priori to oppose to the evidence for miracles : indeed,
it rather ,creates an expectation of the occurrence of actual
miracles, if only they may be regarded as raanifestations of the
truth of ,revelation within the sphere of the physical universe.
But does not our knowledge of this physical universe inter
pose aij objection from experience which amounts to asserting
the impossibUity of miracles? Does not the modern scientific
conception of the course of nature contradipt the theological
conception of a miracle ? It is evident that the answer to this
question must depend largely upon our conception of a miracle.
For we raay adrait the abstract possibiUty that God will mani
fest within nature his purpose of self-revelation, and yet reject
such a conception of the manner of that self-revelation as seems
to contradict the truest and highest conception of nature.
That such a conception of nature involves accepting the pres
ence and power oi the supernatural in various forms of activity,
we have already seen ; but whether it admits of accepting that
form of activity which is represented as a violation or suspen
sion of the course of nature, or of some of the laws of nature,
reraains to 'be discussed.
belief." The repeated uncritical lumping together of the names of just those
German critics whose views upon the question of the supernatural most nearly
approach those of this writer may without doubt have convinced him that his
general statement corresponds with facts. The long and equally trustworthy
list of modern German critics who . accept the supernatural in historical Chris
tianity need not here be cited in reply. But when the author asserts that Ewald
in his latest work, " Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott," " eliminates all the miracu
lous elements from revelation," he may fittingly be invited to consider a pas
sage from this same book. Vol. III. p. 197: -" There are learned fools in these days,
who so little understand the meaning of the biblical miracles th^t they wish to
deny them altogether, and would then logically be compelled even to blot out
the word ' miracle ' from all ancient aud modern languages. But the divine order
of the world, and its progress to which all the biblical miracles refer, is itself the
highest and finally the only true miracle." This is tho avowal of the supernatu
ral as inclusive of the miraculous in all nature and history; to deny which is, as
Ewald immediately adds, "to have lost the best part of one's own spirit."
1 De Miraculorum Jesu Christi natura et necessitate, Particula I. p. 4 f.

THE EARLIER CONCEPTION OF MIRACLES. 293
It cannot be denied, that the modern conception of the
course of nature has modified the older orthodox conception
of the manner in which the supernatural passes over into the
miraculous. The doctrine of Augustine (in one of its forms,
at least) allowed no substantial existence to the physical uni
verse, and made all events in nature in a certain sense miracu
lous, as being alike the work of God.i All events were also
regarded by hira as alike natural ; and no rairacle was regarded
as absolutely contra naturam, but only contra natur am quae nobis
est nota. According to Thoraas Aquinas, those things which
are done by God " beyond the order of nature," or " beyond
the causes that are known to us," are called rairacles. But the
later orthodox doctrine made the essential element in its con
ception of a miracle, a certain contradiction, violation, or sus
pension of the laws of naturei^ The turning-point of the
modern doctrine as to the relation of rairacles to the laws of
nature, Dorner* places in the person of Schleierraacher, who,
together with Rothe, prepared the grbund for such a treatment
as shall satisfy the demands both of faith and of scientific
knowledge. The same writer speaks in this connection of
Loscher as the last important defender of the old Lutheran
orthodoxy, and pronounces unsatisfactory the conception of
this orthodoxy. But not a few writers in English stiU cling
tenaciously to the same obsolescent conception.*
Because the conception of the relation which such events
sustain to the course of nature is difficult to define, it cannot
therefore be concluded that the aUeged miracles of Scripture
are not in fact events belonging to the supernatural order as
manifested within the physical universe. It belongs to the very
1 See Dorner, Augustinus, Berlin, 1873, pp. 70-80; and Glaubenslehre, I. p.
588 f.
2 Buddeus, Instit. Theol. Dogmat. XI. 2, cap. i.
8 Glaubenslehre, I. pp. 594 f. and 588.
^ The basis for Aquinas' view of miracles is laid in his treatment of the rela
tion of God to nature: Summa Theol., quaes, vi., art. 3, and quaes, xxv. The
nature of miracles is discussed, quaes, cv., art. 6f. Hopfner defines: " Miracula
sunt opera Dei praeter et supra naturae ordinem facta." Loscher, however, insists
that the event must also be contra naturae leges, in order to be a true miracle.
For this form of conception, substantially the same, although modified in forms
of expression, see Mozley, Bampton Lectures for 1865, especially pp. 143-166;
Canon Liddon, Lent Lectures, 1870, p. 74 f. ; article on Miracles in the American
edition of Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. For statements which either decidedly
or partially reject from the conception of the miraculous that element which
makes it contra naturae leges, see Trench, Notes on the Miracles, p. 20; Aids to
Faith, article on Miracles, by Mansel. For an admirable discussion of the nature
of the miracle, see Fisher, Supernatural Origin of Christianity, Essay XI.

294 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
nature of the miracle, as a species of the supernatural, that it
shall be obscure on the side of the order of nature : it is, how
ever, a portion of revelation itself, and therefore a manifestation
of truth on the side of a higher order. But the precise con
ception of a miracle, which was forraed by the old orthodoxy,
is not favored either by a scientific theology, or by a science
that concedes its due place to theology. Thus Pfleiderer,
arguing frora the philosophical and theological point of riew,
rejects the conception of the old orthodoxy as imworthy of the
doctrine of God ; although he raaintains firraly the supernatur
alistic view of the physical universe. In his opimon, to sus
pend or contradict any portion of the order of nature is not
simply to do violence to nature : it is to contradict the dirine
idea of the world.^ The oppositions of science, falsely so
called, are especially eager to come to a definite issue with
theology upon the terms of this inadequate conception. From
the time of Spinoza ^ to the present, this view is the one which
the opponents of biblical miracles have been best pleased to
contest. And Weisse is not more certain, as a critic of the
phUosophy of religion, that no interruption of the steadfast
ness of the order of nature can occur, than is Apelt as a
scientist, that physics has long since decided against the possi
bility of a miracle.
The conception of the old orthodoxy raust be pronounced
untenable, however, not so much because phUosophy and sci
ence have proved it to be an absolute a priori impossibihty, as
because it is itself inadequate to express either the doctrine of
Scripture or the teachings of a coraprehensive theology. It is,
raoreover, unnecessarUy offensive to a true scientific knowledge
of • the physical universe. That a raoraentary suspension or
contradiction by Divine Power of certain of the laws of the
universe, if kept within the Umited sphere of a single event,
would destroy, or seriously interrupt, the whole order of nature,
is the figment of an extravagant imagination. The idea of the
order of nature expressed in such a figment is itself one which
excludes the supernatural. On scientific grounds, even, we
have no right to set up the idea of the natural order of the
universe as an eternal, self-contained whole. For, as Lotze
1 See Die Eeligion, Leipzig, 1878, 1, p. 400 f.
" Spinoza himself taught the relative nature of the miracle; mir?j3les exceed
or contradict all known laws. Compare Tract, Theol. Polit., cap. vi.; and Ep. ad
Oldenburgium, XXI., XXIII.
s Mikrokosnus, Leipzig, 1858, II. p. 48.

MIRACLES NOT VIOLATIONS OF NATURE. 29S
lias maintained, we cannot argue from the present condition of
orderly development back to the perfect regularity in forra and
moveraent of the earUest substances and forces. And, more
over, within human experience new increments of forces have
been constantly introduced to modify the course of nature, and
make it different from what it would be were it really a system
of perfectly rigid physical forces and laws. Such new forces
enter into the sphere of the physical universe with every tri
umph of thought in invention and discovery ; and, indeed, the
birth of every rational being is such a force. Should the law
of gravitation be suspended or violated throughout, we might
indeed expect that the entire physical order, and the moral as
dependent upon the physical, would be changed. But if force
from the supernatural source of all forces, even those which are
physical, should so suspend the action of gravitation for a time
in the single case involved, as that Jesus (for instance) might
walk upon the water, we have no right to infer that the physi
cal universe would faU a wreck. Nor can we even maintain
that the confidence of human minds in the uniformity of na
ture would be at all disturbed. " The concluding words of the
Te Deum " are no less likely, after such an event, to be " abun
dantly fulfiUed in the experience of the astronomer : " " He has
trusted in God, and he has never been confounded." ^ So also
would the violation of the laws of physical death in the case
of aU raen, or of any species of the animal kingdom, seem to
involve an indefinite change in the order of the physical uni
verse , but the raising of Lazarus by Christ does not necessarUy
more disturb this order than does that act of wUl on the part
of any sick man which may turn the scale to Ufe or to deatii
through its direct effect upon the bodUy system. And yet we
are abundantly warranted in rejecting that misleadmg and in
adequate conception of the miraculous which finds the essen
tial element in a contra naturae ordinem, or a suspension or
contradiction of the laws of nature.
And first of aU, raust we concede the truth which is insisted
upon by Schenkel 2 and raany others, that no events can corae
to pass in an absolutely supernatural way. The miracle is,
therefore, always lunited by conditions derived frora nature : it
is necessarily in nature, and to a certain extent, even as to its
causation, of nature. The miracle, as a species of the super-
1 See The Unseen Universe, New York, 1875, p. 54 f .
2 Grundlehre des Christenthums, p. 79 f.

296 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
natural, and as a form of divine self-revealing, partakes of the
conditions which belong even to creation and revelation. After
that first act of absolute creation by which God bruigs into first
being the original substances, forces, and laws of the physical
universe, all subsequent creative acts must take into account
the foregoing ; creation is, then, in all its acts after the first
act, conditioned upon nature. Revelation involves the existence
of a supernatural principle in history, but revelation is itself
conditioned upon nature. To maintain, then, that the miracle
is accoraplished in a wholly supernatural fashion, and without
the co-operation of second causes, is to separate it from all
huraan experience ; it is, moreover, to deprive it of all service
to faith, of the possibUity of realizing its own final purpose.
If, for example, the miracle of our Lord at Cana was not
wholly docetic, the wine which he made had the chemical and
physical constituents of other wine; even if we suppose its
elements to have been wholly new creations, they were condi
tioned upon preceding and existing laws and forces of nature.
But we are assured that the water was, so to speak, the'
physical basis of the miraculous wine (John u. 9, to vSap omv
yeyev-r]p.evov). No cvcut iu history cau evcu be conceived of
without the co-operation of all the preceding forces and laws
of the physical universe. Moreover, the epideictic value of
the miracle depends upon its conformity, within certain hmits,
to the order of nature; only thus can it be a manifestation
of God and divine truth in the external sphere, and cognizable
by the senses. It is not more true, that miracles must origi
nate with God for purposes of revelation, than that they must
be conditioned upon the existing course of nature. This pre
vents us from adopting the view which seems implied in much
of the language of Rothe , as, for instance, when he declares
without qualification that nature has absolutely nothing to do
with the effect produced in the case of all proper miracles.^
That conception of the miraculous which makes its essential
element consist in a violation or suspension of the laws of
1 Zur Dogmatik, p. 102. Much fault has justly enough been found with Eothe,
rather because his statements concerning the relations of the miraculous and the
course of nature are unguarded, than because his conception of the miracle is
essentially false. Among such statements are the following : " The concept o£
this miracle (that in the strictest sense) is categorically this, that in it God pro
duces an effect without the intervention of any created secondary causation what-
Doever " (pp. 101 and 96). " From the miracle in the strict sense, every sncceBsion
whatsoever is, according to its conception, excluded " (p. 98). The miracle is
Bomething wholly magical: " Gott zcmftert in ihm."

3 !

MIRACLES NOT VIOLATIONS OF NATURE 297
nature, is to be rejected, because it is also utterly inadequate :
the conception is either too wide or too narrow, according to
the interpretation put upon the terra "nature." "We mani
festly say less than we raean by the word ' rairacle,' " says Lotze,^
" if we see in it only that which is unaccustomed, but still in
its origin calculable : we say more than we should ourselves be
willing to say, when we find in it a coraplete violation of the
laws of nature." But besides the difficulties started by the
term " complete violation," even when appUed to a single law
of nature, we have to consider the raore insuperable difficulties
which arise in the effort to forra any idea of nature itself which
shaU justify such a definition of the miracle. Indeed, it is just
the deistic conception of nature which most invites that con
ception of the rairacle which was formed by the old orthodoxy.
For if we look upon all the visible universe, raan included, as
being in its accustomed course a self-contained and independent
machine, we may raost easily form the conception of some vio
lation or suspension which coraes upon it from without. But
if we restrict the terra " nature " to the substances, forces, and
laws of the purely physical universe, then the laws of nature
are suspended and violated by every act of human free-will ;
that is to say, the supernatural in raan is not specifically distin
guished from the truly miraculous.^ If, however, we include
human nature and all free finite spirits under our term " na
ture," we have then another alternative. We may hold that all
effects, not producible according to the natural working of the
forces and laws of free finite spirits, are violations of those laws;
and then all divine commuiuon with the human soul, in revela
tion and by the act of regeneration, becomes miraculous. If,
on the other hand, God may be said to produce effects, in a
supernatural way and for purposes of revelation, upon the spir
itual realm of nature, without violating its laws, it is difficult
to maintain that he must violate the laws of the other and
physical realm of nature, whenever he produces an effect for
the same purpose there. Indeed, this whole conception of the
miracle seems to grow out of a false and misleading view- as to
the relations of natural and supernatural.
1 Mikrokosmus, II. p. 52.
2 Schenkel truly asserts that every free spirit has an unintelligible, or absolute
and unconditioned, element in itself (Grundlehre des Christenthums, p. 86); but
this must not be identified with the miraculous. The miraculous must rather be
distinguished from the mere general dependence of matter on spirit. See Beck,
System der Christlichen Lehre, p. 169 f.

298 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
This conception also injures, if it does not destroy, the power
to connect miracles in any way with our valid conceptions
either of nature or of revelation. The biblical view represents
one entire class of miracles as supernatural co-ordinations and
exaggerations, so to speak, of physical forces.^ Such are the
Flood, the plagues of Egypt, the deliverance at the Red Sea,
and probably also sorae of the miraculous healings of the New
Testament. Moreover, as we shaU soon see more clearly, the
biblical view favors that conception of the physical universe
which regards it as an organism, every part of which is not only
sensitive to changes in every other part, but also open to the
action of the divine wUl as a co-ordinating force. What we
call a law of nature is, then, from the supernatural point of
view, a divine method of sustaining and co-ordinating the nat
ural forces. The true view of the laws of nature regards them
as abstracted from the functions of the natural powers, — form
ulae or co-efficients for the activities of these powers.^ This
view, however, utterly forbids our speaking of miracles as rio-
lations of the laws of nature. The functions and co-efScients
of these activities remain the sarae during the miracle, and after
it, as before. There has simply been added by the divine vrill
to the production of a single event an element which does not
corae from the activity of these powers. To speak, then, of the
miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, seems to be — even
when so explained as to escape the accusation of introducmg
a complete overturning of nature — like arraying one dirine
raethod against another. And while he who denies effects in
history which are praeter or supra naturam can do so only on
the ground that he does not believe in revelation and the super
natural at all, he who is raost intelligent in his supernaturalism
will be least likely to affirra divine contradictions or violations
of the laws of nature. That is true which Kostlin,^ as an
opponent of Rothe on this point, has maintained : the belief m
1 See Miiller, De Miraculorum, etc., p. 7 f. In these supernatural acts the
divine will operates through the natural forces, and not merely as having its
activity in a measure conditioned upon them. (" Sustentat, adjuvat, nee mutat,"
p. 40 f.)
2 So Kostlin and Lotze: according tb the latter, the miracle may be conceived
of as an event due to the divine will, which does not change any of the qualities of
the elements of matter or any of the functions of its forces, bnt only those specific
co-efScients which enter into the miraculous event (Mikrokosmus, H. p. 49 {•)¦
" The law, the order of the world," says Schenkel (pp. 20, 85), " is the presence ol
the divine reason in the world, on its natural side." Compare Miiller, Ibid., p- 20.
s Die Frage iiber das Wunder, Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie. Hi*i
p. 236 f.

THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF MIRACLES. 299
miracles must adjust itself to the true contents of our idea of
the world. It is the lack of this adjustraent, which, according
to the same writer, has caused the older conception to be uni
versally abandoned.
The above-mentioned conception neglects, moreover, those
very elements, derived from the idea and history of revelation,
which it is most iraportant to preserve. Such eleraents, in
accounting for the origin of a miraculous event, do not empha
size the manner in which it is brought about as a violation of
natural forces, but rather the fact that the event is not due to
such forces, and is due to the divine will. Moreover, such ele
ments require us especially to emphasize the final purpose of
the miracle as an event designed to form one factor in a scheme
of self-revelation. But the conception of the old orthodoxy
lays the emphasis upon a violation or suspension of the laws of
nature ; it thus regards the whole subject from an unbiblical
and an entirely inferior point of view. What is important to
the miracle is this, that God should be recognized as its source,
and that it should serve as a factor in the divine self-revelation.
What is relatively unimportant, even if ever actualized, is this,
. that a single event should stand in a seeming antagonisra to the
other forms of the divine activity, to the other kinds of super-
. , natural action.
We derive, then, from the foregoing discussion, these elements
. . of a true conception of miracles. The miracle is a species of
, the supernatural, and as such it conforms to all the general
laws which control the manifestation of the supernatural. The
J, ', miracle is an event in nature, and is, therefore, conditioned
'. ' upon the substances and forces of nature, and is visible to the
_ senses.! The miracle is an event which serves the divine pur-
^ pose of self-revelation : it belongs, therefore, to a certain place
in the historic process of divine self-revelation. The miracle is
an event which is caused by divine free-wiU for manifesting
God's grace ; it is an act of divine condescension.^ It is not
ff ff an event produced by nature, although within nature. It is
'-' -' not, therefore, calculable ; and it is incalculable, not because it
IS an event caused by unknown forces of the natural order, but
f i because it is pre-eminently an act of free-wUl. If, therefore,
¦; ¦; there are events that occur, as factors in the historical process
5: 5? ^ See Miiller, De Miraculorum, etc., p. 17: "Id quidem ante omnia probe con-
0 ,0 stituendum est, miraculum proprie esse factum aliquod in natura sensibus sub-
{j {) jecta." ,
/, ,5 2 Ibid., p. 42.

300 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of revelation, within nature and so visible to the senses, and
that must be referred to the will of God for their cause, and
regarded as external manifestations of the truths of revelation,
then there are rairacles. And there is not only no sufficient
antecedent presumption against such events, but there is rather
a presumption in their favor.
We now exaraine the bibUcal view of miracles in the light
of the foregoing observations. We cannot, however, expect to
find a coraplete correspondence between the view of the Bible,
and that conception, which, while resting upon the biblical
view, and being in every essential particular confirmed by it, is
nevertheless the product in part of a developed scientific idea
of the physical universe. Those elements of the true con
ception of the miracle which most certainly foUow from an
adequate doctrine of God and of revelation are pre-eminently
scriptural. But other eleraents of this conception are derived
raore directly by observation and experience : they must there
fore recognize the validity of that form of knowing the rela
tions of God and the world, that idea of the cosmos, which
belongs to modern times. The biblical conception makes no
attempt to adjust itself to any idea of a fixed course of nature,
for it is unconscious of the very ground upon which such an
idea has been built. Indeed, in all antiquity there is no ques
tion raised concerning the possibiUty of reconcUing any concep
tion of a rairacle with such an idea. " The entire Old Testar
ment," as Schultz forcefully declares, " presupposes the miracle
as something self-intelligible." ^ The insight of piety sees the
proofs of divine wonder-working in that which science regards
merely as the effect of natural forces (Ps. xcviu. 1, cvii. 8 f.,
Ixvi. 3, 6). And, since all events are results of dirine will,
rairacles are often distinguished frora ordinary events, only as
being more surprising exhibitions of that wUl. In both the
positive and the negative elements of the biblical conception of
rairacles, the nature of that idea of God which had been re
vealed to the writers is the forraative and controlling influence.
The relations of God to his people are those of a free, all-power
ful, and gracious personality. This point of view, as furnished
by faith, deterraines the raanner in which the biblical writers
1 Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 636 f. Perhaps the nearest approaches to
the notion of a fixed order of nature are found. Job xxxviii. 8, 10 f.; Ps. civ.Si
cxlviii. 6.
2 God, as the Creator and Ruler, is the Author also of miracles; see Ps. Ixx^'
6; Exod. viii. 19, xiii. 9; Job v. 9.

BIBLICAL IDEA OF MIRACLES NOT SCIENTIFIC. 301
conceive of the divine relations to the physical universe ; but,
on the other hand, no point of view is reached which requires
an atterapt to adjust the difficulties that arise on coraparing
their view with the one derived from a scientific study of nature.
The God of Israel is Jehovah, who wiU keep his covenant with
his people : in the keeping of his covenant he is not restricted
by any thing physical which lies beyond himself, but is contm-
uaUy evincing his moral purpose in and through nature. He
is the source of rairaculous signs and wonders, because he is
Jehovah keeping the covenant with his people (corapare Joel
ii. 26 f.; Jer. xxxu. 17-21). From the sarae point of view
tiie connection between the rairacle proper and prophecy — the
inner rairacle — becoraes clear; and as well, the reason why
prophets are represented as workers of miracles. The same will
which sends the prophet rules the world ; the confidence of the
prophet, if fully developed as his raission deraands, leads hira to
expect that Jehovah will work any wonder which is necessary
for the accomplishment of that mission.^ So confident is Isaiah
of the divine power and wUlingness to testify to the truth of
revelation and to the raission of the prophet, that he invites
(vU. 11 f.) Ahaz to ask a " sign," and raake it deep as Hades
or high as heaven. The fulfilraent of such confidence is found
when the shadow of the king's dial is carried back ten degrees
in proof of what the sarae prophet had spoken (xxxviii. 7 f.).
Prophecy itself is a rairacle of inspiration and foreknowledge.
Both the strenuousness of bibUcal supernaturalism, and the
fact that the writers of the Bible had no scientific idea of
the order of nature, conspire to prevent the attempt to adjust
the conception of miracles to such an idea. The purely ethical
purpose of revelation prevents the same attempt.
We find, then, certain elements of a scientific order con
spicuously lacking in the biblical conception of the rairaculous ;
but we find the great ethical and religious elements generously
and uniformly inwrought into this conception. To this con
ception, as in general found in both Testaments, belong these
three following truths. It is implied, (1) negatively, that a
miraculous event is not one of ordinary experience ; and posi
tively, (2) that it is the product of immediate divine activity ;
and (3) that it is a sign, proof, or reminder to men, which has
an ethical and religious significance.
1 Even Moses, the greatest of the prophets, is blameworthy for lacking thia
confidence (see Num. xx. 10 f.).

502 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
The biblical conception does not proclaim the miracle as a
violation or suspension of the laws of nature : on the contrary,
although not concerned with adjusting any apparent conflict
between God's ordinary working in nature and his extraordi
nary working in the rairacle, it is rather decidedly opposed to
the terminology of the old orthodoxy. The most general titles
for the miracles of the Bible do not reach farther than to pro
claim thera as unaccustomed and astonishing events.^ The
Old Testament has no name for a miracle which is not as readi
ly applicable to events that are plainly natural, in our sense
of the word, as to those properly miraculous. It unhesitatingly
regards extraordinary natural processes as divine signs (com
pare Ps. Ixxxix. 6-14, Job v. 8-16). SymboUcal transactions
(as, e.g., Deut. xxvUi. 46 ; Isa. xx. 3, xxxvii. 30), or symbohcal
names and persons (as, e.g., Isa. vii. 14, viU. 18), are indicated
by the same title (nix ) which is given to the miracle proper.
The latter, as a sign (so the Greek a-r]p.eiov), points to the super-
sensual world which is revealed by the miracle to the beholder.
Even the term naiD (prodigy or wonder) is not restricted to
the rairacle proper^ (Ezek. xU. 6, xxiv. 24). The prophet de
clares (Isa. viii. 18): "I and the children whom Jehovah hath
given me are for signs and portents to Israel." The plagues
of Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the manna and quails
in the desert, are not considered as any more truly supernat
ural, certainly not as any raore truly opposed to nature, than
ordinary sickness, journeys by sea, and daily sustenance, when
these latter are looked upon as effects of the divine wUl.
We should, however, be quite astray from the truth, were
we to maintain that the writers of the Old Testament made no
distinction between rairaculous and other providential events;
rauch raore, were we also to maintain that the failure to make
the very distinctions which are rendered necessary by the mod
ern idea of the world vitiates their testimony as to the occur
rence of the events themselves. These writers go only far
enough in setting the miracle apart from ordinary experience
to consider it as somewhat extraordinary, separate, and distin
guished (ni'sSaj) ; it is an expression of unusual power, a great
deed (n'^nj) ; it is calculated to inspire terror (nx^'u). The
miracle is, then, conceived of as making an impression by its
1 Compare Bender, Der Wunderbegriff des Neuen Testamentes. Frankfurt
1871, p. 5 f.
2 See Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 250 1

NEW-TESTAMENT IDEA OF MIRACLES. 303
contradiction of those expectations which are the result of ordi
nary experience, rather than as opposed to any abidmg natural
laws, or fixed order of nature.^
The writers of the New Testament received their designa
tions for the mUacles which they narrate, as formed by the Old
Testament in accordance with its fundamental conceptions.
The titles and descriptions of the New Testament, even when
its terms are most closely defined, are ambiguous as to the
relation of a miraculous event to the laws and fixed order of
nature.2 The miracle is, in this regard at least, something
beyond ordinary experience, — a wonder (repas) and therefore
a " sign." (Corapare Mark vi. 2 ; Matt. xxiv. 24 ; Acts U. 19,
V. 12.) These writers do not surpass their predecessors of the
Old Testament in their attempts to adjust the events they de
scribe to the ordinary events of experience, regarded as parts
of a closed and self-contained systera. They could not have
made such attempts unless the modern idea of the physical
universe had been supernaturally comraunicated to them.
That this idea was thus communicated, we have no proof. If,
therefore, aU our confidence in the testimony of apostles and
prophets is to be made dependent upon their philosophic and
scientific adjustment of the relations of natural and supernatu
ral, we are indeed in a desperate case. But the assumption
that the positive reUgious elements of their conception are un
true, and that they must be ruled out of court on the ground
of inability to give scientifically valid testimony, without even
so much as an exaraination of that testiraony, is none the less
an assumption of surpassing impudence. The fact that they do
not attempt to give what we are called upon to attempt, and
yet find so difficult, — viz., a statement of the relations of God
and nature which shall satisfy both the religious consciousness
and a scientifically valid conception of the physical universe,
— is less to their discrecUt than to their credit as trustworthy
¦ witnesses. And surely critics who stand ready to declare that
they would not believe their own eyes if they saw Jesus Christ
' raise one from the dead, are on their own showing utterly in-
1 The argument of the Bampton Lectures for 1865, as contained especially in
i chapters ii. and vi., seems to overlook the fact, that the proof of miracles is not
/ opposed simply to the instinctive confldence that the future will correspond to
the past, but rather to the idea of the world as a self-contained and self-regulated
i system. 2 See Acts ii. 22, vi. 8, viii. 13; Matt. xvi. 1, xxi. 15, xxvii. 42; Luke xi. 16;
John ix. 3. The conception which the Apocrypha have of natural events as mir
aculous may be seen, Sir. xiii. 17, xliii.

304 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
competent fairly to consider the evidence. However unskilled
in scientific matters they may have been, it manifestly was not
a matter of indifference to the eye-witnesses, whether the body
of Jesus went upon the top of the water, or, like that of Peter,
sank beneath it ; whether, again, it passed through the open
or the closed door. The fact that the ancient Hebrews referred
the phenoraena of raeteorology and of aniraal and plant life to
the divine activity did not prevent their writers from holding
a more specific conception of the rairacle, which regards it as
differing strangely frora the ordinary sequence of affairs, and
as being designed and accoraplished by God for a token and
medium of revelation.
We must, however, consider chiefly the positive elements of
the biblical conception of rairacles, as elements which are impor
tant and decisive. According to this conception a miraculous
event is to be thought of and accepted as a positive product of
divine free-will. It is to be ascribed to the power of God; it is
the work of God. The idea of the immediateness of the divme
activity is brought out in the title nx'"i3 (Nura. xvi. 30), which
likens the miracle to the divine work of creation (compare Exod.
xxxiv. 10). It is always a manifestation of the presence and
power of Jehovah. The primary and comraon cause of aU the
New-Testament miracles is the divine voUtion, — Bvvapn 6(cm or
Kvpiov (Luke V. 17). God is declared (Acts ii. 24, x. 40) to
have raised Jesus frora the dead ; that is, to have wrought the
crowning miracle of sacred history. Believers are represented
as having their resurrection &a t^s S-wdpeaii avrov (sc. Oeov) ; for
it is God who raises the dead.^ To the same divine power the
miraculous and other gifts of the Christian community are alike
ascribed.2 Jesus ascribes his own miraculous works to the same
source : they are wrought in the name of the Father (John x.
25), and originate ek tov Trarpo^ ; they are, in brief, ra tpyo tov
Trarpo's, — divine acts of free-will.^ His miracles are wrought, so
we are told by Jesus (Luke xi. 20), iv Sa/cTuAo) Oeov. He refers the
sick to God for help (Mark v. 19 and Luke viu. 39). Yet this
divine power to work miracles is represented also as having its
seat in the personality of Jesus : * it is conditioned, however, on
his spiritual coraraunion and union with the Father (see Mark
ix. 29 ; Matt. xiv. 19, and corapare Luke xvU. 5). So also are
the miraculous works of the apostles ascribed to the same source
1 2 Cor. i. 9, iv. 14, xiii. 4. a Compare Col. i. 11 ; 2 Tim. i.T-
3 See also John v. 36, ix. 3 f ., x. 32, 37, xi. 40 f. * Mark iii. 10 f. ; h-ak^ vi. 18.

THE TELEOLOGY OF THE MIRACLE. 305
in the divine wiU.^ Again, miracles are conceived of as wrought
by God through Jesus, — by the primary cause through a cause
secondary, and yet personal and divinely coraraissioned and en-
dowed.2 The conception of the Old-Testament writers attaches
this miraculous power to the personality of certain divinely
appointed messengers of Jehovah ; there even appear cases in
which one worker of miracles is represented as having imparted
his power or gift to another (see 1 Kings xix. 16 ; 2 Kings ii. 9,
14, 15). It cannot be denied, moreover, that elements of a
lower conception of miracles appear in the Old Testaraent, and
also to a very liraited extent in the New ; such as would tend to
co-ordinate it with raere thauraaturgy and raagic. But the Old-
Testament conception of miracles in general — and with this
alone are we now concerned — evinces its dignity and trust
worthiness in that it rejects the merely thauraaturgic view of
alleged rairaculous events.
The foregoing claira is especiaUy shown to be true by an
examination of the second group of positive elements in the
biblical conception of miracles. It is the teleology of miracles
in which this conception excels; it is this excellence which
especially justifies the claim that the rairaculous contents of tbe
Bible are Sacred Scripture indeed. The raost ancient distinc
tively biblical view of rairacles connects thera with the holiness
and grace of God (corapare Exod. xv. 11). Events considered
miraciUous are items in the process of divine self -revelation ;
they are parts of a great scherae ; and, as manifestations in that
realm of tlivine activity which is cognizable by the senses, they
are both the supplements and the correlates of inspiration and
the spirit of prophecy. The rairacles of the Bible have, then,
in general an ethical significance which sustains important rela
tions to the kingdora of God. They signify that which, as a
moral truth, is to be revealed to the soul of the individual or to
the world at large. This purpose in the progressive manifesta.
tion of God is indicated by the title " sign " (nm, a-ripelov). From
this general fact several iraportant particulars follow. A raira
cle cannot — of itself, and considered apart frora the character
of him who works it, and of the truth which it is designed to
teach — authenticate docteine. We are expressly informed that
errors of doctrine <com;pare Deut. xui. 1 f. ; Jer. xxvUi. 9 ; Matt.
1 Compare Acts iv. 19, xiv. 27, xv. 12, xix. 9.
a Acts X. 38, and compare iii. 12, iv. 30, xix. 11, 17. The view that miraculous
works belonged to the divine nature of GhiriSfwas-held by the Formula Concor
diae, and by Gerhard, Teller, Buddeus, 'Baumgarten, Calvin, and many others.
VOL. I. U

306 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
xxiv. 23-25; Gal. i. 8 f.) and errors of Ufe (Mic. in. 11; Zeph.
iii. 4 ; Matt. vU. 15 f.) limit and even exclude the convincino'
force of the wonders wrought by evil teachers : how much
truer, then, is this in cases where both kinds of error prevail !
(Compare Matt. v. 18 f.) According to Matt. vii. 22, 23, the
claim to work miracles in the narae of Christ is not to be lis
tened to when it coraes from those who work iniquity. This
attitude toward the " wonder," when it is not also a " sign " set
in its true place in the progressive scherae of divine redemption,
shows the intiraate connection which necessarUy exists between
the two correlated forms of divine self-revelation.
In the same direction of thought is the fact, that the New
Testament regards the office of the miracle as unfulfiUed unless
it has an influence within the spiritual realm.^ Faith in mirai-
cles is of little worth unless it become faith in Christ.^ Miracles
call upon those who witness them, to repent, and give thanks to
God.3 The raere wonder, the miracle regarded as a spectacle,
Jesus deprecates, and refuses to lend his power to produce.*
The faith which is a mere faith in miracles and the miracle-
worker cannot be regarded as true faith (compare John xii. 37).
Hence there were only a comparatively small number for whom
the works of Christ served as means to that holy spiritual union
which the works, as well as his teachings, were designed to
effect. It is, however, the declaration of real faith, rather than
the miracle regarded as a means to produce the declaration,
that displays the true 8d^a Oeov.^ Even in those cases, such as
occur especially in the Gospel of Matthew, and in the Book of
Acts, where the conceptions of the writers are least developed
from the Jewish form, and where the miracle is regarded chiefly
as a witness to Messiah in fulfilment of prophecy, the ethical
characteristics of this testiraony are not lost in mere epideictic
display.® The importance which the biblical conception attaches to the
1 See especially Matt, xii. 22-37. 2 John ix. 24, 25, 31-34.
8 Mark v. 19, 20, vi. 12 j Luke x. 13.
4 Mark viil. 11 f . ; Matt. xvi. 1-4, 5-12 ; Luke xi. 16, 19, xxiii. 8; John vi. 30, 33.
6 Compare Matt. xiv. 33 ; John ii. 11, xi.
6 See Matt. xii. 17 f., xxi. 4, Acts ii. 24-36. Steinmeyer (Die Wunderthaten
des Herrn in bezug auf die neueste Kri{;ik betrachtet, Berlin, 1866) finds a fourfold
teleological motive for the miracles of our Lord : (1) They are " tokens " from which
to draw a conclusion as to somewhat not perceivable by the senses ; (2) tiiey are
symbols (compare 2 Cor. xii. 12) which testify to the nature of the Messianic work
¦I- such are especially the works of healing ; (3) they are witnesses, as in Matt. xu.
28, John v. 20, xi. 25, 26, 41 ; and (4) they are prophecies, as in the case o£ the
stater and the fish, the stilling of the storm, the cursing of the fig-tree, etc.

PAUCITY OF BIBLICAL MIRACLES. 807
teleology of miracles is further seen in the history of the devel
opment of this conception itself. As Kostlin has declared,
miracles have their law pre-eminently in the teleological con
nection of the history of salvation.^ For this conception, like
that of prophecy, separates itself, as it becomes more and more
transformed by pure reUgious ideas, from all admixture of lower
conceptions. The same influence is felt in producing the rela
tive paucity of miracles in the Old Testament, and in connect
ing their more frequent occurrence with the several great epochs
of Old-Testament history. Apart from the personality and era
of Moses, and again of Elijah, the occurrence of miracles is
sporadic in Hebrew historj'' ; although the supernatural in gen
eral is conceived of as constantly accounting for the course of
that history. It is the apparent demand for the rairaculous in
the work of founding the kingdora of God, and not the demand
of vague curiosity for the marvellous, which controls the dis
tribution of the Old-Testament miracles. And it is the teleol
ogy of the miracle which gives it its place in the rational order
of nature, and in the order of human affairs regarded as sub
ject to the idea of divine redemption. Weiss'^ justly argues, that
it is the great fact of sin in the world, and the correlated fact
of a divine plan of salvation, which makes us expect that God
wiU enter huraan history in a special manner in connection with
the coming of Jesus Clirist. FinaUy, it is the distinction be
tween the miracle which is wrought for the purpose of manifest
ing spirit and truth upon the earth, and the simulations of the
kingdom of evil, that underlies the accusation of Christ against
the Pharisees (Matt. :^u. 24-27 and Luke xi. 15-26). They
who wUfuUy ignore this distinction show that they have de
stroyed their susceptibility for divine truth.
We conclude, then, that the general conception of miracles
as held in the Bible has no valid presumption against its own
actualization in history. For it does not assert that a rairacle
in any way violates or overturns, even teraporarUy, the order
or laws of nature, but simply that it is an event so extraordi
nary as to be distinguished from the events belonging to that
order. It asserts positively, that the rairacle is the product of
' divine free-will, and is designed as a sign or token, or erabodi-
ment of divine truth : it is an act of God manifesting himself
as keeping his covenant of salvation. To such a conception —
; although it is confessedly not adjusted by the bibUcal writers
1 Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1864, p. 246. 2 Leben Jesu, I. p. 191 f. .

308 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
to the scientific idea of the world — this idea can make no
valid objection. Nor can we suraraarily reject the testimony
of these writers because they were not possessed of this idea.
The rather should we be justified in discrediting an event
witnessed and testified to as " violating " all their notions of
the order of nature, by an entire academy of modern scientists,
than in rejecting on a priori grounds the rairacles which consti
tute an integral part of the Christian scherae of revelation.
Next to the question of the abstract possibility of the mhacles
of the Bible, the question of their general credibiUty must be
considered. And upon this point there has arisen much discus
sion which has proved Uttle better than useless. The effort has
been made, over and over again, to establish by a discussion of
the laws of evidence the irapossibiUty of proving miracles on
testiraony. But it is only by adraitting in fuU force the pre-
suraptions which come from false scientific and philosophic
notions of the world, and of the course of nature, that this un
possibUity can be reached. And these presumptions are the
very opposite of those which we have shown to be valid in an
examination of evidence for the bibUcal miracles, when looked
at frora a supernaturalistic point of view. So that those who
begin the discussion of the question as one of historic prohaUlitj/
are usually fain to decide it by declaring a scientific ov philo^
Sophie impossibility. Thus Zeller ^ proposes simply to discuss
the possibility of proving miracles by historic testimony. The
question, when thus discussed, becoraes in his opinion one of
conflicting probabilities ; and the critic has to consider whether
the probability of error in the writers, or of the occurrence of
all the things they narrate, is the greater. The conclusion at
which one raust arrive is this : that it is irapossible to prove a
rairacle from merely historical sources, which must themselves
first be shown to be genuine and trustworthy, and which can
never establish their own genuine and trustworthy character
in any other than an historically probable form. Historical
sources can never, then, authenticate events which by their very
nature are opposed to all the results of other concurrent
human testiraony.
But this manner of argument siraply introduces by the back
door in disguise the very presumptions which it has, with pohte-
ness and in deference to the wishes of an opponent, just dis-
1 See Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift, 1861; article, Die historische Kritik und
das Wunder.

CREDIBILITY OF THE TESTIMONY FOR MIRACLES. 309
missed from the front. Tn fact, the question of the credibility
of testimony, in the case of alleged miraculous events as of all
other events, cannot be discussed as an abstract question of
probability.^ In deciding a question of evidence upon improba
ble events,, certain presumptions are necessary, even to the fair
consideration of the question : it is the presumptions, indeed,
which largely make up the question. The probability of mira
cles is itself a complex question which involves many elements ;
the credibility of any narrative of an alleged rairacle is a still
more complex question, and involves all the eleraents of the
foregomg question, and raany other additional elements. Cer
tain sets of prepossessions raake the rairaculous extreraely
probable ; certain others, extremely improbable. Is it proba
ble that Jesus rose from the dead ? Who shall say a word in
answer to the question unless he know who Jesus is, and what
is raeant by his rising frora the dead ? Is it probable that John
and Paul teU the truth in asserting his resurrection? Who
shaU say, unless he know, not only the truth as to the person of
Jesus, but also the truth, in aU its coraplexity, as to the value
of the testimony of John and Paul ? As for us, with our views
of the person of Jesus and of the moral and intellectual char
acter of John, and Paul, the resurrection of the former upon the
testimony of the two latter is incomparably more probable than
scientific investigation is able to render any one of the unusual
past events upon the occurrence of which it relies. In fine,
the question of the probabiUty of miracles, as a matter of testi
mony rebutted by alleged uniform experience, is an erapty and
indeterrainate question. Both parties in the discussion raust
agree, indeed, upon certain elements which may be used to
define the general question yet further , such, for example, as
the comparative rarity of the alleged rairaculous event, the pos
sibUity of error, the influence of reUgious credulity, the impos
sibility of proving false doctrine by miracles, the irapossibiUty
of accounting for a miracle by the mere co-operation of second
causes. By discussing these subordinate questions we do not,
however, possess ourselves of all the elements for deciding the
general question of credibUity: the discussion of certain su-
: perior questions raust enter yet more largely into this general
question of credibUity. Among such superior questions, be-
; sides the presuraptions already considered, are the following :
the reality of divine self-revelation in history ; the probabiUty
1 Compare Venn, Logic of Chance, pp. 445 f. and 457 f.

310 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
that the course of nature will be taken into the service of this
revelation ; the divine mission and ethical and rational charac
teristics of those who are claimed to have wrought miracles; the
nature of the testimony rendered in proof of different miracles;
their relation to the scherae of Christian doctrine and the
development of Christian life; and, indeed, numerous other
simUar questions. Unless we adrait the force of the presump
tions upon either side which result frora the decision of these
prelirainary inquiries, we are utterly unable to say whether
the falsity of the testimony to any particular alleged miracu
lous event, or the reality of that event, is the more probable.
The critic who makes a show of critical candor in order really
to forestall, with the assertions of a bald naturaUsm, the discus
sion of all the evidence, is speaking as a dogmatist, and not as
a faithful critic. Nothing, for instance, can be less scientific
than the determination to discredit that picture of Jesus which
tbe accredited sources of the history present, on the ground
that this picture does not correspond to preconceived notions
of possibUity .1
It would appear that the force of such preliminary inquiries
raust have raade itself felt upon the raind of that author
who gave currency to the view that testimony cannot prove a
miracle. The change in the phraseology of the chfferent edi
tions of Hurae's essay indicates such feeling. When we are
told in 1750, " Upon the whole, then, it appears that no testi
mony for any kind of miracle can ever possibly amount to a
probability, much less to a proof," we are treated to a specu
lative dogma, which is easily refuted for a mind whose pre
possessions are entirely different from th6se of the speaker.
But when we are told in 1767, " Upon the whole, it appears,
then, that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever
amounted to a probability, much less to a proof," we are treat
ed to an opinion upon an historical subject which the author
of the opinion had never exarained, and was, indeed, prevented
by his speculative prepossessions from examining with genmne
candor. It may be said plainly, that Hume's entire discussion
of the subject of rairacles is not creditable to his intellectual
honesty ; while his proposal to subtract one probabiUty from
another, and his final caution, — that, although there may possi
bly be " violations of the usual course of nature," " a miracle
can never be proved, so as to be the foundation of a system ot
1 Compare Weiss, Leben Jesu, I. p. 185 f.

THE CHIEF EVIDENCE FOR MIRACLES. 311
relic'ion," — show how utterly he misconceived both the laws of
evidence, and the nature of the bibUcal religion and the bibli
cal miracles.
The foregoing considerations cannot be expected to convince
those who hold to the a priori impossibUity of miracles, what
ever evidence for them raay be offered; and who base their
position upon scientific and phUosophic presuraptions, or upon
fictitious probabUities as to the nature of history and of huraan
testimony. But they do prepare a mind, which is favorably
disposed to the doctrine of a divine historic self-revelation, for
examining the direct evidence for the biblical rairacles, and for
estimating the effect which miracles have upon the general
doctrine of Sacred Scripture. We present now a brief classified
statement of several of the raost important lines of evidence
to show the general credibUity of the biblical rairacles.
The chief evidence for the miracles of the New Testament,
and, within certain limits, for those of the Old, is the existence
and inherent nature of Christianity itself. We have been told
that miracles furnish the chief obstacle, not only to belief in a
personal God (Weisse), but also to faith in the person and doc
trine of Christ. It has even been proposed that the Church
accept such meagre faith as it can get from the cultured and
scientific opponents of a supernatural religion, and so abjure the
necessity of confidence in the mUaculous.^ And that there is a
certain strong moral perfume which flows off from Christianity,
and which can be scented with delight without embracing its
substance, we do not deny. Far be it from us not to welcome
and praise the benefit which any one may derive from the scent
of this raoral perfurae, although it reach him through the mist
and from afar. But none the less must we insist that the
supernatural contents, inclusive of the rairaculous, belong to
the very essence of Christianity, and can no more be separated
from it than can the principle of life frora the living organism.
One may, indeed, construct a certain soraewhat, which shall
represent to one's raind what this great historic religion would
be, if the raost iraportant facts of its history were disproved ;
and what its doctrine would be, if the historic conception of
the personality and raission of its founder were totally changed.
But this somewhat would not be Christianity as it has existed
in history and in the doctrine of the Church. It would not be
^ See sermon on Law and Miracle, by Eev. D. J. Ferguson, " Scotch Sermons,"
1880.

512 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Christianity as it was announced by Jesus, and understood and
proraulgated by Paul. For the coraplete renunciation of the
rairacles of the Bible, on the ground of their impossibility or
extrerae improbability, involves the acceptance of a totally dif
ferent way of looking at the world, God, the human soul, the
moral law, the rederaption of huraanity, and, indeed, at nearly
all ethical and religious subjects. Nay, more : this different
way concerns the very essence of doctrinal Christianity, and
the life-blood of its life. For instance, the rejection of super
natural acts of divine free-will involves the denial of the doc
trine of regeneration; it confines the spirit of the individual
within the liraits of a purely natural process. It is not as
wholly subject to nature, and cut off frora communion with the
supernatural, that man recognizes himself as a raoral being ; it
is not frora the self-inclusive process of nature that he expects
relief by answer to prayer, or salvation on condition of faith.
The irapossibiUty of constructing a history of the origm of
Christianity or of the life of its Founder, which shaU wholly
leave out the rairaculous eleraents, wiU be raade clear in other
connections. At present, we raay simply assert again the con
clusion of Martensen and Rothe : " The conception of sacred
history is inseparable frora the conception of the miracle." It
is, then, as " wise men " looking out for " beacons," and not as
"fools" terrified by "scarecrows," that we pause before the
consequences of wholly rejecting the miraculous contents of
Christianity. For the act of rejection is simply equivalent to a
surrender of the essential truths of Christianity.^ And, more
over, we affirm that the arguraent against the general denial
of the miraculous contents is as weighty as the proof derived
frora the very nature of the essential truths. Instead, there
fore, of admitting the scornful conclusion of Hume,^ that faith
in the Christian religion " subverts all the principles of the
understanding," we are forced to conclude, rather, that this
faith carries with it those principles which must be taken
account of by the understanding when examining the evidence
for rairacles.
Of the above-raentioned course of argument, one form is
especially cogent and conclusive. The evidence for the mira
cles of Scripture is inseparably and organically connected with
1 See this great truth presented with admirable force and clearness in a T^j'-
trag, published in tract form, by Professor Beyschlag, and styled Ueber die
Bedeutung des Wau'lers in Christenthum. Berlin.
2 At the close to the essay, Of Miracles.

EVIDENCE FROM THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 313
the person of Jesus Christ. His personality is the central rair
acle of Scripture ; his testimony is that of the chief witness ;
his ethical and intuitional trustworthiness is the guaranty of
their reality. It is the personality of Jesus which completely
turns the scale of probabUity in the case of the New-Testament
miracles; for this personality, as the actual reaUzation of an
ideal huraanity, is itself the absolute miracle. It cannot be
explained from the development of the factors which belong to
the regular course of the history of huraanity.^ Once admit
the divine reality of the fact that God has entered into union
with humanity in this personality, and a different class of pre
sumptions with regard to the relations of Christ to nature will
obtain from those which must control our examination of ordi
nary matters of historical evidence. The question of the actual
occurrence of any alleged rairacle which is connected with this
personality wUl then becorae a mixed question of probabilities
derived from the nature of the evidence offered, and from the
conception held regarding the worker of the miracle. Evi
dence which is valid for any historical event is valid for any
miracle wrought by Christ, unless the miracle itself be of such
nature as to conflict with a true conception of Christ.
In the effort to carry into details the truth of a connection
between the evidence for miracles and the personality of Jesus,
we are raet at once by the fact, that the ethical integrity of
this personality is pledged in support of certain of the New-
Testament miracles. This is a fact from the thorough dis
cussion of which unfriendly critics naturally shrink back. Thus
ZeUer 2 wishes to have the clairas of Jesus left entirely out of
the account, on the ground that they were not made by himself
but by his biographers, — the very men by whora also the nar
ratives of his actual miracles were constructed. " They form a
part of that manner of picturing his life which belongs to the
Gospels, and cannot be used in proof of the truthfulness of the
same manner." And the author of " Supernatural Religion " ^
tries entirely to obscure the personaUty of the chief actor in the
stories of the Gospels, by referring to the superstition and ar
dent partisanship and disputatiousness of the narrators of these
stories. But we are anxious first of all to have the inquiries
answered : Did Jesus claira to work rairacles ? and, if he raade
this claim, was he self-deceived as to his own powers, or was he
1 Compare Weiss, Leben Jesu, p. 186 f.
* See Sybel's Historische Zeitschrift, 1864, VIII. p. 112 f. s Vol. I. p. 193 f.

314 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRH'TURE.
a wonder-worker and miracle-monger like one of the supersti
tious and not over-scrupulous rabbis whom the latter critic
takes pains to describe ? Now, it is certain that the claims of
Jesus to be the Supernatural One, and to work miracles, are so
interwoven with his own conception of his own mission, and
with all that we know of his life, as to defy all efforts to sepa
rate the two. Such claims are iraplied in his doctrine concern
ing Mmself, in his conduct, and in his promises to his disciples.
They are not only indirectly put forth in such connections as
might possibly suggest a foisting of unoriginal pretensions into
the narratives: thej'' are also artlessly woven into the very
substance of narratives which are as nearly original as any
that we possess. As Holtzmann ^ has pointed out the truth,
the beginnings of the oldest records of the life of Jesus assume
that the people were attracted to him by an abiding gift of
working rairacles (compare Mark i. 45, ii. 2) , they prove that
Messiah was designedly exercising his Messianic office, and ac
cepting as true that verdict of the people which pronounced
his claim to the office legitimated in part through his miracles
(compare Matt. ix. 33 and Mark ii. 10). If any thing is his
torical in the Gospels, it is, as the same critic asserts and even
Strauss admits, the argument of Jesus with the Pharisees,
Mark iii. 20-30 (corapare Matt. xU. 24-32 , Luke xi. 15 ff.) ;
and yet this argument pledges the moral character of him who
raakes it, to his claim to be a worker of miracles. Moreover, it
is plain from Luke xiii. 32, and Matt. xi. 2 f., that he considered
it his daily work to perforra rairaculous cures.
The connection of such cures, both in his own mind and in
reality, with the supernatural and superhuman personality of
Jesus Christ, regarded as a true and adequate cause, is as plain
ly made out as any thing well can be. It is true, on the one
hand, that the words for these miracles of healing do not of
themselves assert the rairaculous nature of the cure.^ It is also
true that the nature of these cures is most favorable to
attempts at physico-psychological explanations of the causative
agency of Jesus in effecting the cures. To the latter reason
must we attribute the eagerness of those who would deny mira
cles, and yet make a show of saving the moral character ot
Christ and the essential contents of Christianity, to resolve all
the credible narratives of the Gospel miracles into narratives
1 Die Synoptischen Evangelien, Leipzig, 1863, p. 509.
' Such words are depaTrevtiv, a-toieiv, loffSat, xapiitaSai.

THE MIRACULOUS HEALINGS OF CHRIST. 315
of such cures. According to their view of these cases, we
have in the miracles attached to the personaUty of Jesus only
more wonderful instances of that power over the body which
the mind habitually exercises. The Saviour, then, worked mir
acles because he had a great talent, amounting to a unique
genius, in doing that which many others have done and are
constantly doing. But against this view of saving the moraUty
of the worker of rairacles, and accounting for the popular faith
in him, without allowing hira any strictly superhuman power,
the following objections obtain.^ He is represented as curing
manifold cases of such a nature as present insuperable difficul
ties to the art of heaUng, even when its utmost physico-psycho
logical resources are taken into the account. Such cases are the
hopelessly maniacal (Mark v. 1 f., ix. 14 f.), the deaf-mutes
(Mark vii. 31 f.), those born blind (John ix. 1 f.), those leprous
(Luke xvii. 12), the paralytic prostrated upon beds (Matt. ix.
1 f. ; Luke v. 18), those lame or maimed with permanent and
organic changes (Matt. xU. 10 ; John v. 5). He is represented
as heaUng all diseases aUke, at once ; and not as a physician, or
worker of wonders, but as the Messiah of God. It is, there
fore, not the physiological benefit of faith, but an ethical neces
sity, which makes faith connected with these cures.^ The
simple word of Jesus is the only customary means of cure
(Luke vii. 7) : for him to forbid disease (cVm/Ai^o-e tw Trvperw,
Luke iv. 39) is sufficient ; his command restores the sight of
the blind (dvdpXe\pov, Luke xviii. 42). But the word is not
more to be regarded as a second cause, or true means of the
result, than is the spittle or touch of his finger (Mark vii. 32
f., viii. 23), or the wet clay (John ix. 6), or the oU (Mark vi.
13), or the more custoraary grasp frora his hand (compare
Matt. viii. 15, ix. 25). The will of Jesus accompUshes the
effect of cure even upon those at a distance (see Matt. viii. 5 f. ;
Luke vii. 2 f. ; John iv. 46 f.). Indeed, so much is this power
of heaUng regarded as the normal product of his personaUty,
1 Some of these objections to the physico-psychological theory of the miracu
lous healings are given by Bishop Douglas: Criterion, or Rules by which the True
Miracles recorded in the New Testament are distinguished from the Spurious
Miracles of Pagans and Papists. London, 1807. See especially Bender, Wunder
begriff, p. 17 f.
" Unbelief is represented as a hinderance to miraculous cures, but faith as a
help or even pre-requisite (ovk tSuvaro, Mark vi. 5, compare ix. 14 f . ; Matt. xiii.
58, ix. 28, viii. 13; Mark vii. 29; Luke vii. 9, xvii. 5). The faith requisite to work
these cures is a subject of prayer (Mark ix. 29; Matt. xxi. 22; Luke v. 16) it is
faith in God (Mai-k xi. 22; John xi. 23-42).

316 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
that it is represented — in a manner which departs from the
custoraary type of the bibUcal conception — as flowing uncon
sciously forth, or as being extracted frora his person and
garraents by contact.^ All these rairaculous acts of pity are,
however, alike considered as constituting one stream of super
natural influences, which has its unfaiUng spring in the super
natural and superhuman person of our Lord. These acts are
never mere wonders: they are ever intensely spiritual and
religious. And when we mark how the New-Testament con
ception and narratives of the rairaculous attach themselves,
as a perfectly norraal and legitiraate developraent, to the very
roots of the ethical and spiritual being of the divine Redeemer,
we feel how rauch of the entire bulk of the argument for theu
validity is drawn frora the sources of this being.
And when we further note that the proraises and spiritual
coraraunications of this sarae Redeeraer to his messengers form
a guaranty of their derived power to work certain miracles in
his name (see Acts iii. 6), and that the conception of the apos
toUc miracles and miraculous gifts of the apostolic churches
corresponds in its principal elements to the sarae idea as that
which controls the miracles of Jesus ; then we are made aware
how large a portion of the miraculous contents of the New
Testaraent are taken under the protection of his unique per
sonaUty. Having once adraitted that the miraculous heaUngs of Christ
are the natural result of his superhuman power, and therefore
products of the divine free-wiU which is regarded as haring its
seat of power in his person, we are ready to reject the merely
physico-psychological theory of these healings, and yet also to
conceive of them in such a manner as to do no violence to the
course of nature. We find in the divine personality of the
Redeemer the sufficient cause of all such results. But we are
not compeUed to represent the manner of reaching the results
as being without regard to, and as receiving no conditions from,
any of the so-called second or natural causes. We have in the
same personality, raoreover, a sufficient cause for other effects
in the mixed realm of nature and spirit ; although these effects,
still raore than the miraculous cures, fail of explanation by
natural causes. The power of the spirit in Jesus Christ to
work miraculous changes in his own bodily organism, and to
make possible bodily acts and functions which do not belong
1 Compare Mark v. 25 f., vi. 56; Luke vi. 19, viii. 44.

THE POWER OF CHRIST OVER NATURE. 317
to the bodies of meii in their so-called natural condition, is the
expression of his personality: it need therefore occasion no
special difficulty or offence. The observation is true, whether
we apply it to his transfiguration (Mark ix. 2 ; Matt. xvii. 2,
peTepoptfxoOrj ; Luke ix. 29, eiSos tov ¦n-poa-w-irov avrov erepov), OV tO
any one of his appearances after resurrection ,i or, indeed, to
his disappearance from mortal sight (see Acts i. 9). To the
same natural working of this permanent cause raay be referred
his walking on the sea (Mark vi. 48 and parallel passages), or
his escape frora the angry crowd (Luke iv. 30).
In stiU higher degree is the quality of this sarae personality
displayed in the power which Jesus showed over nature, even
when it lay beyond iraraediate connections with his own body
or the bodies of others. This power is certainly iraplied in the
rairaculous stilling of the sea (Mark iv. 39) ; and in stUl higher
degree, approaching if not fully realizing creative energy, in
the rairacles of John ii. 1 f. ; Mark vi. 40-44, viii. 1 f., and par
allel passages. The rairaculous draught of fishes (John xxi. 6)
is, however, probably to be regarded as an act simply of rairac
ulous knowledge. The unwonted phenoraena in the sphere of
nature, — such as are narrated Mark xv. 38 and Matt, xxvii.
51, — which accompaiued the death of Christ, are appropriate
to his mission and personaUty: they are to be referred to the
divine wUl as acting, it matters not whether mediately in the
form of providential coincidence, or by direct voUtion. The cli
max in the exhibition of this wondrous power of the person
of Jesus over nature is reached m his raising the dead to life ;
the three instances recorded in which this power was exercised
being Mark v. 35 f.^ (compare parallel passages), Luke vii.
11 f., and John xi. 1-46.
In the case of the only vision attributed by the New Testa
ment to Jesus (see Mark i. 9 f.), both the subjective irapression
and a certain divinely caused objective ground or occasion of
this impression, are to be distinguished ; the latter of these ele
ments we cannot, however, describe with confidence on account
iMatt. xxvui. 9; (compare Mark xvi. 12, iv Irepa nop* j) ; Luke xxiv. 16, 31,
xxvi. 51, Stearrt air' aiiTtov ; John XX. 19, 26, xxi. 1, E^ai/epuo-ef eavTov.
2 Concerning this miracle the author of " Supernatural Eeligion " is so utterly
uncandid as to assert (I. p. 178) : " The raising of Jairus' daughter has long been
abandoned, as a case of restoration to life, by all critics and theologians except
the few who still persist in ignoring the distinct and positive declaration of Jesus."
This view, as Meyer declares, does not simply contradict the view of the Evangel
ists, but also violates the moral character of Jesus.

318 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of the discrepant modes of narrating the event by the different
Evangelists. Besides this general connection of the miracles of the Gospels
with the personality of Jesus, — a connection which pledges his
moral character for their actual occurrence, and also fully ac
counts for this occurrence by attributing the miracles to his
personality as their sufficient cause, — we may indicate other
subordinate connections. For example, the working of miracles
is closely connected both with the developraent of his conscious
ness of a divine nature and mission, and also with the historic
manifestation of the Messianic office.
The arguraent which has been used by Nitzsch, Ritschl, Dor
ner, and others, to set forth the a priori necessity of " external
revelation," or a manifestation of divine power and grace in the
order of second causes, applies to the inner and outward life of
Christ.^ The necessity for miracles in the progress of God's
kingdom upon earth is much profounder than that indicated by
declarations Uke the following : " And certainly, if it was the
will of God to give a revelation, there are plain and obvious
reasons for asserting that miracles are necessary as the guar
anty and voucher for that revelation." ^ It is true that the doc
trine seeras to be taught, especially in passages of the Old
Testament like Exod. vi. 7 ; Deut. xiii. 1 f . ; Judg. vi. 17 ; 2
Kings XX. 8 f., that supernatural communications of truth must
have supernatural attestation ; but even in the first two of these
passages the truer and profounder connection of the doctrine
and the miracle is not overlooked. We have akeady seen that
the miracles of Scripture are not to be considered as exterior
attestations of revelation so much as integral parts of revelation
itself. The true miracle is a divine self-revelation, a manifesta
tion of God's power and grace, within the sphere of visible
things. It is the true correlate of inspiration and prophecy.
The power to work miracles comes, then, to sustain the closest
possible relation to the great leaders and chief media of revela
tion in Scripture. Miracles are designed and adapted to awaken
within these leaders the consciousness of the fact that God is
with them, and will use them for his gracious purpose of reve
lation ; they are also designed and adapted to call the attention
1 See Dorner, Glaubenslehre, I. p. 578 f.
2 So Mozley, Bampton Lectures, 1865, p. 6 f. ; and compare Butler's Analogy,
Part II. chap. vii. ; Aids to Faith, Essay I. ; J. H. Newman, Two Essays, etc., p -6
1. ; Bishop Atterbury, Sermon on "Miracles the most Proper Way of proving
the Divine Authority of any Eeligion."

THE MIRACLES AND THE MISSION OF CHRIST. 319
of their conteraporaries, and of all who accept the records of
their Uves as weU as the truthfulness of thek doctrine, to the
same fact.
That the miracles wrought by our Lord bore an important
part m the developraent of his own self-consciousness, we cannot
doubt. In the development of aU human self-consciousness the
awakening and growth of a recognition of the power which be
longs to each personaUty is the factor of greatest importance.
The effect of his first rairacle upon our Lord's consciousness of
what he was, and was to accomphsh, must have been incalcula
ble. The influence which all his rairaculous acts had upon the
manifestation and pubUc recognition of his divine nature and
mission may be considered in the four foUowing ways:^ (1) as
expressing to the people his claims to a Messianic mission ;i
(2) as attracting men to his person ; ^ (3) as expressing the
divinest qualities of his personaUty ; (4) as demanding and cul
tivating faith, and so proving a means of grace. That Jesus
distinctly intended to connect his claira to be Messiah with his
claira and power to work rakacles, there can be no doubt ; ^ and
thus in another way does his raoral integrity becorae coraraitted
to the rairacles of the Gospels. That he suffered this connec-
'iiQ-n. of these claims to continue in the minds of the people, com
mits this integrity stiU further to the proof.
Indeed, it raay be affirraed with perfect confidence that the
only tenable conception of the person of Jesus Christ includes
the sufficient general evidence for those miracles which can be
attached historicaUy to hira. Moreover, the utter impossibUity
of rendering any satisfactory Mstoric account, not only of this
person but also of the origin of Christianity, without adraitting
the validity in general of the Gospel rairacles, is a strong argu
ment in their behalf. It is true, as Zeller has claimed, that the
critic should not be compelled to show in detail what was the
real basis of fact or idea underlying the narratives of the mirac
ulous, if only he can make out in general that the miraculous
cannot be admitted in any case as an element of the history.
But the critic who denies rairacles is at least bound to give
us some intelligible and consistent account of the historic per-
1 See Mark x. 47 f., xi. 9 f., xiv. CI, xv. 18, 32 ; Matt. xv. 22, xx. 30, xxi. 9, 15 ;
Luke ix. 18-22, xviii. 38, xix. 38 ; John x. 24r-26, xii. 13.
2 See Mark i. 27, 34, 45, iii. 8, vi. 56, ix. 15 ; Matt. xi. 2, xii. 23, xiv. 2, xvi. 13,
xxviii. 8 ; Luke iv. 37 f., v. 13-15, vi. 17 ; John iii. 2, vii. 26, 31, 40 f ., xi. 32.
5 Compare Matt. ix. 2-7, xi. 1-G ; Luke vii. 18-23 ; John v. 36, x. 25, 37, xi, 4, 5,
42, xiv. 10.

320 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
sonality called Jesus Christ ; and to show iu general how the
narratives of his life could have arisen in the form in which we
have them, without adraitting the reality of their aUeged facts.
Neither of these tlungs, however, has ever been accomphshed
by criticisra. We desire to know : If Jesus was not a person
of pure raorality and divine raission and superhuman character
istics, claiming to work miracles, and actually working them,
then what manner of person was he ? If the expectation that
the Messiah would work miracles was so prevalent and strong
as to account for the fact that the later writers of these stories
concerning him introduced, as a raatter of course, miraculous
eleraents into thera, what was the effect of the same influence
upon Jesus and the men of his generation ? ShaU we say that
Jesus complied with the expectation of thauraaturgic displays,
and was therefore accepted as Messiah ? To say this, however,
involves not only a low estiraate of his morality, but also a
total disregard of the fact that he is represented as deprecating
this expectation, and refusing to comply with it (see Mark
viU. 11 ; Matt. xii. 39 ; Luke xi. 29 ; John vn. 37, 41, 42, 52);
to say nothing of the other fact, that scarcely any of the narra
tives of miracles in the Gospels fail, by thek very form and
flavor, to bear witness against the idea that Jesus ever con
sented to make displays in thauraaturgy. The impossibility of
rendering any true historic account of this historic person,
without admitting into our conception of him the miraculous
eleraents of his life, is a positive arguraent in favor of the
objective validity of those elements.
The same argument obtains with regard to the New-Testa
ment conception of the rairaculous. This conception itself
deraands sorae historic explanation. That it cannot be re
garded as something which was originated later than the his
toric events themselves, is clear from the fact, that, as we have
already seen, the events are in thek original essence regarded
as supernatural. The historic substance of the Gospels is
rairaculous : to such a degree is this true, that, if we attempt
to separate the rairaculous frora the historical, and then regard
the forraer as superiraposed upon the latter, we lose all historic
shape and consistency frora the narratives in general. The
declaration of Weiss ^ is not one whit too strong: "Our evan
gelistic tradition is full of the rairaculous, and no criticism of
the sources is in a condition to exclude the miraculous from
1 Leben Jesu, I. p. 193.

JESUS AS A WORKER OF MIRACLES. 321
this tradition." According to Holtzmann,^ the connection of
the doctrine and miracles of Jesus, and the pre-eminence of his
doctrine, together with the reaUty of his miracles, are under
stood and set forth iu the oldest source (A) of the oldest Evan
gelist (Mark 2). From the ancient apostolic source, the memo
rials of Peter, Weiss finds it impossible to exclude numerous
narratives of miracles in the strictest sense of the word. This
conception, then, dates frora the very first, and raust have an
adequate explanation. Shall the explanation be found in the
self-deceit or imposture of the person with whom the power
of working miracles is connected? Or shall it be found in
the general and vague tendency to believe in the miraculous,
and to consider aU wonderful leaders in religion as workers of
wonders? But this conception is not the kind of product
which adraits of such an origin. The conception of a teacher
who refuses to be considered as a worker of miracles, and yet
clairas the raost stupendous powers to work them ; who exer
cises these powers daily for purposes merely of instruction and
grace, and then refuses to display thera in order to convince
gainsayers ; who is wUling to be accused of iraposture rather
than raake the inost ordinary exhibitions in thauraaturgy, and
yet himself accuses the Pharisees of the most dreadful crime in
refusing to recognize the reality and spkitual exaltation of his
own miraculous deeds, — this conception is not accounted for
by reflecting upon the general and vague tendency of the
human mind toward the mkaculous.
And, moreover, the conception is not to be adequately ex
plained by any raore definite and well-known connections with
sunUar ideas in the history of its own era. It is entirely unUke
the view of a wonder-working Messiah, as that view might
be evolved fi-om rabbinical notions, and from the thauraaturgic
instinct and expectation of the Jews.3 It is unUke the related
view of the Apocrypha. It is not even derivable by natural
development from the Old Testaraent. It has itself, rather, the
power to penetrate and purify by its own nature aU the speci
mens of aUeged rairacles introduced in the New-Testaraent
narratives from those of the Old.* This is true of the lowest
form of the conception, as held by the writers -of the New
^ Die SynoptiSchteh Evangelien, p. 505 f.
2 See i. 38, 39, iii. 14, 15, vi. 2, 7, 12, 13.
' Compare Bender, Wunderbegriff des Neuen Testamentes, pp. 99-123.
' See Luke iv. 25 ff., xvii. 27, 29, 32; -Matt. xii. 40; Acts vii. 30,-36; -and'OOmpiiTB
Josephus, Bell. Jud. Vn. 6, 3.
VOL. L V

322 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Testament, even when it concerns that subject upon which the
likelihood of crass conclusions was greatest. The subject of
demonology is purified from many of its most objectionable
features by the power of the New-Testament conception. The
general abhorrence which the New Testament has for magic
is clearly enough expressed.^ Instead, then, of its being true,
as the author of " Supernatural Religion " coarsely asserts, that
" the Gospel rairacles . . . were substantially mere repetitions
of similar wonders well known araongst the Jews ; " and, as the
same writer even more coarsely hints, that the picture of Jesus
is, so far as its rairaculous eleraents are concerned, only that
of a Jewish conjuror and rabbi, — the very reverse of all this
is true. The difficulty of rendering any satisfactory historic
account of the origin of the New-Testaraent conception of its
own miraculous history, without adraitting certain miraculous
events, is a positive arguraent in favor of the reality of those
events. The general argument given above may be applied in detail
to the narratives of the New Testament. Granted that we can
not justly require of destructive criticism that it shall explam
every part of these narratives without admitting any miracu
lous elements ; nevertheless, it should be required of all historic
criticism to show at least how the more iraportant narratives
originated. In the case of the resurrection of Jesus, it is indeed
irapossible to harmonize all the details of the different accounts,
and so render an accurate and complete description of the
whole event. But the difficulty of accounting for admitted
facts, both of ideal and of historic certainty, without assummg
the one central fact that Jesus did indeed rise, is of all diffi
culties most insurmountable. Even the raost ideal form of the
conception of this resurrection demands the actual fact as, its
true cause. There is a great and obvious cUfference between
the conception which shapes the Gospel narratives, and any
whicli could be framed of a resurrection of Messiah on the basis
of the Books of Wisdom, Enoch, and the Fourth Ezra.^ Nor
is the raere belief of ardent disciples, that they have seen their
departed Master appear from beyond the grave, at all adequate
to give rise to stories of his having been upon the earth in hd'j
for a definite tirae, and of his having then been taken from
1 See, besides the passages already cited which bear upoh this point, Acts
viii. 9, xiii. 6, xvi. 16, xix. 13; 1 Tim. i. 4, iv. 7.
2 See Kostlin, Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1864, p. 219 f.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE EYE-WITNESSES. 323
before their very eyes to be upon the earth no more. The
same difficulty of accounting for the early belief without adrait
ting the principal facts, which belongs in marked degree to
the narrative of the resurrection, belongs in less degree to the
narratives of the New Testament throughout.^ The general
failure to render any adequate account of the person of Christ,
of the evangelistic conception of him and his works, of the
history as a whole and in its separate parts, without accepting
the main fact, that this person was the supernatural One, and
did things corresponding to his supernatural character, is itself
a strong argument for the general credibUity of the New-
Testament rairacles. And this claim is as secure and just as
ever, even after historical errors in details and admixtures of
mythical elements have been shown to exist. Moreover, the
critical arrogance which begins with a boastful defence of the
principle of causation in history, and ends with an utter failure
to account for historical Christianity, merits no a priori prefer
ence with thoughtful minds.
And finally, concerning the nature of the positive evidences
offered by bibUcal revelation in proof of its rairaculous contents,
we consider the direct testiraony of conteraporaries and eye
witnesses. It is important to notice here, what will concern
our discussion more particularly at another point, that we can
ourselves have only raediate anci indirect testiraony. The ques
tion, how much of the record of miracles has been received
substantially at first hand, is a question for Biblical Introduc
tion and BibUcal Criticism to determine. For few of the Old-
Testament narratives of rakacles corae to us from eye-witnesses ;
and the amount of evidence which the New Testament furnishes
us for its miracles, substantially at first hand, depends upon the
authorship and manner of the composition of its books. These
questions of authorship and coraposition wiU be considered
with their appropriate critical apparatus, and in their due place.
Some of the more prominent considerations, which belong to the
general inquiry as to the value of the bibUcal evidence for its
mkaculous contents, vrill suffice iu this connection.
Certain common narratives of miracles, and groups of such
narratives, in the Synoptic Gospels, furnish the evidence of
contemporaries and eye-witnesses to the general fact that Jesus
Christ was weU known to have accomplished in the physical
1 Compare Holtzmann, Ibid., chap, v.; and Steinmeyer, Die Wunderthaten des
Herrn, ^lassim.

324 THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCRIPTURE,
realm effects of an extraordinary character. Thus far we have
credible and unshaken testimony. Concerning the interpreta
tion given by these witnesses to the facts witnessed, each critic
will, of course, accord such credence as belongs to the presump
tions with which he approaches the examination of the evi
dence. The presumptions by which our criticism, as well as
our faith, is compelled to abide, if we adopt a correct view of
revelation in general and of the person of Christ in particular,
are precisely those which favor the apostolic interpretation.
The modern criticism of the Synoptic Gospels has not, then,
destroyed their testimony as that of contemporaries and eye
witnesses to the miracles of Christ. It has, however, greatly
modified our conceptions of the nature of this testimony. How
greatly the ground has shifted, and how largely changed are the
critical difficulties belonging to the subject, we may judge by
contrasting the present conflicting points of view with that
maintained by Bishop Douglas in 1807: "It would be ex
treraely irapertinent in rae to enter upon a proof that the books,
in which we have an account of the miracles of Jesus, are as
old as the tirae they claira to." And yet none of the subse
quent changes of view, necessitated or favored by modern criti
cism, prevent us frora raaintaining the assertion admitted in
1866 by Keira : ^ " The picture of Jesus, the worker of miracles,
as it is given in its coraraon features by the Evangelists, and so
standing in strong contrast with the picture of John Baptist
(compare John x. 41), belongs to the first believers in Christ,
and is no invention." This picture has, then, the meaning and
force of a concurrent testimony from many eye-witnesses.
That the testiraony concerns, for the most part, only one of the
two classes of miracles distinguished by Keim, Holtzmann, and
Weiszacker, — viz., the miraculous cures of our Lord, — ism-
deed true. This fact is accounted for by the other undoubted
fact, that raost of his rairacles belonged to this class naturally,
and in accordance with his divine niission. But that the most
ancient testimony is not confined to this class of miracles, we
may cite in proof, the exaraples of Mark iv. 35-41 ; Matt. vui.
23-27; Luke viu. 22-25, and Mark v. 21-43; Matt. ix. 18-26;
Luke viU. 40-66 ; and especially of Mark vi. 30-44; Matt. xiv.
13-21 ; Luke ix. 10-17. To the same most ancient group of
narratives belongs also the miracle wrought by God in the
resurrection of Jesus.
I See Der geschichtliche Christus, Zurich I860, p. 121 ''•

THE APOSTOLIC WITNESS TO MIRACLES. 325
We have also in the First Gospel the witness of the Apostle
Matthew. That this witness is not given in the manner for
merly supposed, — that the present Gospel is neither dkectly
from the apostle's hand, nor a mere translation of a work of his
hand, — criticisra has abundantly established. But the sarae
criticisra is still bound to find in the present Gospel such signs
and fruits of the work of this apostle as commit certain por
tions of its miraculous contents to the care of an eye-witness.
Thus HUgenfeld — whose declaration, "That an eye-witness
should have told the history of Jesus without rairacles, would
be, considering the extent of the credence given to rairacles in
that tirae, far raore rairaculous than the miracle itself," has
been used to discredit the Gospel testimony for the rakacles —
has himself referred considerable contents ^ of the present Gos
pel (including ix. 32-34, x. 1, xi. 5, xii. 24) to the Apostle
Matthew. But this reference commits not only the trustworthi
ness of Matthew, but of Christ hiraself, to these mkaculous
contents. And Holtzmann,^ while assigning to Matthew the
one source of the present Gospel (viz.. A) which contained only
discourses of Jesus, nevertheless asserts that these discourses
theraselves were either dkectly induced by the miracles, or at
any rate recognize in "the most pronounced manner " the rair
aculous power of the speaker. The witness of the Fourth Gos
pel can, of course, be cited as immediate and direct, only upon
the assumption that it is to be ascribed to the Apostle John.
This assumption is originally based for the believer of to-day
upon the claims of the book itself, is still to be firmly held, and
held in the expectation that criticism will raore and more con
firm its validity. That the author of Revelation, whora the
same criticism which denies the Johannean authorship of the
Gospel is raost ready to identify with the Apostle John, believed
with full faith in miracles, there is little reason indeed to doubt
(see xiii. 13, xix. 20). The school of Baur has always been
only too eager to raake out that this Book of Revelation is the
only genuine writing of the Apostle John, and even of the
entire New Testaraent.^ In fine, that double-dealing which
accounts for the adraitted testiraony of eye-witnesses by the
superstition of the age and their own large ignorance and easy
credulity, and then accounts for the record of the testiraony by
1 Namely, Matt. iii. 13-iv. 11, viii. 1^, viii. 14-ix. 34, xv. 21-29, xvii. 1-27, xviii.
1-10 and 16-20, xx. 29-34, xxi. 17-22. See Evangelien, pp. 106 ff., 115.
2 Die Synoptischen Evangelien, p. 504.
» See Hertwig, Tabellen zum N. T., Berlin, 1872, p. 82.

326 TIIE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
denying that it is even indirectly frora eye-witnesses, and by
asserting that it must have been accumulated by those who had
little or no knowledge of the facts, evinces its own need of
trustworthy historical resources.
As the contemporary witness whose testimony is, according
to Keim,i entitled to the first rank, we raay turn with confi
dence to the Apostle Paul. And this testiraony may be taken
as it is found in his most undisputed writings. There can be
no doubt that this apostle believed in the continuance of the
rairaculous power which Jesus had possessed. He even re
garded the possession of this power as a requisite of the apostle
ship and as a distribution of divine charisms to the Church
(compare 1 Cor. xU. 9, 28-30 ; 2 Cor. xU. 12; Rom. xv. 18 f.);
although, as we see from 1 Cor. i. 22 f., he would not make the
gospel depend for success upon gratifying a desire to see won
ders worked. That Paul meant to speak of supernatural deeds
in 1 Cor. xii., Zeller himself admits. But this being admitted,
we have not dismissed the testimony of Paul by asserting that
he was peculiarly well fitted to be deceived, and moreover had
never himself seen the rairaculous works of our Lord. For
the clairas of Paul are such as to deraand confidence in his vera
city; otherwise we must raake the odious assumption that he
was corapletely lacking in moral integrity. For Paul, unlike
Augustine and others of the better witnesses to the ecclesias
tical miracles, clairas to be hiraself empowered by tbe Spirit of
Christ to accomplish these supernatural deeds. And, moreover,
how does it happen, that without any trustworthy knowledge
of facts he has given to us (1 Cor. xv.) raore instances of the
appearance of Jesus Christ as the Risen One than all the Evan
gelists taken together ? One would suppose that by the time
of his writing, the principal circle of rayths, gained by repeating
stories of the supposititious appearance of Jesus, would have
taken sorae definite shape, and that we should discover else
where in the records traces of these new wonders narrated by
Paul. Has he, then, wholly invented these new instances of the
appearance of the risen Jesus by his own fertile imagination?
And, besides all these considerations, we may point to the fact
that no forra of the so-called " vision-hypothesis " has made
intelligible Paul's appeal (1 Cor. xv. 6) to the more than five
hundred witnesses; unless we admit that they were indeed
eye-witnesses of bodily appearances of our Lord after his death.
1 Der geschichtliche Christus, p. 131 f.

THE APOSTOLIC WITNESS TO MIRACLES. 327
It is true, that at various times in history considerable numbers
of people have given their united testimony to having witnessed
portentous phenomena, the occurrence even of which we do not
hesitate to deny. But neither the conjectural basis nor the
direct evidence of any such visions in the early Christian
Church can be established. When Strauss is asked for the
proof, that, in direct contradiction to the narratives, there
existed among the disciples immediately after the death of their
Lord any such expectation as could occasion a story of his ris
ing from the dead, he is fain to say with a sneer that we can
know no more of " the cooling-off of the early Christian con
sciousness " than of that of the planets.^ With the exception
of the vision alluded to, 1 Cor. xv. 8, there exists in the New-
Testament history no hint of any such glimpse of Jesus Christ
after death. The visions of Peter, of the dying Stephen, and of
Paul himself (2 Cor. xu. 1), are of an entirely different order.
And the difficulty wliich the claim of Paul, that he had hiraself
seen the Lord after his ascension, seems to have found in gain
ing the acceptance of a portion of the early Church, shows how
ill-suited thek whole experience and temper were to supposi
titious and ecstatic visions. The testimony of Paul, and his
appeal to the five hundred witnesses, raake it siraply irapossible
to account for accredited historical facts by any so-called
vision-hypothesis. In brief, we raay confidently affirm, that none of the results
arrived at by the so-called destructive criticism have raade any
less certain the fact that the first disciples — the Apostles
Matthew, Paul, and John included — believed themselves to
be credible eye-witnesses of miracles, both of those wrought
by Jesus and of those wrought by theraselves in his narae.
From this indestructible centre of Gospel history raay we
proceed to construct the historical evidence for the miracles of
the New Testament, and in a measure for those of the Old.
This work of construction is not, however, a pure work of faith
and of the assumptions of faith. The work does indeed involve
in inextricable folds raany truths concerning the person of
Christ, the nature of revelation, the abiding characteristics and
claims of Christianity : it is not, then, in all respects a pure
work of criticism. We cannot apply the canons of criticism to
the entire miraculous contents of both Testaraents, without
1 Compare Keimi Ibid., p. 139, note; and Strauss, Die Halben und die Ganzen,
p. 601

328 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
regard to the influence of dogmatic considerations. But, on
the other hand, we cannot assume to exclude criticism from
any of these contents. Even the narratives of the miracles of
our Lord appear to criticisra of different degrees of validity,
according to the purity and origin aUty of the sources in which
they appear.i As the whole course and temper of the prerious
argument must have raade apparent, we cannot assume that the
mere presence of a narrative of rakaculous events, in either one
of the Testaraents, is a sufficient guaranty of the events them
selves. For the truths of revelation and the miracles of Scrip
ture we raay claim, not simply that the former are proved by
the latter, nor even siraply that each is proved by the other,
and that they, to a large extent, stand or fall together : we may
rather claim, that it is a distinctive element of a veritable and
trustworthy biblical rairacle to be in sorae way an integrant
part of revelation ; and, conversely, that the biblical idea of
revelation includes, as a necessary part, the miracle proper.
But there is a very plain distinction — a distinction which is,
indeed, becoming more plain and iraportant with every new
step of our whole investigation — between revelation and the
record of revelation. There is just as plain a distinction be
tween a miracle and a record of a miracle. The miracle is by
its very nature a supernatural event; the record is presump
tively only an ordinary event. The record cannot of itself give
an unfaiUng guaranty to the miracle it records, without bemg
itself a kind of universal mkacle. If the Bible, as a record of
rairaculous events, were such a rairacle, it could be proved such
only after a thorough criticisra of the historic testimony ; and
of such testiraony there is none to exaraine beyond the very
claims and phenoraena which the induction of the doctrine of
Sacred Scripture must undertake. The miracle of infallible
inspiration in writing narratives of miracles cannot guarantee
the miracles theraselves. Even should the Scriptures assume
to withdraw all their narratives of rairacles from detaUed exam
ination, and authenticate thera in one body by the simple fact
that the narratives are in Sacred Scripture, they could not pos
sibly raake good their assumption. For that assumption could
never rest on so good evidence as belongs to the miracles ot
revelation in general. It is revelation, then, and the connec
tions and influences of revelation, which guarantee the miracles
that constitute a part of it ; the record, even though it be con-
1 See Weiss, Leben Jesu, I. p. 133.

CRITERIA OF THE RECORDS OF MIRACLES. 329
tained iu Sacred Scripture, does not of itself give the guaranty
it only seeks. We must, therefore, conclude — to use the words
of Dorner 1 — that "the historico-critical investigation of the
trustworthiness of the individual accounts of miracles is clearly
to be distinguished from the dogmatic question whether raka
cles are possible, and whether Christ possessed the power of
working them."
It is this "historico-critical investigation of the trustwor
thiness of the individual accounts of miracles" which more
definitely fixes the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, in so far as it
is dependent upon the miraculous contents of the Bible. And
for this investigation we propose the foUowing criteria, by
which the relative value and trustworthiness of the individual
accounts raay be estiraated, and the right understanding of the
real nature of the events they record raay be attained : (1) the
closeness of organic connection with the central truths of reve
lation ; (2) the purity of the conception of the rairaculous, as
evinced by comparison with the genuine and permanent idea of
a miracle ; (3) the amount and kind of evidence, and especially
its freedom from any manifest admixtures of myth or popular
tradition; (4) the correspondence with, or divergence from,
the analogies which reveal the methods of the divine wiU in the
ordinary course of nature.
In discussing the evidence for certain of the Gospel raira
cles, the influence of dograatic considerations is confessedly,
and with justice, exceedingly strong. For these rairacles are
integrant parts of Christianity itself. It is superfluous to dis
cuss, what the religion of Christ would be without the miracu
lous events of his incarnation and resurrection and constant
supernatural and superhuman relations to nature and to
humanity. In historical and dograatic Christianity these super
natural factors are indispensable elements. We do not as yet
feel ourselves either corapeUed or frightened into the effort to
discover whether other tenable positions will reraain wheii
once the Church shaU have been dislodged from these ancient
strongholds of faith. But it certainly cannot be claimed that
all the alleged rairacles of both Testaraents hold the sarae close
organic relations either to Christianity or to revelation in gen
eral. With certain miraculous events our confidence in the
raoral integrity and divine raission of Jesus Christ is, as we
have already seen, inextricably interwoven. Certain other mir-
1 Glaubenslehre, I. p. SM; compare Rothe, Zur Dogmatik, p. 84 f.

S30 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
aculous events of the Old Testament seem raost intimately con
nected with the progress of divine revelation in Israel. We
cannot fail also to note how few miracles appear anywhere in
Scripture that can possibly be regarded as sporadic wonders
which raight be rejected on the very ground of their lack of
connection with the systera of scriptural truth. On the other
hand, nothing but the falsest and raost dangerous conception of
the nature of Sacred Scripture can raake the believer willinw to
risk all the miracles alike by binding thera in a common bun
dle with one doctrine of the infallibUity of their record. The
validity of the stories of wonders in the lives of Samson, and of
that swarm of prophets which surrounded Elijah and Ehsha,
cannot be made to test the validity of the Gospel narratives
of Christ's divine works. It is this consideration of organic
connection which enables us in large measure to determine the
epideictic value of the mkacle. This value is in direct pro
portion to the closeness of the organic connection which exists
between each miracle and the truths of revelation. If such
value is established at aU by appropriate evidence, it remains
perpetual ; rairacles which are in the relation of organic con
nection with the truths of revelation as much display and
evince those truths to-day as they have ever done. But mira
cles which lack this relation lose by age whatever evidential
value they may seera to have had to those who first witnessed
thera. And if we raay raake a distinction, which seems to be
needed, between the epideictic value and the evidential force
of any alleged rairaculous event, we raay say, the former is
tested by its organic relations to truth, and, once established, is
enduring : the latter is a vanishing quantity, even if it be at
first of large apparent force.^
I The distinction of Aquinas between miracles " quae sunt ad fidei confirma-
tionem " and those " de quibus ipsa est fides " (compare 2 Tim. ii. 8; Bom. i. 3) is,
indeed, to be affirmed; but the question how far the former can have any perma
nent evidential force without acquiring close connections of faith with the latter
is one about which theological opinion has diverged widely. (Compare Stein
meyer, Die Wunderthaten des Herrn, p. 22 f.) Buddeus held, that not only the
truth of the Christian religion, but even the existence of Deity, could be indisputa
bly demonstrated by the miracle. But, according to Gerhard, " per miracula non
possunt probari oracula: " the miracles he likens to the seals of a letter, which
when torn away prove nothing. " Praedicatio per miracula confirmatur, miraon-
la autem per praedicationem " (Theophylact). Eothe, who will not go with
Schleiermacher, and say that the miracles of Christ are perfectly superfluous for
our faith (see Der Christliche Glaube, I. pp. 106 ff. and II. p. 236 f.), nevertheless
rejects the apologetic value of the miracle. Others go so far as Weisse, and de
clare that a miracle, if witnessed by their own eyes, would have no evidential force ,
and still others continue to strive in vain to impart such force to all the mirac.ea

GROWTH OF THE IDEA OF THE MIRACLE. 331
Those miracles of Scripture, other things being equal, are
best attested which conform most closely to that pure concep
tion of the rairaculous whicli is itself, in its characteristics and
ill its growth, one of the important elements in proof of the
inspiration of Scripture. The inner miracle of inspiration, and
the outward form of revelation, the miracle proper, act and re-act
in evidence each upon the other. But we have already seen,^
that the conception of prophetic inspiration and of the nature
of prophecy underwent a process of purifying, which separated
it raore and more widely from the heathen mantic of antiquity.
The same process is apparent in the biblical conception of the
miracle proper. The wonders wrought by Moses are avowedly
like those wrought by the Egyptian magicians ; they are mani
festly unlike those wrought by Christ. Frora all the analogies
involved in the case, we have nothing else to expect than that
such a change in certain unessential elements of the conception
of miracles should result from the general changes in religious
ideas wrought by the process of divine self-revelation. The
New-Testament conception, as it attaches itself to the personal
ity of Jesus Christ, is as truly higher and purer than the con
ception of raany of the wonders wrought by prophets in the
Old Testament, as the law of the Gospel is higher and purer
than the Mosaic Torah. Especially difficult do we find the
case when the ascription of lying rakacles and wonders is made
to false divinities, which are thus represented as having author
ity over the forces of nature. Nor can it be denied that this
conception invites a stricter scrutiny of the probable origin
and nature of narratives involving the conception (see Exod. vii.
11 f., 22 f., viU. 7, ix. 11 ; compare Deut. xiU. 1-3). There is
undoubted force, moreover, in the assertion of Schultz,^ who
makes the apparent extravagances of the Book of Daniel, and
of some of the Apocrypha, depend upon the general change
undergone in the conception of God and his relations to his
kingdora. Nor can we deny the declaration of the sarae author
to the effect, that raany narratives of the Old Testaraent — such
as those which place the rairaculous strength of Sarason in his
unshorn hair (Judg. xvi. 16 f.), raake the mantie of the prophet
divide the waters, whether used by hiraself (2 Kings ii. 8) or
by another (14), heal the waters with salt (U. 20), make the
of the Bible even when considered apart from their closeness of organic relatioii
to truths accepted on other grounds.
^ Part I., chap. iv.
^ See Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 786, for confirmatory passages. J

332 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
irou swim by casting a stick into the water (vi. 5 f.), and render
the poisonous pottage innoxious by pouring in raeal (iv. 40 f.)
— make decidedly the impression of thauraaturgic displays.
We have, however, to reraeraber that sorae of the above-men
tioned narratives are intiraately connected with the biblical
doctrine of unseen spkitual agencies; and that this doctrine,
in purified and raodified forra, is apparently maintained in the
teachings of the New Testaraent, and even in the declarations
and conduct of Christ. In this connection, the healing of the
diseases attributed to deraoniacal possession particularly de
mands attention. These rakacles of Christ, then, and to some
extent also certain rairacles of the Old Testaraent, receive help
for their acceptance and understanding frora the first of our
four criteria : that is to say, they have acquked certain connec
tions with biblical truth which serve to confiira them, and to
place them in their right relations to other contents of revela
tion. The sarae reraark holds true with respect to rakacles like
those of Matt. xiv. 36 (Mark v. 25 f.) ; Luke vi. 19; Acts v.
15, xix. 11 f. Representations which are so much Uke the
promiscuous curing of certain kinds of disorders by relics, or
by articles of clothing frora the persons of those supposed to
possess this peculiar virtue, undoubtedly savor of a different
and lower conception of miracles. They lose rauch of the
strength of arguraent which enforces raost of the New-Testa
raent narratives of rairacles by the supreme and unique beauty
of that very conception which they involve. They also lose
much through the suspicion that the narratives themselves could
not have originated otherwise than in mere popular expecta
tion that cures would be wrought in this manner, and in the
ordinary experience that such expectation in many cases actu
ally works the expected cures. If, however, we receive that
doctrine of the person of Christ, and that picture of the apos
tolic age, which alone will account for the facts of Christianity,
these sweeping declarations of miraculous effects flowing from
Jesus and his disciples receive a certain dograatic support. It
cannot be denied, on the one hand, that these effects are possi
ble ; nor, on the other hand, that they fall short of the most
conclusive evidence from the various sources. In general, we
may claira for the rairacles of the New Testaraent, that they
evidence their own truth in the light of the New-Testament
conception. This conception is a proof of the reality of the
events which correspond to it.

DEGREES OF TIIE EVIDENCE FOR MIRACLES. 333
Different narratives of miraculous events, as given in the
Bible, present wholly different claims to acceptance on the
ground of the amount and kind of direct evidence involved
in the narratives. In certain cases we have evidence which is
substantially at first hand, is corroborated by many trustworthy
witnesses, and concerns facts of which the witnesses were most
capable of giving convincing testimony. Such are those mira
cles of our Lord which have the concurrent testimony of two or
more Evangelists, and which therefore belonged to the narra
tives of his life raost frequently testified to by his conteraporary
disciples. Such is also the rakacle of his resurrection. Other
alleged narratives of rairacles corae to us frora the diraraest and
remotest antiquity, and are, moreover, raanifestly the records
of popular beliefs, or current stories which had originated and
maintained theraselves in changing forra long before they were
recorded in Scripture. Of sorae of thera it must be said, that
we can only conjecture what historic fact lay at the base of the
original narrative. The utter inadequacy of any combination
of theories of rayths, legends, and popular stories, to account for
the alleged supernatural origin of Christianity, is an assumption
of faith, and is raore and raore becoraing a verdict of criticisra.
Such theories are also far frora being able to account for the
miraculous contents of the Old Testament. Nor need we resort
to the less radical conclusions of Keim, and suppose certain
narratives of rakacles, like that of the deraoniac swine, to have
originated wholly in popular fable, and others to have grown
up from sorae gerra of a saying, or figure of speech, by repeti
tion from raouth to raouth and Gospel to Gospel.^ But, on the
other hand, certain narratives of wonders in portions of the Old
Testament have originated in such a way as to raake it impossi
ble to derive from them any direct evidence for thek content
of mkacles. For example : on being told (Judg. xv. 19) that
Elohim clave a hollow place at Lechi (or split a tooth in the
jaw: so Luther), and thus opened a miraculous fountain for
the refreshment of Sarason when he was weary with the slaugh
ter of his eneraies, we are far less certain as to what historical
fact underlay this stateraent than we are that the stateraent
itself did not originate in any first-hand testiraony to such a
miraculous fact.
' Thus the history narrated Matt. iv. 18 and the parable xiii. 47 f . might, Keim
supposes, have given rise to the narrative of the miracle L^ike v. 4 f . ; and the
parable of Luke xiii. 6 f., to the miracle gf Matt. xxi. 19.

334 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRE© SCRIPTURE.
We have already seen, that the so-called laws of nature can
be used, neither as an idea nor as a congeries of associated sci
entific facts, to discredit the rairacles of Scripture ; and, further
more, that the validity which these rairacles possess as elements
and signs of revelation is not dependent upon thek being riola-
tions or suspensions of those laws. It is true, however, that
the entire course of nature furnishes certain analogies in the
light of which we raust exaraine each alleged miracle. Inas
much as the very idea of the rairacle requires that there shall
be both a course of nature to whose events it may stand in
contrast, and also certain natural conditions which Umit it as
an event happening in the course of nature ; the substances,
laws, and forces which form the complex of this course must he
taken into the account of every rairacle. The mkacle has not
its origin in second causes : it must be referred for its causation
to the divine will. But it cannot be referred to the divme
will without taking the second causes into the account. We
affirra with the utmost confidence, that God wUl not repeatedly
overturn the physical universe in order to reveal his power;
and in affirming this conviction we are only viewing the divine
self-revelation in the light of its own idea. Moreover, the
biblical narratives in many instances decidedly invite the at
terapt to interpret thera by analogies taken from so-caUed nat
ural events. We have seen that the Bible makes no sharp
distinction between such events as we might possibly account
for wholly by second causes, and such others as we could not
thus account for: in bibUcal language, a miracle is an event
which is looked upon as extraordinary, is referred to the dirine
will, and connected teleologically with the divine spiritual king
dom. The biblical usage favors, then, the familiar distinction
between the relative miracle and the miracle proper. Some of
its rairaculous events are to be conceived of as divinely arranged
coincidences of nature and the spkitual kingdom.^ The super
natural element in such events consists in this, that the divme
wUl operates to co-ordinate the second causes for marked ethi
cal purposes ; the forces of nature are providentially brought
into a particular conjunction, perhaps in greatly exaggerated
degree, and with a more manifest tendency to further the inter
ests of God's kingdom. These extraordinary natural phenomena
thus serve to make the divine will known, and are justly referred
to it as the element which religion necessarily recognizes m
1 Dorner, Glaubenslehre, I. p. 606.

INSTANCES OF RELATIVE MIRACLES. 335
them. In this way we may render an account of the events
which an historical criticism of the narrative of the plagues of
Egypt confirms as accepted facts. On the one hand, we cannot
remain true, not only to the spkit and general outUnes of this
narrative of divine deliverance (see Exod. vi. 6 f., vii.-xii.), but
also to that view of the whole transaction which is woven into
the very thought and life of the deUvered nation (compare Ps.
IxxvUi. 43, evi. 21 f.), and yet regard the result as due to " the
most extraordinary exertions and most noble activities " of the
people themselves in their struggle for freedora (so Ewald).
On the other hand, we cannot deny the very plain connection
of all these so-caUed rairacles with the natural conditions and
events of ordinary life in Egypt. The people were not, in any
sense of the words, their own deliverers : they were led out as
a horde of cowardly and abject slaves, by a leader divinely ap
pointed and equipped for the purpose. Ezekiel (xvi. 3 f.) per
tinently corapares thera to a new-born infant cast out to perish
in its own blood. It is the historical fact, that their deUverance
was accomplished by divine coincidences, which underlies the
characteristic descriptions of a contest over them between
Jehovah and the heathen divinities and worldly power of
Egypt.i And yet even the succession of the wonders which
wrought their deUverance is connected, as Eichhorn was the
first to show, with the natural progress of the Egyptian year
from the overflow of the NUe in Jmie to the following spring.
Considerations Uke those raentioned above must affect our
judgment of many of the visions of the Bible. To give thera,
so far as is possible, an explanation in the analogies of the ordi
nary and law-abiding operations of body and mind, does not
necessarily prejudice the existence also of a supernatural ele
ment. That God can act immediately upon the huraan body
and soul to produce irapressions which shall serve the purposes
of revelation, is not to be denied. That he does also serve the
same purposes by co-ordinating the second causes according to
the laws of body and raind, there is as little reason to deny.
Thus the visions of Acts viii. 26, ix. 10, xviu. 9, are not so to be
interpreted as to resolve all the phenomena into myths which
were caused as the reflex of mental impressions and eraotions.
Neither are we to reject the explanation which raay be derived
from analogous physico-psychological phenomena, — an explana-
1 Compare Exod. xii. 13, xv. 11, xviii. 11 ; Num. xxiii. 4 ; Ps. Ixxviii. 12, evi.
7 1; cxiv.

336 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tion which is as clearly suggested in the cases of Acts x., xvi.
9, xxii. 17, xxiii. 11, xxvii. 23, as it is inadequate in the cases
of Acts V. 19, xii. 7, and xvi. 25 f. The analogies derived from
the same class of physico-psychological laws are worthy or
unworthy to be brought into connection vrith the mkaculous
cures of our Lord, according to the manner in which we make
use of them. To explain these cures by any known or con
ceivable combination of the second causes, which is possible to
human nature, we have found to be wholly inadmissible. But
that the natural supremacy of mind over body, and the ordinary
relations of the divine mind to nature, and the constitutional
subordination of all spirits to the spirit of purity, furnish analo
gies in the light of which .we may consider these mkacles, there
is abundant reason to maintain. The very idea of the miracle
introduces the necessary element of divine free-will, and thus
raakes the event not wholly explicable by second causes ; but the
fact that each miracle is an event in nature, also makes possible
certain partial explanations of it as related to ordinary events.
And that the difficulties interposed by a consideration of the
course of nature may become insurmountable by any given or
even conceivable amount of testimony in history, we are forced
to assert by the nature of the case. No event which overthrows
its own logical foundations can be established by tradition or
by written records. It is for this reason, that those deny all
miracles who can conceive of the world only as a self-contained
whole, rigidly excluding every form of the supernatural. But
even for the mind which most heartUy accepts all the great
scriptural ideas of revelation, there are supposable cases where
the testimony of Scripture itself could only be looked upon as
in apparently hopeless contradiction with the necessary ideas
of revelation as derived frora the course of nature.
The bearing of this fourth class of considerations may be
Ulustrated in the case of the narrative of Josh. x. 12 f. ; although
in this case, as elsewhere, the foregoing three criteria must also
be taken into the account. What irapresses us with regard to
this alleged rairacle of Josh. x. 12 f. is, then : (a) the stupen
dous character of the miracle itself; (b) the uncertain character
of the historical evidence ; (o) the apparent lack of due moral
motive and of organic connection with the truths and facts ot
Scripture.^ All attempts to depreciate the plain meaning of
I other instances, in which Jehovah is conceived of as punishing the enemies ,
of Israel with hail-stones, are found Exod. ix. lO, 2o ; Job xxxviii. 22, 23 ; Is*

THE MIRACLE FROM THE BOOK OF JASHER. 337
the narrative, and thus relieve it of this stupendous character,
are rebuked by the integrity of devout criticism. The coramand
of Joshua, Be sUent ! or. Stand stUl I (d'i^), and the correspond
ing statement, the sun was silent, or stood stUl (Dl!l), in the
midst of heaven, and did not haste to go down for a day long, —
are quite incompatible with any lengthening, by an hour or
two, of the usual twilight.^ That the author of Joshua under
stood his source of information to speak of a miraculous arrest
of the sun and raoon, — whicli are ordinarUy seen raoving across
the heavens and "hasting" to their going down, — in mid-
heavens, and for a time equal to that from sunrise to sunset, we
have no right to deny. And that he narrated a fact, until the
rise of the Copernican theory of the solar system there was no
sufficient reason to question. But since that tirae various ex
planations of so difficult an assertion have been deemed neces
sary. Araong thera we need only note the following: The
author spoke of a rairaculous retardation of the earth's motion
(Lilienthal, Mosheim, and others) ; or of an extraordinary re
fraction of light (Grotius, Clericus, Dathe) ; or of lightning
following the haU (J. D. Michaelis) ; or of a great shower of
meteors, and ah accompanying disturbance of the earth's course
(Volck in Herzog and Plitt). But all such explanations con
tradict the historical accuracy of the narrative without at all
accounting for the alleged miracle. More decidedly reprehen
sible stiU is the subterfuge of Keil,^ who supposes that the day
was subjectively lengthened, in that Joshua and the Israelites
were so busy kUling their eneraies, and so without accurate
timepieces, that the work of this day seemed Uke the work of
two days without rairaculous aid. We have also to consider
that the historical ground of the narrative is very insecure.^
The picturesqueness of the scene shows, indeed, that a descrip
tion of this battle had been left on record by an eye-witness.*
But the "song praising the great deeds of that day " (Keil), and
XXX. 30, xxxii. 19 ; Ezek. xiii. 11. The standing-still of the sun, however, finds
its closest analogy in the Greek classics, where Agamemnon prays that Zeus will
not let the sun go down until he has destroyed Priam's dwelling (Iliad, II. 413 f .) :
similar events are narrated in the Odyssey as occurring in the behalf of Ulysses
(see xxiii. 241 f., and compare Iliad, xviii. 239 f.).
1 The author of Sirach lengthens the time so as to make two full days out<Jt
one (xlvi. 4) ; but Josephus softens the narrative into a lengthening of the day
(Ant. V. 1, 17.) 5 s J'
2 Commentary, in loco. To this remarkable explanation Keil adds the quasi-
scientific one, that. If we must accept the narrative literally, still all the move
ments of the heavenly bodies are merely phenomenal.
» Compare Bleek, Einl., p. 130. i So Ewald, iiistory of Israel, II, 'p. 250 f.
VOL. L V

838 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
contained in the Book of Jasher, — a work apparently not com
pleted until after the tirae of David (corapare 2 Sam. i. 18),—
furnished the basis for this representation of the Book of Joshua;
and the representation itself seems to have been gained by mis
understanding the figurative speech of poetry as though it were
a narrative of veritable history. We find ourselves, then, com
pelled to take the following position. The author of the Book
of Joshua, in taking his account from the ancient poetic source
of the Book of Jasher, raisinterpreted its war-song as the state
ment of fact. Of the magnitude of the physical difiiculties
which stood opposed to this interpretation, the writer of Joshua
h^-d, of course, no adequate conception.
The Ulustrations already given of the relations in which the
miraculous contents of the Bible stand to a true doctrine of
Seeped Scripture, might be indefinitely increased. But our
previous conclusions raust rather be left to suggest and system-
ati?« for each reader his own atterapts at iUustrating the gen
eral therae. For us a brief statement of these conclusions must
suffice- The doctrine of revelation and the doctrine of mkacles are
closely related doctrines : the very ideas from which these doc
trines take their rise are identified in the bibUcal representation.
The fact of miracles and the fact of revelation are, therefore,
correlated facts ; and so does the Bible, with the greatest sim
plicity and yet with the most profound philosophic and religious
insight, represent the case. Its conception of the miraculous,
and the narratives of the rairaculous which it contains, — so far
as they correspond to the conception, — evince its own claim to
the characteristics of revelation and inspiration. Of alleged
mkacles there has been in history, and there still is, an abun
dance ; but of miracles which correspond to the loftiest and
purest idea of God and his self-revelation, there are few or
none outside of the Bible. The record is itself bathed in the
light of a heavenly idea. The Scriptures receive, then, from
their miraculous contents, that sarae attestation, as being sacred
and inspired, which coraes from all their contents of revelation.
The record of the miracles of revelation which they give to us
is in general a record that bears its own marks of being derived
frora the true idea of revelation. We may conclude : Such a
conception, and such a manner of narrating alleged miraculous
events, are undoubtedly the product of divine inspiration.
This inspiration which belongs in general to the biblical record

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BIBLICAL MIRACLES. 339
of the miracles is, however, to be derived from the influence of
revelation itself. It is the spiritual insight which interprets
whatever the senses behold, in its right relations to God and to
the divine kingdom. To narrate the mere story of a miracle
faithfully and accurately does not necessarily require or evince
inspiration in the narrator. Such work may be better done by
an academy of scientists than by a group of believers. But to
discern the inner raeaning of an event so as to declare that it is
a miracle, and so as to recall human thought to God the author,
and. so as both to appreciate and to raake appreciated the place
of the event in the divine self-revelation, — this does require
and evince divine inspkation. It does not, on the other hand,
vitiate the trustworthiness of the witness as to his attested
facts. The biblical records of the biblical rairacles generally
bear the plain raarks of being theraselves suffused Avith the
ideas of revelation ; the writers of the records show that they
have received those ideas by inspiration. So far forth, then,
may their record be regarded as sacred and divine.
Among the general characteristics which raost difference the
biblical records of rairacles frora all others, we have had reason
to note the following: (1) a lack of that disposition to exagger
ate which belongs to the stories of raere thauraaturgic display ;
(2) a wonderful discretion and reserve about passing beyond the
¦¦:::: limits fixed for all rairaculous events by the course of nature ;
 (3) a fidelity, for the age reraarkable, in adhering to conceptions
 ;, of order, law, and steadfast control; and yet (4) a constant
;;;;;;;; maintaining of the position that God has not exhausted or
 restrained his activities by that order of nature which itself
¦only evinces his wisdora and power ; (5) a kind of holy tele-
::::::,. ^^^1 which raakes the miracle not a medium of display, but a
 moment or element of God's self-revelation in redemption.
,,,,,,,, But that this "inspkation" of moral insight into the truths
..,''''. of revelation has no more secured the miraculous than the
'.'.'.'.'.'.. more purely scientific contents of the Bible from all error,
we have abundant reason to conclude. Even in so iraportant
''^^^^^2,. matters as the miracles of Scripture, inspiration has not made
"'^.'^.'^.'^.'':_... itself the guaranty of infallibUity. In the case of the record
""""\^^^ of our Lord's resurrection, that most important of rairaculous
¦¦¦¦¦¦¦ events, the details of the record are peculiarly difficult to har-
^^^^^^ '' monize with any claim to strict historical accuracy ; and surely
;i-i-i^< in this case, if anywhere, might we expect such a guaranty to
:::3 ^^ given. Moreover, certain of the miraculous narratives of

V^V^^AA^^.

340 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the Old Testaraent are — as we have already seen, and shall
soon discover raore fuUy — ancient and wide-spread, or more
local, traditions, whose historical accuracy it is impossible to
authenticate. What facts, in any special case, underlay these
traditions, it belongs to criticisra to establish. It cannot, how
ever, be made a matter of the assumptions of faith to accept
the entire accuracy of the traditions. It cannot be shown to
be an element of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture to guarantee
such accuracy by an assuraption of infallibility.
The above-mentioned clairas to inspiration for the miraculous
contents of the Bible raust be applied very differently to differ
ent portions of the whole. That those portions which may be
traced to apostolic influence can claira to be inspired, we have
the proraises of Christ, the nature of the case, and the criticism
of the aUeged facts, to establish. That those portions which
may be traced to the teachings or writings of acknowledged
prophets are also inspired, we may claim from the character and
mission of the prophet, as well as frora the nature of the records
theraselves. But that those which have their rise in tradition
and popular story are inspired, we can only claim in a more du
bious manner, and with a rauch looser appUcation of the words.
Whatever raarks of divine characteristics may be stamped upon
them would have to be distributed, so to speak, between the
tradition itself, regarded as subject to the general influence of
ideas of revelation in the nation, and the work of the redactor
and publisher of the tradition in purifying it by the same mflu
ence working through his own mind.
In this chapter, as in all the preceding chapters, we have come
upon no proof of a special divine influence, given for the pur
pose of composition, and guaranteeing the ethical or historical
infaUibility of the composition itself. We have as yet found
no claira, direct or indirect, to an inspiration which is specifi
cally ad seribendum or in scribendo. But this examination ot
the miraculous contents of Scripture, Uke that of its so-called
scientific contents, suggests, for some portions at least, the pos
sibility of sorae influence reserabling that which has been called
an impulsus ad seribendum, as well as the doctrine of a certain
divine assistance in the work of writing.

CHAPTER IV.
THE DOCTEINE OP SACRED SCEIPTURE AS EELATED TO THE
HISTOEICAL CONTENTS OF THE BIBLE.
"The Bible," says Westcott,^ "is the oldest and truest vindi
cation of the dignity of history." Accepting this stateraent
provisionaUy, as erabodying conclusions frora a critical survey
of the historical contents of the Old and New Testaraents, the
final purpose of this chapter requkes that we should also be
able to reverse the thought, and declare : One of the oldest and
truest vindications of the divine origin and nature of Sacred
Scripture is the dignity of its history. The dignity of biblical
history raay be ascribed, priraarUy, to the nature of that sub
ject which furnishes the raaterial for this history, and which is
the kingdora of God on earth in its preparation for, and reali
zation of, the advent of the Redeeraer. It raay also be ascribed,
secondarily, to the dignity of the forra in which the history is
given. For an ethical and religious consciousness on the part
of the writers, as to the dignity of their subject, manifestly
pervades the historical narratives of the Bible. So far do the
conclusions of criticism and the irapressions born of faith unite
upon these views, that it raight seera possible to dispense with
any lengthy treatraent of the relations of the historical narra-
¦ tives of Scripture to the doctrine of its origin and nature. It
is in raatters of biblical history, however, that many of the
most difficult inquiries and perplexing adjustments of conflict
ing considerations are certain to arise. Instead, then, of dis-
'pensing with a detailed inquiry, we must the rather give to
it a more painstaking consideration. Yet we cannot hope to
accomplish raore than to make a few clear distinctions, advance
.certain raore or less probable opinions, and Ulustrate these dis-
^tinctions and opinions by individual cases, selected — be it
understood, with raany chances of error in details of statements
— from the overwhelraing araount of materials at coraraand.^
1 Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, Boston, 1866, p. 68.
2 In regard to no other part of the entire investigation does the author feel
341

842 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
A critical exaraination of the historical contents of the Bible,
in their relation to the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, is made
both raore iraperative and raore difficult by two classes of prev
alent opinions. On the one hand, it is the opinion of a numer
ous class of critics, that the history of both the Old and the
New Testaraents is largely fabricated and untrustworthy; that,
indeed, the alleged history is not in any worthy sense historical.
And, in the face of the arguraents which they present, it is the
shallowest folly to busy the apologetic forces of historical Chris
tianity solely with quibbles about the possibUity of justifymg
this or that detail of narrative, or of harmonizing this or that
small discrepancy of one writer with another. The fundamen
tal- question has already becorae a question as to the extent to
which the alleged histories of the Bible are truly what they
claim to be. On the other hand, a quite numerous class—
scarcely of critics, but certainly of thinkers interested in bibli
cal inquiries — still maintain with unwavering confidence the
assertion, that the historical contents of the Bible must be, not
simply in the main trustworthy, but in their detaUs infallible,
in order that we may have any doctrine of Sacred Scripture at
all. Between these two classes, there is danger that the cause
which would unite historical criticism with true dogma, and
with a rational faith in revelation and inspiration, may quite fall
out of consideration and repute.
We need, then, again and constantly to raise the question
which Tholuck ^ raised more than forty years since in his reply
to Strauss. We need to inquke in what way and how far we
raay raake the distinction between the shell and the kernel of
truth ; with respect to historical contents, as with respect to
all the contents of Scripture. That the words of Westcott
also are appropriate, when he says, "The history of Christ
Jesus is concrete doctrine, as doctrine is abstract history,
we have no roora for doubt. We are in general ready to admit
that the history of the Bible is given as concrete doctrine, and
that its raost precious doctrines are, as it were, abstracts from
its history. But we can never allow our dogmatic confidence
either to construct history, or to pervert its statements of fact.
When, therefore, Westcott further asserts (p. 39), " The abso
lute impossibility of separating the two elements, the external ;
more keenly the limited and uncertain nature of the result which he is aWa
obtain. 1 Die Glaubwiirdiglseit der evangelischcn Geschichte, 1838, p. 430.
a Ibid., p. 43.

THE PRELEMINARY QUESTIONS. 343
and the internal, the historical and the doctrinal," and thus
makes the letter as indispensable and faultless as the spirit;
and when, moreover, he abandons the canons of historical criti
cism, and idealizes and schematizes the discrepancies of the
Evangelists, — we raust object both to his method and to his con
clusions. To show how doctrinal truth, which is given by the
spkit of revelation in historical form, should be distinguished
frora the historical faultiness of that form, raay involve difficul
ties and dangers ; but these difficulties and dangers are small
in comparison with those involved in the denial of plain facts.
We cannot deny, previous to examination, the possibUity that
the truth of revelation may be given in the form of only appar
ent historical narrative, and that critical inquiry raay corapel
us to pronounce unhistorical sorae of the alleged histories of
Scripture. The inquiry into the relations which the historical contents
of the Bible sustain to the doctrine of Sacred Scripture raay,
then, fitly be divided according to a difference in the prima
facie evidence for those contents. The one inquiry will thus
become twofold. It wUl concern, in the first place, those parts
of the Bible as to the historical character of which the dispute
is either raost plausible or raost iraportant. The question raised
wUl then be : How far are the alleged histories reaUy entitled
to the claira to be genuine and substantiaUy true histories ? It
will be at once apparent, that the range of the inquiry will be
extended or restricted according to views held upon two yet
more fundamental subjects. These two subjects are, first, the
validity of alleged historical accounts of miracles, and, secondly,
the date, authorship, and raanner of coraposition, of the several
books of the Bible. The first of these subjects we have already
sufficiently considered : it wiU therefore, as far as possible, be
separated from the present discussion. The narratives of
Scripture wiU henceforth be regarded as subjects of historical
criticism, without any prejudice against their historical character
or perfect accuracy merely from the fact that raany of thera are
narratives of supernatural events. The second of these subjects
wiU receive special consideration, as to its connection with our
whole inquiry, in a subsequent chapter. But it wiU be irapos
sible in the present discussion to avoid certain assuraptions as
to the date, authorship, and construction of the separate parts
:of Scripture. In many cases, to hold an opinion upon such
. matters of BibUcal Introduction is to settle at once our opinion

344 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
upon important raatters of historical trustworthiness and accu
racy. The inquky into the historical contents of the Bible will
concern, in the second place, the accuracy and infaUibihty of
those portions which raust be held to be without doubt genu
inely historical. The relation of this branch of the inquhy to
the inspiration of the writers of Sacred Scripture is at once
apparent ; for is not this the chief concern of many when the
subject of biblical history is even mentioned? It does not,
indeed, belong to the conditions of historical composition, as
they are dependent upon the nature of the human mind and of
human testimony, as well as upon the way in which events
necessarUy happen, to achieve infalUble history. As F. A.
Wolfi declared years since: "It is often not within human
power to give a true historical narrative : the phUosophical head
corrupts it often just as truly as the unphUosophical." That
all history of the past, even when narrated under the most
favorable circumstances by conteraporaries and eye-witnesses,
abounds in inaccuracies of detail, and especiaUy iu numerical
and chronological difficulties, is a raatter of universal experi
ence. Are, then, the histories of the Old and New Testaments
exceptions to the otherwise universal experience ? Could we
answer this question with an unqualified affirraative, we should
quickly pass to the inference, that some supernatural influence
had wrought upon the minds of thek authors. We should
rightly be inclined to regard the influence as the more wonder
ful and rairaculous, when we considered by how many different
authors these histories were written, and under how diverse
circumstances and opportunities. There are, however, only
two ways open by which to reach an affirmative answer. Oue
way is that of induction as the result of searching and scru
pulous criticism. We raay test each part of the historical
contents by such raeans as are at our disposal ; by comparison
with external authorities, by coraparison of part with part, and
by all the devices of internal criticisra. Or we may rely upon
some general assumption of the necessities of faith as giving au
inflexible law to the historic record of revelation. But that
such an assuraption cannot claira authority from the Bible
itself, we have seen as one result of the First Part of our work.
That the same assumption does not follow from the nature or
revelation and inspiration, we shall subsequently see. No sat
1 Alterthumswissenschaft, III. p. 257.

FALSE ASSUMPTION OP DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. 345
isfactory dograatic reason exists for assuming the historic infal
libility of Sacred Scripture. The Bible can be regarded as
being, and can reaUy be, Sacred Scripture, even though it be
found simply as accurate in its statements of fact as belongs
(we raay say naturally) to the circurastances of its authors
with respect to their sources of inforraation and their facUities
of composition.
How monstrous is the counter-assumption, that, on the prin
ciple of falsus in uno falsus in omnibus, the critics of the so-
called destructive school may quite reject the narratives which
they find historically faulty, as though they were not history at
all, we raust feel aU the raore keenly when we compare the
Bible with the case of profane history. He who has been
styled the father of modern scepticism and criticism, — no less
discerning and honest a raan than Lessing,^ — fitly asked, " If
now Livy and Dionysius and Polybius and Tacitus are treated
so frankly and nobly by us that we do not put thera to the rack
for every syllable, why not also Matthew and Mark and Luke
and John ? " Modern criticisra, although it is fast recovering
from the gross and coarse raethod of Strauss, stiU needs to
remind itself, that to announce concerning Jesus the verdict
of " dead without particulars," on the ground of discrepancies
in the accounts of his resurrection, is to be not siraply without
faith towards the Lord, but also without fairness towards his
biographers. Closely connected with the preceding distinctions is yet
another, which raust be raade prelirainary to a detaUed investi
gation. We raust distinguish between the relations sustained
by the raaterial of biblical history to the spirit of revelation
and to the inspiration of the writers, and those relations sus
tained by the forra of this history. It is indeed true that no
really historical composition is possible in which the material is
not itself modified by the forra. Even in the case of narratives
made by different eye-witnesses, the conceptions and the entire
mental furnishing and condition of the narrators will impress
themselves upon the alleged facts which the eye-witnesses nar
rate. Where the material of history comes to the historian at
several stages of reraove frora the events, this material will
have been repeatedly modified by the conceptions of those
through whora it has been transraitted, and will receive yet
another raodification through the historian hiraself. We see at
1 See among the Theologische Streitschriften, the one called Eine Duplik.

346 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
once, therefore, the importance of such inquiries as the follow
ing: What does the spirit of revelation furnish, whether of
material or of form, to the historical contents of Sacred Scrip
ture ? What does the inspkation, which we are able to attrib
ute to the authors of these contents, guarantee as to fulness
and trustworthiness of material, and as to purity and ethical
excellence of form? Were the mere facts of the past ever
revealed to the writers of the Bible ; or was the work of reve
lation confined to iraparting an ethical and reUgious insight
into the meaning of those facts which came to them. as pre
served in ways at once natural and providential ? How far did
the inspkation of the writers preserve them from accepting,
from their sources, erroneous statements of fact?
In answer to these and all sirailar inquiries, our conclusions
are best reached as the result of an inductive examination;
especially since we have no answer given to us on the authority
of our Lord and his apostles. At present we need only to
allude to the significance of sorae of these conclusions.
The most fundamental of the above inquiries concerns the
sources of inforraation as to the past which the biblical histo
rians had at their disposal. In the case of these historians the
sources raay all be reduced to two, ^=- tradition aud preriously
written records. The value of tradition depends upon many
considerations, such as its purity, the nature of the subject
treated, the ability to trace the tradition to its aUeged source in
fact, the raethod taken for its delivery, its intrinsic probability,
and other considerations.^ The value of previous documents
depends upon equally nuraerous and coraplex considerations.
And these two classes of sources interact with one another in
many ways. That the historians of the Bible made use of both
these sources, adraits of abundant proof frora their own writ
ings ; and that the sources they made use of had all the char
acteristics which belong to such sources, and which render
thera only relatively trustworthy and accurate, admits of the
sarae proof. It is also quite plain to hira who observes worthily
of the subject, that the spirit of revelation which pervades the
books of the Bible raay to a certain extent purify them from
historical error ; for especially in the case of all the writings of
antiquity is it a fact that raany of the raost extravagant histori-
1 See the very instructive remarks of Ewald upon tradition, History of Israel,
I. pp. 13-49; and tho chapter on Augenzeugensohaft und Ueberlieferung, in AVeiss
Leben Jesu, I. pp. 124-139.

FIRST TWELVE CHAPTERS OF GENESIS. 347
cal errors are the result of false ethical and religious views.
We cannot, however, on this ground assert that any degree
of ethical and religious inspiration could prevent the biblical
writers from receiving into their histories the errors of fact in
the sources from which they were obUged to draw. The spkit
of revelation wUl, so to speak, do the best it can to give right
ethical and religious form to such material as comes to its hand.
But for even inspired writers to construct history out of their
own imaginings would not result in laying assured historical
foundations for the record of the kingdom of God on earth. We
have reason to doubt whether prophetic inspkation ever results
in the clear and definite knowledge of sorae single occurrence
which is to take place in the future. We have rauch more rea
son to doubt whether the inspkation of the historians of the
Bible ever of itself gives a clear and definite knowledge of some
otherwise unknown event which has happened in the past. At
any rate, our conceptions, if they are forraed by the inductive
raethod, raust accord with the preparation upon which the bibU
cal writers seem dependent, and with the nature of the result
which they accomphsh.
With these preliminary observations, we turn to the first and
raost important of our proposed inquiries : Are all the appar
ently historical portions of the Bible in fact genuinely his
torical? The answer must be given in the presentation of
selected examples, for a complete critical survey of the entke
ground would be simply unpossible. As to the vastly superior
importance of this question, when compared with the question
of perfect accuracy in detaUs, there can be no intelUgent differ
ence of opinion. The exaraples selected will lead us to con
sider several books and sraaUer sections of the Old Testament,
and— although only very briefly and imperfectly — the histo
ries of our Lord in the New Testament.
We consider, first of all, the openmg chapters of Genesis,
from the thkd to the twelfth. These chapters are of especial
value and interest to our subject ; both because their original
sources are undoubtedly merely traditional, and because we are
here able to compare the bibUcal traditions with corresponding
ones which grew up on other grounds. Araong the early tradi
tions common to the Hebrews and other nations of antiquity, is
that of
The first pair, and their happy condition in their original
dweUing-place. The view, so widely spread, that man waa

348 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
formed from the soil, or frora clay, does not deraand a common
historical origin : it is rather an easy and inevitable conclusion
of the first atterapt to account for his origin (compare Gen. ii.
7). The Iranian tradition of the creation of man, as found in
the Bundehesh, — and, although the present version is subse
quent to the Mussulman conquest of Persia, it is believed by
Windischmann, Spiegel, Lenorraant, and others, to have an
indigenous and truly ancient character, — narrates the creation
of Gayoraaretan, the typical raan.^ Lenorraant,^ relying upon
the researches of Windischraann, Roth, Kuhn, and Lassen,
asserts that originally the first raan was the being called by the
Indians YSraa, and by the Iranians Yiraa ; and that in the earli
est legends he unites in hiraself the traits which Genesis sepa
rates and assigns both to Adara and to Noah. This typical man
is the child of heaven, and the father both of antediluvian and
postdiluvian huraanity. The bibUcal doctrine of the creation
of man involves an original distinction of sexes, and is not to
be compared with the Phoenician and other myths which make
the first man androgynous. This interpretation of Gen. v. 2,
although advocated on the ground of the absence of the arti
cle,^ is opposed to Gen. i. 27 f., and to the teaching of our Lord,
Matt. xix. 4-6 : of it the remark of DiUraann * is emphatically
true, " Rabbinical insipidity and heathenish mythological forms
of thinking lie close together." The Chaldean account of Gen
esis, so far as it can be derived from the fragments preserved
in the British Museum, does not coraprise a narrative of the
forraation of raan.^ The other related traditions besides that
of the Bundehesh, having been shaped by pantheistic religious
views, do not derive man from the free act of the divine will,
but leave his origin to vague ideas of his having emanated from
Deity by various steps of transition which extend through count
less ages of time. We are at once led, then, to observe the
purifying and ennobling influence of bibUcal monotheism upon
the tradition of the creation of the first pair.
That the original condition of man was one of happy inno-
cency, there is a concurrence of various traditions. The reign
1 See Les Origines de I'Histoire. Paris, 1880, p. 50 f.
2 Ibid., p. 68. Compare Lassen, Indisohe Alterthumskunde, I., p. 519.
3 Even by Lenormant. Compare Ibid., p. 55 f. ^ Die Genesis, in loco.
'' George Smith supposed that one of these fragments contains portions of an
address from Deity to man newly created (see the New- York ed., 1876, pp. 15 and
77 f .) ; and according to Lenormant, who pronounces the translation of Mr. Smith
" very inexact," and that of M. Oppert " infinitely superior," it may perhaps lie
the creation of man which is hero referred to (see Les Origines, p. 45 f., note).

THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 349
of the god R3., which inaugurated the existence of huraanity,
was, in the tradition of the Egyptians, an age of gold.^ The
four ages of the Book of Manu, although the atterapts of Ewald ^
and Maury to find in the Bible traces of the same chronological
division must be pronounced raisleading, have this in coramon
with Genesis, that they begin with an age of innocence and
happiness. So, too, is the golden age of Hesiod, the earliest
of his four.3 The Garden of Eden is a traditional conception,
wrought over, as it were, by the power of Hebrew religious
ideas. The existence of symboUc eleraents corresponding to
various myths of other peoples is show^n by an examination of
the narrative of Genesis in the Ught of coraparative religion.
Indeed, its forra of conceiving God and his self-revelation seeras
unlike any elsewhere found in the Old Testament ; which, al
though it frequently speaks of definite locaUties where divine
self-revelations are made, never otherwise represents Deity as
dwelling in a fixed place, and even enjoying the delights of the
evening coolness (corapare iii. 8).* The entire picture seeras
not to have originated on Palestinian soil. Corresponding pic
tures represent those raountains of the gods to the northward,
which the Indians found in Meru, and thought of as fitted out
with shining gold and precious stones ; ^ where were wonderful
trees (especially the tree Kalpavriksha, " the tree of desires "),
and whence flowed down the strearas that brought blessing
with thera. So also did the Iranians place the blessed abode
in the mountain range Hara-berezaiti, that surrounded the sea
Vourukasha; this abode had wonderful trees, among which
was the tree of imraortality and life. From one of the highest
peaks of the mountain range, the water of life streamed down.^
StUl more definitely Uke the narrative of Genesis is the repre
sentation of the Bundehesh concerning the garden of Yiraa, with
its freedora frora night and darkness, and cold and hot winds,
in which Ahura-Mazda gave to Mithra a dwelling-place. The
tradition which locates this blessed region in Northern raoun
tains is recognized in the Old Testaraent (Isa. xiv." 13 ; Ezek.
xxvui. 13 f.). That the narrator of Gen. Ui. believed Eden still
to be in existence, is inferred frora iii. 24 ; and especially frora
iv. 16, where the position of Nod is fixed as in front of Eden.
Its location, which has already wandered from Scandinavia and
1 Lenornjant, Ibid., p. 58. - 2 History of Israel, I. p. 256 f.
8 Works and Days, X. 103-199. i See Dillmann, Ibid., 56 f.
5 See Bitter, Erdkunde, II. 2, pp. 7-14.
^ So Windischmann and Spiegel, as cited by Dillmann,

350 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the Prussian coast to the islands of the South Sea, can never be
determined ; ^ and he who hesitates to adopt the opinion upon
which, says Winer,^ recent investigators are united, and to
declare the account a " fragraent of mythical geography," must
at least admit with Delitzsch, " Paradise is lost, and its four
rivers are therefore an unsolved riddle." Closely connected with
this tradition is another ; viz., that of
The temptation and the fall. After a season of purity Yima,
as we are instructed in the Yesht and Bundehesh,^ sins, and is
cast out of paradise, and given over to the power of the serpent.*
The Bundehesh relates the fall of the first man in a manner
which preserves some of the most characteristic features ofthe
narrative in Genesis. The primal sin consists, indeed, in a lying
ascription of water, earth, trees, and all things fair and good,
not to Ahura-Mazda but to Angro-Mainyus, the spirit of evil.
A second sin consists, however, in taking and eating fruits pre
sented by a lying Deva.^ This tradition also represents man as
partaking of animal food only after the fall (compare Gen. i.
29, ii. 9, 16, Ui. 2, ix. 3), and as then first clothed with the skins
of beasts (Gen. iii. 21). The Scandinavian myths tell of a
garden in the midst of the world, where was perfect innocence,
and where grew the fruits of immortality ; but Loki the tempter
wrought evil there ; and the raeans of his seduction were other
fruits which he had discovered, as he alleged, in a wood. The
records of Babylon and Chaldea, so far as now deciphered,
contain no verbal allusion to the faU of raan ; ^ the same is true
of the fragraents of Berosus. But the raysterious and sacred
plants which the Assyrian bas-reliefs so frequently represent
as guarded by celestial genii, suggest the trees of life and of
knowledge in the Garden of Eden : "^ as yet, however, no incon-
1 Of the four rivers, two may be flxed as the Euphrates and the Tigris. Ebers
agrees with Ewald and others in thinking that by Gihon is meant the Ganges,
which is considered as uniting with the NUe (Aegypten und die Bucher Mose's,
Lp. 30f.).
2 Eealworterbuch, article Eden. Compare the statement by Riietschi in Herzog
and Plitt.
3 Yesht, xix. 31-38 and 46; Bundehesh, xxiii. and xxxii.
4 According to the Vendidad (i. 5-8), it is the flood caused by this serpent whicli
obliges Yima forever to qjiit his happy abode.
c Compare Lenormant, Les Origines, p. 70 f .
6 The fragments which George Smith interpreted as relating to the fall of the
first man are now known — so Lenormant declares, on the authorityof Oppert a
investigations — to have been misunderstood and mistranslated (Ibid., p. 73; com
pare Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 83).
' Other unmistakable traces of the mythical tree of life are given by Lenor
mant, Ibid., p. 76 f. According to the same author, the most ancient name ol

THE TEMPTATION AND FALL. 351
testable interpretation of the meaning of these bas-reliefs has
been discovered. According to Schrader,^ the figure of this
sacred plant appears as the emblem of eternal life upon the
sarcophagi discovered at Warkah. A stone cylinder, preserved
iu the British Museum, shows us a man and a woraan facing
each other on the two sides of a tree frora which hang two
great fruits, while they stretch out their hands to pluck thera ;
behind the woraan is an erect serpent.^ The sirailar representa
tions iu the fragments of Sanchoniathon and on Roman sar
cophagi, as well as those of early Christian art, carae from the
Old Testaraent rather than Chaldea or Phoenicia. Lenormant
considers, however, that the vase found by Cesnola, and pre
served in the Metropolitan Museum in New- York City, proves
an indigenous tradition of the fall among the early people of
Canaan.^ It is not necessary to describe the various forras in which the
serpent plays his part in that religious and cosmogonic symbol
ism which seems to reach back to the time before the ancestors
of Egyptians, Semites, and Aryans had separated ; nor to dis
cuss the connection which he bears in other traditions with the
fall of raan. Mazdeisra is the only ancient religion in which
the serpent never syrabolizes the good ; and it is in this religion
that we find the closest reserablance to the narrative of Genesis,
with regard to the part of the serpent in the fall. In the forra
of a serpent does the spirit of eyjl descend upon the earth to
corrupt it. There is thus introduced the conception of a raoral
temptation, and subsequent struggle between the forces of moral
good and evil. Nor need we follow the many traces in Assyrian
sources of those guardians of Eden, the cherubim (Gen. iii. 24) ;
nor question the somewhat doubtful statement that the turning
sword — both word and thing — is found araong the Chaldean
monuraental records. We pause only to notice how lacking in
any true ethical conception of the nature of sin and of its
origin are all the other traditions than the Hebrew, — with the
Babylon is, " the place of the tree of life." This sacred plant Lenormant identi
fies with the Asclepias acida, the soma of the Aryans, and the haoma of the
Iranians, the intoxicating juice from the branches of which was offered in libi*-
tion to the gods. According 'to Schrader, however, it was a cypress. In a part of
Chaldea, the palm rather furnished the type for the representations of the tree of
life. Compare Ewald, Lehre der Bibel, III, p. 72 f.
1 Jahrbiicher fiir protest. Theologie, 1875, p. 124 f.
^ Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 90 f .
8 For the various widely scattered traces of the tree of knowledge, see Lenor
mant, p. 85 f., and compare Ewald, Ibid., I. p, 234.

352 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
probable exception of that of Mazdeisra ; and how certain it
appears that we have in the account of Genesis a combinatioi
of traditional and syrabolic and allegorical elements, wrought
over and made into an ethical and religious unity by the force
of the Mosaic religion.
The various attempts made to connect the raurder of Abel
by Cain, and the founding of the first city, with other myths,
legends, and traditions of antiquity, — whether to find a myth
of the struggle between day and night,i or to trace the corre
spondence between Genesis and a confused mass of traditions,
which range in subject and tirae frora the Chaldean terminology
for the raonths to the Roraan legend of Roraulus and Eemus,^
— are all quite unsatisfactory and raisleading.
The traditions which enter into the genealogies of the Cainites
and Sethites offer theraselves for further iUustration of this
branch of our subject. It seeras probable that these documents
were originally separate, and that the one erabodied in Gen. iv.,
being of Jehovist origin, belonged with the account of the first
murder ; while the one in Gen. v. (with the exception of verse
29), being of Elohist origin, was introduced as an immediate
preparation for the narrative of the Flood. The parallelism
between the names in the line of Adam through Cain, and the
names in the line through Seth, is such that seven successive
naraes correspond throughout, with the exception of slight
changes in spelling, and the inversion of the names of Enoch,
Irad, and Mehujael. It is doubtful whether we shall account
for this fact by supposing that one tradition has taken two
forras,^ or by supposing that there were two original traditions,
— the one of the race of the .godly, the other of that of the
irapious. In arguraent for the latter opinion, the difference m
the two genealogies has been pointed out ; the character of the
genealogy of the Sethites being dry and precise, but that of
the Cainites adraitting more freely certaui raanifest elements
of mingled traditions or myths.* It is a probable conjecture
of Hupfeld, that the forraer docuraent originally contained
genealogies both of Seth and of Cain ; but the redactor sup
pressed the Jehovist genealogy of Seth, and preferred to give
the Elohist in its place, inserting, however (verse 29), a verse
1 So Goldziher, Der Mythos bei den Hebraern, p. 130 f.
2 Lenormant, Les Origines, pp. 140-177; and an article in the Contemporary
Keview for February, 1880.
8 So Schrader, Studien zur Kritik, pp. 122-124 and 134.
* Compare Lenormant, Ibid., p. 178<£-.

THE SONG OF LAMECH. 353
from the Jehovist into the Elohist account, in order to explain
the name of Noah.
But, however this raay be, we certainly have in Gen. iv. 19-24
an interesting exaraple to show how rauch the spUit of the
Mosaic religion could do with the most questionable material
which carae to its hand. And even if we adrait that the naraes
of the wives of Laraech (Adah — beauty or light — and Zillah
— shadow) are of raythical origin, we can call attention to the
fact,^ that nothing of the myths belonging to these names has
been permitted to enter the sacred narrative, and that the names
themselves are possibly used to starap with condemnation that
polygamy of which they furnish the first instance in Scripture.^
The traditional song of verses 23 f. is one of the raost curious
and ancient of the fragraents preserved in the Old Testaraent ; ^
it is worthy, says Lenorraant,* to be placed " in the raouth of a
savage of the stone age as he brandishes his flint tomahawk or
the jawbone of a cave bear." It raay be understood, however,
as conderaning by its connection that thirst for personal blood-
revenge which is contrary to the spirit of the Mosaic Torah.
The sons of Lameeh, all of whose naraes are frora the sarae
root 0^1), are raentioned as the traditional founders of the arts
of civilization, and are connected with the descendants of Cain,
in order to show, if not the corrupting influence of these arts,
at least the fact that they belong to the developraents of an
earthly Ufe rather than to the requisites of piety. The nature
of the raaterial here used is further shown by the fact that
Naaraah, whose narae only is raentioned Gen. iv. 22, was raade
by the rabbinical tradition "the raistress of raourners and
singers." ^ Yet no admixture of detailed myths concerning
the interference of gods and derai-gods in human affairs is
permitted by the monotheisra which controls the raaterial of
even this narrative. This fact does not prevent us, however,
from seeing that personification and myth have already had a
1 Following Lenormant in this view of thfe relation of the passage to the
nature of Sacred Scripture.
2 This explanation, while it gives an ethical character to the passage, is at best
barely possible, ahd is made difficult by the fact thatthe acceptance of polygamy
by the Jehovist author of this passage seems to occur in Exod. xxi. 10; Deut. xxi.
10-14, 15-17.
8 See Ewald, History of Israel, I. p. 266 f.; andfileek, Einl. iu das A. T., -p. 77.
¦' Les Origines, p. 187.
= Por the many paraUel traditions- as tothe piimitive founders of the arts, see
Lenormant, Ibid., 191 f.; Goldzihet.Der Mythos, p. 232; Dillmann, Die Genesis;
Ewald, Ibid., I. p. 271 f.
VOL. L z

354 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
marked influence upon the names and statements introduced
into the narrative. In Tubal we can scarcely fail to find an
allusion to that people who sold slaves and vessels of copper in
the markets of Tyre (see Ezek. xxvii. 13), who were famous
in raetallurgy, and who are raentioned (Gen. x. 2) among the
sons of Japheth.^ There is no doubt also that ethnic personi
fications entered into these early genealogies.
The traditions of the ten antediluvian patriarchs enforce the
hints toward conclusions which have been already given. That
the nunjibey of the patriarchs is not arbitrarUy selected by the
author, is as certain as that it does not completely represent all
the steps of historical descent. The number ten, which is re
peated in Genesis, may be selected as a round number to which
the generations lying between great epochs are raade to corre
spond. It is, however, traditional and not raythical. It perhaps
arose in the;tiine when the raeraory of raan did not retain more
of unwritten history than could be comprised in this number.
If so, it corresponds to the idea of a long tirae and of a great
number. This tradition of ten patriarchs or kings is widely
reproduced in antiqiiity. The antediluvian kings of the Chal
dean tradition, as given in the fragments of Berosus, were ten.^
The Assyrian tradition, as given by At)ydenus, made out a simi
lar circle of generations of heroes previous to the founding of
Nineveh.^ In the sacred books of the Iranians, nine generations
of raythical heroes succeed Gayoraaretan, raaking with him ten
before huraan history begins.* In the cosmogonic legends of
the Indians we find nine Brahnj&dikas, who with Brahma, their
author, make ten ; and the sarae number is a standard in con
structing their genealogies. The term " Brahmadikas " which
Lenorraant uses (p. 226) signifies " those who have Brahma for
their first" ("Brahma, etc."). The passages to which Lenor
raant refers in the note on this page, to justify his statement
that the repetitions of the number ten are frequent in the con-
structious of .the Indians, are taken from worthless legends of
the later writings, — tlie PoujSnas, and a portion of the Laws
of Manu, which may be .as late as the second or third century
A.D. It would, .therefore, be unsafe to base any argument
1 We have no confidence in the attempts made to find in the three sons of
Lameeh a triad of gods adored by the Hebrews in remote antiquity; and none
in the attempt of Ewald to identify certain names of the line of Seth with the .
gods, Apollo, Mars, the Sun, and a god of the waters.
•^ Fragments 9, 10, 11, ed. Lenormant. « Eusebius, Chron. p. 38, ed. Mal
* Spiegel, Avesta, III. pp. Ivi.-lxii.

THE SONS OF GOD AND THE DAUGHTERS OF MEN. 355
upon them. The Chinese count ten emperors who partake of
the divine natm-e, preceding the sovereign who inaugurates
historic times. In Egypt, Egyptologists suppose that traces of
ten gods are to be found who at the beginning governed raen.
This number and the number seven are the numbers between
which the traditions seem to vaciUate. And, as to the length
of Ufe attributed by tradition to these patriarchs, we are to
consider the uncertainty which attaches itself to all numbers
derived in this way; but we are to consider also the very favor
able contrast which the bibUcal accounts present in tliis respect,
when corapared with the rayths of other nations. This part of
Sacred Scripture has, at any rate, kept entirely clear of those
enorraous falsehoods into which the false religions of antiquity
led their devotees. After having admitted thus rauch as to the
traditional nature of this genealogy, we are prepared to stop
short of all such conjectures as that, for instance, of Ewald ; ^
who beUeves that Enoch's life of 365 years may be typical of
the renewing of the year, and who is corrected by Lenormant ^
mth the statement that the year of the Hebrews was exclu
sively lunar (354 clays), while that of the Chaldeans and Baby
lonians was only 360 days.
In the next following section (vi. 1-4), ^ the tradition of the
marriage ofthe sons of God with the daughters of men, — we find
more plainly than perhaps anywhere else in the entire Old Test
ament, marks of likeness to ancient heathen rayths ; yet even
in this case the purifying effect of the spirit of revelation raakes
itself felt. It must be adraitted that the interpretation which
sees in this passage only the narrative of raixed raarriages be
tween the race of Seth and the race of Cain gives way before
a critical exaraination.^ The more ancient interpretation of the
Apocrypha, and apparently also of Jude 6 f. and 2 Pet. ii. 4,
of Justin, Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, and TertulUan, is
also that of almost all modern critics. The angels, terapted by
the beauty of the daughters of raen, contract raarriages with
them ; the fruit of which is the heroes whose renown filled the
ancient traditions.* The exaltation of these heroes is, accord-
1 History of Israel, I. p, 265 f. 2 Leg Origines, p. 248.
5 This Interpretation seems to have taken its rise in the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies ; it became through Augustine and Jerome the orthodox view for both
Eoman Catholics and Protestants.
* This interpretation is justified by the title itself, which is elsewhere used of
the angels (?'.rl7J<n "33 : see Job i. 6, ii. 1, xxxviii. 7) ; by the lack of reasons
other than dogmatic for another view ; by the fact that the same word (DISH)

356 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE,
ing to the biblical narrative, one of violence and pride: the
rayths of heathen nations, on the contrary, advance ideas abhor
rent to monotheisra, when they trace the descent of their demi
gods to a physical divine generation.
The traditions gathered up in the ethnographic table of Gen. x.
admit of confirmation as to a certain araount of general his
toric validity ; although all the researches of raodern ethnology
do not enable us either to affirra or to deny sorae particulars.^
Nor does the question of Sacred Scripture depend in any case
upon the decision which raay be reached. As to the nature of
this table, we raay agree with Knobel in holding that ethno
graphic conclusions deterrained sorae of its divisions ; and yet
depart frora his view, and agree rather with Tuch, Bertheau,
DiUraann, Winer, Ebers, and Renan, in beUeving that the chief
considerations are geographical. The tripartite division of the
table was not original with the author of Gen. x., but was found
already in existence, as is proved by its use elsewhere in Genesis
(viz., iv. 20 f., xi. 27). How surprisingly wide and accurate for
so early a time was the knowdedge of this writer, he will perhaps
adrait raost readily who studies the table with raost thorough
ness and with least prejudice. Ebers,^ after examining the
question whether the Egyptians once belonged, as Herodotus
and classic antiquity supposed, to the Ethiopians, and came
into Egypt frora the South, or belonged, as Gen. x. teaches, to
the Caucasian race, and carae into Egypt out of Asia, finds his
tory, philology, and anatoray confirraing the biblical view.^ We
cannot, however, follow Canon Rawlinson,* and discover in
verses 1-5 an anticipation of the Indo-European theory: these
verses are only a sketch of the Northern nations, which is rela
tively brief because of their coraparatively few relations to
Israel, and which displays an amount of ethnographic informa
tion comparing favorably with that of the ancient Phoenicians.^
In the legendary account of Nimrod, Gen. x. 8-11, we have
again to insist upon the fact that certain trustworthy lustorical
information is fused with material not historic. He is neither
to be resolved into the personification of some tribe, nor into
requires the same translation in both the first and fourth verses ; by the nature of
the offspring ascribed to such a marriage as its cause ; and by the correspondence
of tbe kindred ideas in that antiquity to which this passage is historically related.
Its use as a bare historical title has no analogy in Ps. xxix. 1 and Ixxxix. 7.
1 See Ebers, Aegypten, etc., p. 36. 2 Ibid., p. 40 f.
s Tbe classifying of Cush and Mizraim with Canaan as children of Ham was
opposed by Movers, but is rather confirmed by more recent ethnography.
4 Historical Illustrations, London, p. 24. 6 See Dillmann. Die Genesis.

THE TRADITION OF THE FLOOD. 357
the deification of a hero.* The reraains of Babylon and Assyria
have as yet disclosed no such name ; so that neither the opin
ion of Lenorraant,^ who would identify Nimrod with the divine
person NUirusi, nor that of George Smith," who elaborately
argued that we have in the hero Izdubar the mighty tyrant and
himter of Genesis, stands confirmed. The original character
of the narrative as a popular legend is clear from its present
form: Nimrod was a raighty hunter before Jehovah, as the
people would say. Yet it has been declared that this passage
furnishes us "with facts of the highest iraportance in the primi
tive history of Mesopotaraia." The Cushite origin of the first
Babylonian kingdora (although not necessarily by raigration
frora Cush, or Meroe) ; the priraeval origin of the civiUzation of
the southern Babylonian plain, which George Sraith beUeved to
go back at the very least to 2300 B.C. ; the subsequent spread
of this civiUzation northward to Assyria (Nirarod went forth
frora that land to Asshur), — these all are significant stateraents
of ancient history which seem abundantly proved by modern
researches. Of the tradition of the Flood it is not necessary for our
purpose to add rauch to what was said in the previous chapter.
We only note further, that the raaterial which enters into the
bibUcal narrative has evidently been derived and handled in
substantially the sarae way as is the case with the foregoing
traditions. The reaUty of the event which Ues at the base
of the two forras of tradition, as they are interwoven by the
author of the entire account, is beyond doubt ; and the raore
minute correspondences of these traditions with those of Chal
dean origin adrait of iUustration especially by the tablets ex
humed at Nineveh, and now in the possession of the British
Museum.* The recital of these tablets, both in general progress
and in striking particulars, corresponds with the traditions of
Genesis. Nor need we stop to inquire as to the relation of the
Chaldean stories of " The Tower of the Tongues " to the bib
lical account of Babel. The raoral connections and purposes
which appear in the biblical narrative of the Deluge are, how-
1 The former view is that of Oppert. Sir H. Rawlinson would identify him
with the god Nergal (Herodotus, I. p. 632, and compare Ancient Monarchies, I. p.
136) ; Sayce, with Merodach (Transactions of Soc. of Bibl. Archseology, II. ii. pp.
243-249, and compare j;osef Grivel, Ibid., III. i. pp. 136-144).
2 Berosus, p. 425. 8 Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 173 f.
* See the translations of George Smith, Ibid., pp. 263 ff. ; and compare Lenor-
Diant, Les Origines, pp. 391 ff.

358 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ever, quite unique. And it is in them that we see another
exhibition of the effect which the spirit of revelation causes,
even when it has only matter of mingled and remote traditions
ready for its use.
The following results seera to be gained from this brief
survey of the very earliest of the alleged historical contents
of the Bible : They have a certain significance which reaches
beyond theraselves, and influences our entire conception of the
nature of revelation, inspiration, and Sacred Scripture. These
results concern both the nature and the origin of the material
which is given (Gen. i.-xi.) in apparently historical form. As
to its nature, this raaterial appears to be of a peculiar kind.
It does not consist largely of pure rayths, although certain
fragraents of ancient rayths in the form of names and alleged
ethnographic relations, and in other forras, raay have entered
into it. The spirit of Mosaic raonotheisra has rigidly excluded
all those forras of rayths by which, according to its true con
ceptions, the Deity would have been degraded; of gods and
deraigods, and personified powers of nature, the religion of
Jehovah cannot take account. But, on the other hand, it
cannot be clairaed that this raaterial is of pure and impreg
nable historic character. Such a claim would be inconsistent
with the facts which are educed both by a comparison of these
chapters with corresponding ancient accounts, and by internal
criticisra. The coraparison shows, that the biblical narratives
are the results of a long previous process of growth and of the
blending of various forras of material; the internal criticism
shows us, in certain instances, the different forms which the
raaterial has assumed, and has blended or left standing in con
trast. The nature of tradition must above all be understood
in order to coraprehend the nature of this raaterial which the
writer of Gen. i.-xi. found ready for his use. For this material
consists most largely of the growths of tradition : much of it,
however, had become fixed in writing previous to the work ot
the final author. As to the priraal elements of the earliest
traditions, it is irapossible in all cases confidently to conclude.
The difficulty is raade the greater frora the obvious fact, that
the power of iraagination in symbolisra and in allegory has been
exercised both to originate and to shape some of the elements.
This remark applies especially to passages like Gen. ii. and ui.
The effect of such symbolism and allegory is always to make
the tradition approach, if not corapletely take on, the form oi

THE NATURE OF TRADITION. 359
myth. If, then, certain passages should be called mythical by
any investigator, the granting or the withholding of our assent
to the term wUl depend upon what is intended by it. The
view which makes the narrative of the creation of woraan
frora raan, of the placing of the first pair in the Garden of
Eden, and of their intercourse with God therein, of their
temptation by the serpent, faU, and expulsion from paradise,
symboUc and aUegorical, does no dainage to the right doctrine
of Sacred Scripture. The historv of Christian dogma may
safely undertake to show this to be true. That other rainor
portions of these chapters are of the sarae general nature, the
evidently symboUc nature of the naraes eraployed in thera
tends to prove. And the fact that such conclusions as to the
presence of symbolic narratives in Scripture raay be carried to
pretentious and ridiculous extremes, does not invalidate the
conclusions themselves. Moreover, feW students are now in
clined to deny that the earUest so-caUed genealogies of Genesis
are to a certain extent rather syrabolic than purely historical
in their origin. These early narratives are, then, of such na
ture that we must recognize in them elements of fact and
of reflection, of symbolisra and of allegory, — all more or
less changed, and all somewhat inextricably mingled by the
traditional forra in which they carae to their author's hand.
"Tradition," says Ewald, "has its roots in actual facts; yet it
is not absolute history, but has a peculiar character and a value
of its own."
As to the origin of th-eir raaterial, it may be said in general,
that the biblical traditions, and those of some of the surround
ing nations of antiquity, are so alike as to prove a common
root. Especially true is this with respect to the Chaldean
traditions. It has been thought not unlikely that the family
of Abraham brought them westward when they migrated from
their ancient seat.^ And, if we raise the inquiry as to their
1 See Lenormant, Les Origines, p. xvi. f. It is claimed that philology furnishes
minute verbal proofs of the common origin of the biblical and the Chaldean tradi
tions. The name of Cain (]'.p.) is not derived, as Gesenius conjectured, from pp,
" a lance," but rather from pp = n:p, " creature," and is so found in the Sabean
inscriptions of Arabia. The derivation of the name Abel (Habel) from b^r\,
"breath," on account of the shortness of his life, is incorrect. Ewald denied it,
and substituted a derivation from IT; and Assyrian inscriptions have since shown
that Hablu was the customary Assyrian name for "son." The conjecture of
Lenormant, that tho play on the word Dt? (sign or monument and name). Gen.
xi. 4, has its source in the Assyrian language, where Zikru signifies " souvenir "
or " sign," and Zikurat " tower," appears at best doubtful.

360 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
remoter origin, it can only be replied : Sorae of these traditions
had their rise in facts of history, and others of them m the
reflections which men raade upon the course of nature, the
probable past of the race, or the concerns of raorals and reli
gion. In precisely what raeasure facts and reflections were
blended in any given case, we shall never be able to say ; nor,
indeed, does it greatly concern us.
The foregoing stateraents of fact enable us to discern the
relations which existed between early revelation, inspiration,
and Sacred Scripture, on the one hand, and, on the other, the
material with which the history of the kingdom of God on
earth must deal. That this material was itself matter of direct
revelation, it would contradict all the facts involved to suppose:
on the contrary, we can determine historically with sufficient
definiteness, how these narratives carae to the writer of Genesis.
The question before this writer practically was, whether he
should accept the ancient traditions of his people, or should
make no effort whatever to discover to his nation and to all
posterity the ethical and reUgious truth revealed to him. For
no other raaterial than that which he used was at his command.
As to the spirit of revelation which wrought in him, we may
say, and with perfect reverence, that the divinely wise choice
was made to embody the truth of revelation in such foundations
of tradition as were already laid. For the investigator who
rejects this view of the case, it reraains, after he has settled his
dispute with the plain facts of history and the conclusions of
criticisra, to answer the question. Why raay not the Spirit of all
truth coraraunicate raoral and reUgious verity to men by infus
ing human traditions with such verity ? Must the only choice
be, either to withhold such truth, or in a purely miraculous way
to coraraunicate the exact facts of a lost antiquity ? The Rock
of Ages is not the less well founded because it arises out of the
mists of that antiquity. For positive proof that this manner
of inspiration is apparent in these earlier historic contents, we
may point to the truths already evinced. Mosaism put an end,
in the Hebrew nation, to those tendencies toward wild myth-
making which influenced the surrounding heathen peoples.^ It
clothed the traditions which it selected and preserved with such
religious ideas as fitted them to be vehicles of revelation, and
to form the beginnings of religious history. Even before the
time of Mosaisra the sarae divine influences had not withheld
1 Compare Dillmann, Die Genesis, p. 97 f.

TRADITIONS OF THE PATRIARCHS. 361
their purifying efficiency : the traditions theraselves had already
developed far away from the forms taken by other growths
from the sarae root.
The subsequent traditions, which, beginning with the life of
Abrahara (Gen. xi. 26 f.), uiclude the period of the three great
patriarchs, of Joseph, and of Israel in Egypt, and which corae
down to the tirae when traditions are for the most part dis
placed by written contemporaneous documents, are subject to
the foregoing conclusions in only a very Umited way. The his
tory of Joseph forras, indeed, a kind of turning-point in Genesis ;
a fact which we raay perhaps express by saying with Ewald,^
that this history " stands on the border-land between the pre
lirainary and the actual history of the people," or by noticing
with Ebers,2 that " Genesis begins to be genuinely historic with
Joseph." Neither saying is, however, to be so interpreted as to
involve the denial that the traditions of Abrahara, Isaac, and
Jacob are substantially accurate accounts of historic personali
ties. There are only two or three points at which this state
raent can be tested by a coraparison of the Hebrew narratives
with other historical records ; and to these points reference will
be made in the proper connection. It is iraportant now to
observe, that the results of internal criticisra, when it discerns
several different accounts of one event, and therefore raaintains
that the history of the event was corapiled frora several sources
which must have been originaUy different traditions, may be
used in proof of the historical character in general of the bibli
cal record. This arguraent, for instance, may be applied to the
different sources of the life of Abraham. For it is certain that
aU these sources gave only one substantially uniforra picture
of the character and life of this patriarch, and of the course of
his history. Thus raight the fact, — if it could be proved, —
that the accounts of xii. 10-20 and xx., of xv. and xvii., and of
xvu. 15-21 and xvUi. 1-15, are divergent traditions of the sarae
events, be held to estabUsh the raore firmly the validity and
significance of what is comraon to each pair of accounts.^ The
temptation to which Noldeke, Bernstein, Kuenen, and others,
quite succumb, when they resolve nearly the whole of this
noble history into myths, contradictory traditions, and late
modifications of the original records, we may escape by raaking
our criticism less arbitrary and subjective, and our theological
1 History of Israel, II. p. 1. 2 Aegypten, etc., p. 2jS.
' Compare article Abram, in Herzog and Plitt, by A. Kohler.

362 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
prejudices less overwhelraing. In the view of Kuenen,^ the
obstacles to supposing the entire tradition from Abraham to
Joseph, even in its principal facts, truly historical, are simply
" insurmountable." Of these " insurmountable " obstacles the
first is, that such pure and advanced religious ideas are ascribed
to these patriarchs ; Abrahara, Isaac, and Jacob are represented
as holding a raonotheisra as lofty as that of the prophets in the
eighth century B.C. But to us this seems no obstacle what
ever ; for why should " pureness of religious insight and inward
spiritual piety " be unable to decline after the time of Abrar
ham, when the entUe theory of Kuenen is largely dependent
upon the fact that it did decUne after the time of the early
prophets, and even down beyond the tirae of that priestly spirit
which the writer of Chronicles exhibits ? Nor have we more
difficulty with the third objection of the sarae critic ; vi?., that
these patriarchs are represented as holding famUiar intercourse
with their Deity. On the contrary, the peculiarly simple and
patriarchal character of the religious coraraunion is an historical
witness to the truthfulness of the traditions. The second objec
tion,^ which arises frora the insoluble chronological difficulties
in which we find ourselves involved by accepting the narratives,
is an equal objection against alraost all ancient history. The
admission that the Hebrews had conflicting traditions as to the
nuraber of years which elapsed frora the raigration of Abraham
to the Exodus, and that they could give no satisfactory solution
of the chronological difficulties of this part of theU history, by
no raeans necessitates a surrender of any of these " principal
facts." But the raost iraportant of Kuenen's so-called insur
mountable obstacles to perfect confidence in the traditions of
the patriarchs is the following: they are all represented as
'¦'•progenitors of tribes." Yet, according to Kuenen, even the
descent of the Israelites from the wife of Abraham, and of
the Ishmaelites frora his concubine, raust be referred solely to
the ethnological ideas of the forraer people. But the same
Abrahara raay be both "the iraraigrant and father of nations
and "the man of God." And even if the patriarchs were falsely
represented as the " progenitors of tribes," it would not follow
that all the " principal facts " of their history, and of the sub
sequent history of their nation, were also falsely represented.
The ethnological statements of Gen. xxv. 1 f. are not to be
placed on a level with the " principal facts " of the personal
1 F^eligion of Israel, Lordou, 1874, I. p. 107 f. 2 ibid., I. p. 159 f., note.

THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT. 363
history. There are, raoreover, besides the passages subsequent
ly to be considered, other proofs of what Ewald caUed "a solid
background of fact" to these primitive histories. It is a not
unwarrantable affirmation, that we know more of the history
and personaUty of Abraham than of any other historic character
of like antiquity; and certainly we have more reason to regard
with interest any attamable degree of positive knowledge.
Only two or three other passages of the Old Testament, which
by their seeraingly legendary character especiaUy tend to raise
the inquiry whether they are really historical, need at present
receive consideration. As to the Exodus and the subsequent
wanderings of Israel, all historical inquiry must largely take
the ultimate forra of conflicting views concerning the super
natural, the nature and origin of the Mosaic religion, and the
authorship and date of the related books. It is such views,
rather than any independent consideration of the other evidence
for a single event, which is likely to determine its acceptance
or rejection with a critic like Kuenen. To any event which
is made probable by such views, no " insurraountable obsta
cles" are Ukely to be foimd. For instance: "We raay not
doubt," says Kuenen, "that the Exodus is an historical fact." ^
But why not? since on this author's own theory we have no
written account of it which is conteraporaneous by hundreds of
years. Because, is the reply of Kuenen, "independently of
the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, it is proved by the
testimony of the prophets : " " they obviously start frora the
supposition that none of their conteraporaries disagree with
them as to their deUverance out of Egypt." But on just as
good grounds wiU we undertake to prove all those principal
facts of earlier and later tradition which Kuenen utterly refuses
to accept as trustworthy history. And surely the chronology,
and the entanglements with uncertain ethnographical traditions
which belong to the Exodus, constitute by no means relatively
smaU, even though not "insurmountable," difficulties. But
does Kuenen perhaps accept the fact of the Exodus on the
authority of Egyptian fable ? Does he not perhaps go upon the
principle that an Egyptian fable and a Hebrew tradition, even
when they disagree in raost particulars, are raore trustworthy
than two concurrent Hebrew traditions? And yet the tradition
of the Exodus is in the Old Testaraent always and inseparably
connected with a religious truth ; viz., that, as Kuenen himself
i Religion of Israel, I. p. 117.

364 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
elsewhere says,^ the prophets of Israel " appeal to history to
prove that Jahveh stands in an entirely peculiar relation to
that people." If, then, even this critic of so negative tenden
cies is ready to accept the fact of the Exodus on the ground
that the tradition is corroborated by the unanimous consent of
the prophets, we cannot see on what ground he is so ready to
discredit almost all the other principal facts of the early history
of Israel. For the traditions of all these facts are corroborated
by the unaniraous consent of the prophets.^ As Kuenen himself
adraits : " Micah had, upon the whole, the sarae idea of Israel's
wanderings in the Desert" as that given in the narratives ofthe
Old Testaraent. There are, then, no " insurraountable " obsta
cles to accepting the historical trustworthiness of the "princi
pal " facts in the lives of the patriarchs, and in the early history
of Israel.
The narratives of Balaara and of Samson may serve further
to illustrate the existence of certain traditional and even legend- i
ary raaterial in the historical contents of the Old Testament out
side of Genesis. In the case of Balaara (Nura. xxii.-xxiv.) the
two later views of his personality seera traceable to the two
traditions incorporated into the biblical narrative. According
to one tradition, Balaara seeras to be a worshipper of the true
God (see xxii. 18 f.), who, in his ignorance of the fact that
Israel also worshipped Him, and in his readiness to gain royal
favor, would have cursed the people whora, in his obedience to
divine coraraand and as a true prophet (xxui. 5, 16), he really
blessed (xxiv. 15 ff.). Thus can Josephus style him fiams apm-
Tos. This older tradition is apparently followed by Deut. xxiii.
5 f. ; Josh. xxiv. 9, 10 ; Mic. vi. 5, and Neh. xiu. 2. The other ;
forra of tradition appears rather in Num. xxxi. 8, 16, and Josh.
xiii. 22 ; it afterwards became the view of the Talmudist
legends, and the accepted view of the New Testament in 2 Pet.
ii. 15 ; Jude 11 ; Eev. ii. 14. According to this tradition, »
Balaam was guilty of blasphemy and of attempts to seduce |
the IsraeUtes to fornication and idolatry.^ Certain elements
of parable and popular story have become intermixed with
the historical eleraents which underlie these traditions; and
the whole has then been wrought over by one author, viz., the
' Eeligion of Israel, I., p. 101. . |
2 That the prophets held the same view of the history of Israel as that given in
the historical books of the Old Testament, see passages like Hos. xii. 9; AmcM
ii. 10, iii. 1 f.; Mic. vi. 3, 4, vii. 20; Isa. xxix. 22.
2 Compare the commentary of Knobel, in loco.

THE LEGENDS OF SAMSON. 365
Jehovist to whom the composition of Num. xxii.-xxiv. is due.
The whole is, then, a compound, which cannot be regarded as
a fabrication of late date,i ora merely mythical account; but
which is not, on the other hand, to be treated as though it were
a perfectly trustworthy history of facts. So also in the case of
Samson, it is not to solar myths that we must refer the origin
of the narratives recorded in Judg. xiU.-xvi.^ The only real
basis for this flction of solar myths in the Book of Judges is
the derivation of the narae of the hero frora the Hebrew for
"sun" (mp, Shimshon-mn-'hke), — a. derivation which, says
Ewald,8 is conceivable, but by no means beyond doubt. The
simUarity between the nature and exploits of Samson and
those of the Greek Hercules is manifest;* but we may well
enough speak of Samson as the Israelitish Hercules without
regarding his history as raade up of raythical elements. In
this case also, the biblical narrative raust be regarded as made
up of traditions and legends which have an historical foundation,
and which are designed by the author, who has given them
their final grouping and redaction, to serve a purpose in the
general narrative of the national life. This purpose seems
closely connected with the developraent of the prophetic order.
There is no sufficient reason to doubt that a hero of iramense
brute strength and lawless life distinguished himself in the
defence of his nation against the Philistines, by exploits such
as are preserved in these traditions. It raay also be true, as
Stark ^ and Lenorraant^ suppose, that the general resistance of
the nation to the PhUistines has been to a certain extent per
sonified in Samson. On the one hand, we find these narratives
fuU of particularities which seem eminently historical in char
acter: on the other, we discover plain traces of that process of
exaggeration and poetizing to which the traditions have been
subjected. The author hiraself seems by no means insensible
1 See the prophecy of xxiv. 7, which Kurtz, Volck, and others claim could
not have arisen after the reign of Saul; compare article Bileam, in Herzog and
Plitt. 2 Compare Steinthal, Zeitschrift fiir Volkerpsydhologie, II. pp. 129 ff. ; and
Vatke, Bibl. Theol., I. p. 368 f. Kuenen (Eeligion of Israel, I. p. 307 f.) and Oort
(Bible for Learners, I. p. 414 f.) follow Steinthal even in his most ridiculous appli
cations of the mythical theory; for a criticism of some of these views, see Bleek,
Einl. in das A. T., p. 196 f.
2 History of Israel, II. p. 396, note.
» Compare Winer, Eealworterbuch, for points of similarity, and citations from
Apollodorus and Diodorus Sioulus.
5 Forschungen, pp. 156-160.
« Ancient History of the East, Philadelphia, 1871, 1, p. 125.

366 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
to the drollery of the stories he narrates, although the spirit
of national piety constantly controls this feeling.
Considerations like the foregoing becorae the more impor
tant when they are seen to appertain to some entire books of
the Old Testament. We have already i declared our adher
ence to the view that the Book of Jonah is designedly written
as an allegorico-didactic coraposition upon a certain basis of
historical fact. It does not, therefore, belong to the present
discussion, because it puts forth no claim to an historical char-
acter.2 Of books which do appear to claim this character, with
out evincing the characteristics necessary to place their claim
beyond reasonable doubt, we find in the Old Testament only
two ; viz., the book of Daniel (chaps, i.-vi.) and the Book of
Esther. The question of the historical character of the first
part of Daniel is, of course, closely connected with the question
of its date of composition. The following are some of the
more specifically historical difficulties which lead to the conclu'
sion that it raust be classed with such portions of Scripture as
are now under examination, rather than with those of more un
questionable historic trustworthiness. It is declared (i. 1) that
Nebuchadnezzar as king of Babylon besieged Jerusalem in the
third year of Jehoiakim : but from Jer. xxv. 1 and xlvi. 2 we
know that this monarch did not begin his reign until the fourth
year of the Jewish king ; and from Jer. xxxvi. 9 we learn that
in the ninth month of the fifth year of Jehoiakim the Chal
deans had not yet appeared before Jerusalem. The unverified
assumption of Rawlinson,^ that he might have taken this city
while only a satrap (called king by prolepsis), is thus excluded.
A sirailar confusion of chronology seems to exist when (ii. 1)
the dream of Nebuchadnezzar is placed in his second year as
monarch, although Daniel had been brought to Babylon at least
three years before (i. 5), araong the captives of the same mon
arch. We have already learned, however, that chronological
difficulties do not of themselves discredit the historical charac
ter of the narrative in which they occur. Nor need we dwell
upon the inherent improbabilities which are alleged agamst
statements Uke those of U. 48, Ui. 1-30, against the royal edict
of vi. 26 f., and against the conception of lions dwelling in a
dark stone cavern (vi. 18 f.). It can scarcely be denied that
1 See Part I., p. 66 f.
2 Compare the very satisfactory discussion in Bleek, Einl. in das A. T.,eo.
"Wellhausen, pp. 453-461.
2 Historical Illustrations, p. 159.

TIIE BOOK OF DANIEL. 367
the letter of chap, iv., in its change of person (23-30) as well
as its entire construction, is not strictly historical; and that
the Jewish and theocratic flavor of the aUeged language of
Nebuchadnezzar (iU. 29, iv. 1 f.) and Darius (vi. 26 f.), with its
reference to " signs and wonders " (compare the phrase " holy
gods," iv. 8, 9), suggests the author's iraagination as its source.
But then we raust reraeraber that the universal practice of both
Testaments, and of all the writers of antiquity, admits of giv
ing the speeches, and even the letters, of their historic person
ages in free and somewhat iraaginative form. This is, indeed,
the practice not only of all antiquity, but even of raore modern
times. It seems strange enough that Belshazzar is represented
(v. 11} as ignorant of Daniel, while the latter is represented
(viu. 27) as doing the business of this king even in the third
year of his reign, to say nothing of his famous services under
Nebuchadnezzar. But this discrepance is scarcely so serious as
that which occurs with reference to the first introduction of
David to Saul, and on account of which the Vatican MS. of
the LXX. has rejected 1 Sara. xvu. 12-31, 56-58, and xvUi. 1-5.
If, however, the latter case does not warrant us in abandoning
the entire Book of First Sarauel as unhistorical, the forraer case
of itself wiU not utterly discredit the Book of Daniel. The
lycoraania of Nebuchadnezzar, enduring through seven years,
cannot be confirraed by the reference to Berosus, as Hengsten
berg and KeU would have us suppose ; but, on the contrary,
the silence of Berosus concerning so wonderful an event tells
against the historical character of the narrative. ^ Moreover,
the Darius of Daniel, called (ix. 1, xi. 1) the Mede, and the
son of Ahasuems or Xerxes, is unknown to history : his person
seems rather quite excluded from history. Darius the son of
Hystaspes is indeed weU known ; and the story of his accession
to the Persian throne (521 B.C.), as given by Herodotus, has
been recently « confirmed in aU points and completed in some "
by the inscription on the great rock of Behistun.2 The narra
tive of Daniel presents its Darius as king not only of Chaldea,
but as great king of the Medo-Persian empire (see v. 31, vi. 2 f.
8, 26, ix. 1, xi. 1), and as predecessor of Cyrus the Persian.
The statement of Rawlinson, that he can "have been no more
1 Compare Josephus, Con. Ap., L 20. Not only are these two illnesses unlike,
but also their issue, - that spoken of in Berosus terminating in death. That no
appeal can be made to Berosus on this point, even Kliefoth admits.
- Lenormant, Ancient History, II. p. 102 f.

368 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
than a viceroy or deputy-king, a ruler set up by Cyrus," ^ seems
quite too rauch like a subterfuge. But abundant evidence has
been shown by Duncker ^ and others,^ that the raale line of the
Median kings perished when Astyages was dethroned by Cyrus,
and that the Persian rule in Babylon followed immediately
upon that of the last Chaldean king, Nabonahid. This testi
mony cannot be overcome by the abrupt notice in a fragment of
Abydenus ; especiaUy when we consider the character of this
writer, and the fact that the fragraent is wanting in Eusebius.
The hypothesis which identifies the Darius of Daniel with the
Cyaxares mentioned in Xenophon,* and which is as old as Jose
phus,^ is justly regarded as unsatisfactory by most modern crit
ics. The narae Ahasuerus=Xerxes is not the equivalent of
Astyages ; the Darius of Daniel is not represented as reigning
by favor of another ; and, as says Kautzsch,^ we are not justi
fied in preferring the novel of Xenophon to the history of
Herodotus, Berosus, and the Canon of Ptolemy. But especiaUy
difficult to reconcUe with the full historical character of Daniel
is the fact, that the names for the rausical instruraents of iii. 5 f.
15 are so purely Greek terras. These naraes cannot be referred
to a coraraon source for Greeks and Babylonians; nor, in the
opinion of corapetent 'authorities, could they have been known
to the latter in the tirae to which this history claims to belong.
The use of such terras as applying te the court of Nebuchad
nezzar, and without any explanation, seems impossible to recou:
cile with the historical character of this passage.^
We raust conclude, frora the foregoing and other similar con
siderations, that the historical character of Dan. i.-ri. does not
adrait of by any means complete vindication. But, on the
other hand, there is rauch in this book which even so competent
Orientalists as Oppert ^ and Lenormant ^ consider as showing a
marked knowledge of ancient Babylonian customs; and many
indirect proofs of historical accuracy are brought forward by
1 Historical Illustrations, p. 174. The inadequacy of this explanation even
Keil admits, Einl. in das A. T., p. 423.
2 Geschichte des Alterthums, 4te aufl., IV. p. 286 f.
8 Eawlinson, Ancient Monarchies, II. p. 418 f.
i Cyrop., I. 5, 2. 6 See Ant., "X. 11, 4.
<! Article Darius, in Herzog and Plitt.
7 The attempt of Hengstenberg to show that these words had a Semitic origin,
has turned out iU ; and the attempt of Keil aud Kliefoth to show that they entered
tho Hebrew through the Babylonians, no better.
8 Exp(5dition scientifique en Mesopotamie, 1863, 1.
" La divination et la science des presages tJiez les Chaldeens, 1875.

THE BOOK OF ESTHER. 369
writers Uke KeU^ and Rawlinson.2 it is possible, then, td hold
on historical grounds, with DeUtzsch, that the early ch&pters of
tbe Book of Daniel grew out of trustworthy traditioiis of Dan
iel Mmself. That there were such traditions of I>anifel as a wise
counciUor, the references of Ezekiel (xiv. 14, 20, xxviU. 3)
seem to prove. His person was a "darUiig subject" of the
later Hagada, as is shown by the traditions — such as those
of the rescue of Susanna, the unmasking of Bel and his priests,
the slaying of the dragon, and the feeding of Daniel in the den
of Uons by the prophet Habakkuk— which gathered around it.
Although, then, the present form of these chaptets came from a
writer in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and although the
historical eleraents cannot always with confidence be separated
from the accretions of tradition, legend, and desighed symbolisra,
we nevertheless seera warranted in recognizing the historical
character of the bopk in that liraited sense wMch belongs to
others of the class we have been examining.
As to the somewhat similar, but much less important, case of
Esther, a few words must suffice. All historical character has
been denied to this book on the ground that it contains various
p)lain offences against Persian custdms,^ and, indeed, " swarras
with iraprobabilities and irapossibUities." * But an exaraination
of these " irapossibUities " proves that they are largely of that
subjective order about which experts in history differ araongst
themselves. Thus Schrader urges against the Book of Esther,
that its author knows nothing of the expedition of Xerxes to
Greece, which would have to be placed between the third year
of his reign (i. 3) and the seventh (ii. 16) ; while Orelli ^ is
disposed to claim that the feasting spoken of in Esther is the
very one which Herodotus speaks of "^ as preceding this expedi
tion, and that by the king's absence the otherwise inexplicably
long interval between Vashti and Esther is explained. The
principal witness for the substantial accuracy of the raain event,
as narrated in the book, is the feast of Purira itself, ^Vhich is
first alluded to (2 Macc. iv. 3'6) as -ft MapSoxatK^ -qpepa. The Per
sian origin of this feaSt seeras certain; und the occasion of the
origin is certamly better su;pported by the narrative of Esther
than by the conjecture, forinstance, of Hitzig, who would derive
it from the Persian new year. Moreover, every thing which we
1 Einl. in das A. T., p. 425 f. 2 Historical Illustrations, p. 156 f.
8 So Schrader, De Wette's Einl. in das A. T., p. 397.
* Noldeke, Alttest. Lit., p. 83 f.
s Article Ester, in Herzog and PHSt. o VII. 8.
VOL. I. 2 A

370 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
have already learned concerning the nature of the most doubtful
of the historical contents of the Old Testament impels us to
reject all explanations that largely introduce myth-making or
conscious fraud. According to the probable view of Orelli, the
stateraents of the b(^ok itself (ix. 20-28 and 29-32) show that
the author looked upon Esther and Mordecai as characters be
longing to the reraote past, and drew Ms information concern
ing them from written or oral traditionary sources (compare x.
2). We shall probably never deterraine just how much admix
ture of historical error had entered these sources ; nor is the
ethical nature and canonical position of Esther such as to make
the inquiry iraportant.
We cannot fitly close the Ulustration of this branch of our
inquiry without defining our position toward that view of the
historical contents of the Old Testament, which, proposed by
Von Bohlen and Vatke raore than forty years since, and gaining
at first but little assent, has in recent tiraes " taken captive the
rainds of raany, and wrought iraportant changes in the whole
conception of Israelitish history." ^ The fuU discussion of this
view belongs to the work of Biblical Introduction. We might,
then, properly relegate it to those whose critical researches are
even raore fundaraental than those here undertaken. We frankly
confess our strong inclination, on grounds of religious conric-
tion, to be content with a suraraary judgraent unfavorable to
this view. But the thorough treatment of our general subject ,
brings us into contact with the theories of Kuenen at several
different points. The following remarks are especiaUy directed
toward the treatraent he gives to the historical books of the
Old Testaraent,^ — a treatraent in which he largely foUows the
earlier work of Graf.^ In depicting and estimating the trust
worthiness of Old-Testaraent history, the plan of Kuenen leads
hira to reverse the usual, and what we certainly raight call the
natural, method of procedure. Instead of patiently and care
fully constructing the earliest religious history of Israel h'om
the material given to us in the Mstorical books, and then fitting
into its place a true picture of Prophetisra in the eighth century
B.C., he is persuaded that the order of inquiry should be exactly
the opposite. In the beUef that " the accounts of the Mstorians
1 Words taken from the work, De Aaronitici Sacerdotii atque Thorae Elohisticae
Origine: Samuel Ives Curtiss, jun., Leipzig, 1878, p. 3.
2 Kellgion of Israel to the Pall of the Jewish State, 3 vols., London 18T1;
The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, London 1877.
8 Die geschichtlichen Biicher des Alten Testaments, Leipzig, 1866.

KUENEN ON THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 371
offer less certainty than the testimonies of the prophets thera
selves," ^ he proceeds to construct, largely by subjective consid
erations and assuraptions, a picture of Prophetisra in tMs era ;
he then makes use of this picture as a weapon, of destruction
against the historical narratives.
The present conffict of view regarding the Mstorical contents
of the Old Testament can be completely and satisfactorily settled
on critical grounds, only by foUowing the criticisifi of Kuenen
into its minutest detaUs. To his laethod and conclusions it is
enough for the present purpose to raake the foUowing general
objections. The avowed prejudice of this criticispi against the supernat
ural, and against all revelation, largely enters into and vitiates
its conclusions. "For us," says Kuenen,^ "the Israelitish is
one of these (the prinoipal) religions; nothing less, but also
nothing raore." And if we would gladly interpret these and
similar sayings as simple declarations of the universality of di
vine self'pevelation, and of the desire not to do injiistice to other
so-called " heathen religions," we ^re compeUed by aU the sub
sequent discussion to see that the author has in mind much
raore. For he himself convinces us that his intention is to strip
Mosaism and Prophetism of every element of supernaturalism ;
and to show how one nation of the earth happened, without any
divine election op any special cornnjunion with God, to develop
from a low form of fetichisni to a form of raonotheisra, wMch
was at the best extremely faulty, and essentially unUke that of
Christianity in the present day. Now, inasmuch as aU this is
exactly opposed, not only to the convictions of the Christian
consciousness, but also to v£|,Ud critical conclusions, and inas
much as it appears to contradict the moral integrity and au
thority of Jesus Christ, we are veiy suspicious of its aUeged
foundations. Moreover, the very conception of Prophetism in the eighth
century B.C. wMch Kuenen raakes the test of trustwortMness
in the historical books, is itself false and raisleading. This critic
refuses credence to aU this portion of the Old Testament, in
part because "the representation of the prophets and of prophecy
in the narratives of the Old Testament is not historical." 3 The
latter conclusion he reaches not only through Ms general aver
sion to aU claims of supernaturaUsm, but also because of what
1 Compare The Prophets, etc., pp. 32 f. and 386 f.
Eeligion of Israel, I. p. 5. 3 See Prophets, p. 404.

372 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
he considers an utterly irreconcilable discrepance between this
representation and his own conception of the later prophecy .1
But we have already seen reason to believe that the difference
in the Old-Testaraent representations of prophecy is simply a
difference between the earlier and the later stages in the same
supernatural process of divine self-revelation.^ Having consid
ered all the predictions of the later prophets either to have been
unfulfilled, or else to have been raere fortunate guesses upon
approaching events, Kuenen can, of course, complete his purely
naturalistic view of Hebrew prophecy, only by denying historical
accuracy to the accounts of the earlier prophets. The accounts
of their predictions were, as he holds, in every case made matter
of record after the fulfilment of the predictions themselves.^
Not less unsatisfactory is the entire conception and critical
treatment which this author accords to Mosaism. He indeed
adraits the Mstoric personality of Moses,* ascribes to him on the
ground of ancient tradition sorae " such a law as is contained in
the ten words," ^ praises Mra with rauch reserve for having "es
tablished the service of Jahveh among Ms people upon^a moral
footing,"^ and even assumes, -in deference to tradition, thatthe
Levites enjoyed a certain preference in respect to religious ser
vice in the time of Moses.''' Yet beyond these and a very few
sirailar points he refuses to ascribe historical trustworthiness to
the Old-Testaraent accounts of the Ufe and work of Moses. In
our opinion, tMs raethod of procedure results in standing the
pyraraid upon its apex. We find it utterly irapossible to account
for either the religion, the history, or the literature of Israel,
without ascribing much raore than tMs to Moses. We shall
subsequently show that the Pentateuch, and to a considerable
extent the laws and ritual of so-called Mosaisra, are an historic
growth which extended rauch beyond the time of Moses ; we
cannot doubt that the additions and redactions of a much later
date have becorae, to an extent quite difficult to determine,
incorporated with the original records. But Mosaism is quite
too concrete and personal an affair, it too rauch underlies and
influences every thing in the history df 'Israel from the tradi
tions and records which originated in the era of the great law
giver, to be thus resolved into thin air. The need of Mosaism
would be only all the more apparent, if with Kuenen we should
1 Prophets, p. 403. 2 Part I., chap. iv. ' Prophets, p. 388.
^ Eeligion of Israel, I. p. 272 f . 5 ibid., p. 285. « Ibid., p. 292
7 Ibid., p. 299.

KUENEN ON THE HISTORICAL BOOKS. 373
reject aU the narratives of divuie self-revelations and covenants
in the time of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and
then make the utterly unwarrantable assuraption that the Israel
ites in Goshen were adherents of a low form of fetich-worsMp.
Nor has this perverse view of Mosaism completed the task upon
which it has bestowed unUmited critical labor ; viz., proving
m mass the late and even post-exiUan origin of the so-caUed
Mosaic ritual and of the Levitical priesthood.2 And the more
we know of the antiquities both of Egypt and of Israel, the
more difficult is this self-appointed task likely to become.
Moreover, the alternative wMch Kuenen so often, either avow
edly or impUcitly, presents between " pure history " or no Mstory
at aU, between "acknowledging absolutely as history" or re
jecting as historical, is an uncritical alternative. To adopt it
throughout is to abandon criticism, and to despair of a substan
tially accurate knowledge of the past. It is the pressing of this
alternative wMch makes it possible for the destructive criticism
to change the face of history. This criticism thus points out
discrepancies or difficulties in the records it examines, calls at
tention to the subjective tendencies of the writer of each narra
tive as they Ue before us in the narrative itself, and then clears
the ground of all objective authority as to facts in order to cover
it again with conjecture as to what the facts should have been.
We find it, however, quite possible to admit the existence of
all the discrepancies, difficulties, and signs of subjective ira
pression, which the historical books of the Old Testaraent cer
taiiUy contain, and yet raake no substantial change in our
conception of the history of Israel. We acknowledge the
fact that these books contain " rautually conflicting narratives
alongside of each other," because the authors, finding raore
than one tradition or document, have foUowed "the Semitic
method of writing history," and given uncritically what they
have found.^ But tMs fact seeras to us to increase rather than
diminish our own opportunities for constructing a true history.
If it be true that the Chronicler has impressed Mmself upon
the utterances of the earlier characters wMch he narrates, we
are rather to say with Bertheau, that "he reproduces, in his
own fasMon and in his own words, the speech of the ancient
1 See Eeligion of Israel, I. p. 218 f. and 268 f.
2 See Graf, Die geschichtlichen Biicher des A. T., pp. 1-113; Kuenen, Eeligion
of Israel, IL chaps, vii. and viii.
' See Kuenen, ProphetSj p. 393 f.

374 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
prophets," than claim with Kuenen,^ that he has manufactured
both it and the historical setting in which it occurs. The fact
that the writei? of Kings has given the predictions of Ahijah,
Jehu, Elijah, and Elisha, in language partly his own, and not
precisely as they were uttered, does not render First and Sec
ond Kings unhistorical. The general credibUity of these books
is not destroyed by the fact that evidences of unchronological
arrangeraent raay be found in thera (2 Kings vi. 23 and 24).
Nor do all the rainute criticisms bestowed upon the writer of
Chronicles, and all the corabined evidences of his relatively
large prejudice and small accuracy in detaUs, invahdate the
general historic trustworthiness of Ms work. In all such cases,
however, the true criticism of sacred history delights to dwell
upon the largest possible residuum of fact. To enlarge this
residuura, it evokes the utmost care and loving pains-taking;
it is glad to build, if it must be only with fragments and scat
tered bits of inforraation. Moreover, since ^^ probability" is so
frequent a guide with Kuenen in denial, we are the readier to
make it a guide in affirmation, although, of course, only with
such degree of confidence as properly belongs to each particu
lar degree of probabUity. Nor can we be blamed if we prefer
to govern our conception of probability raore by the objective
testiraony of venerable tradition than by the quite purely sub
jective standards of some of our modern critics.
But, finally, it cannot be denied, that our decision upon all
such questions of history raust be largely influenced by the
decision arrived at as to the date and raanner of the compo
sition of the Old-Testaraent books. " No one will deny," says
Kuenen,^ " that our conception of Israel's reUgious history
entirely depends upon our verdict on the Old Testament;"
and again,^ " A real history of religious ideas in Israel has been
rendered possible, for the first tirae, by the modern chronolo
gical arrangeraent of the books of the Old Testament." Only
upon a few points, however, can it be said that the arrange
ment which is needed to satisfy the very strenuous demands
of Kuenen has been consented to by critics of different convic
tions upon the religious questions involved. The general prin
ciple which this critic insists upon applying almost everywhere
is, that the residuum of fact in the historical books is very
small, because they have themselves been in fact so largely
¦¦ Ibid., p. 397. Compare Graf, Die geschichtlichen Biicher, p. 14fi t
s Eeligion of Israel, I. p. 13. s Ibid., p. 15.

THE TRUE AIM OF GOSPEL HARMONY. 375
constructed by the " subjectivity " of their authors. TMs prin
ciple does double duty: it proves the earliest histories to be
largely of late origin, and then proves them to be unhistorical
in character. Thus is Kuenen ready, on confessedly very
slight evidence, to extend the raethod of his conjectural Deu-
teronoraist, not only over the entire Pentateuch, but also over
the books of Judges, Sarauel, and Kings.^ These histories
have, in his opinion, been largely constructed subjectively by
later prophetic redactors iu the same manner in wMch the
priestly redactors, such as the author of Chronicles and others,
have much more vitiated the earlier biblical books.^ Thus it
may be said of all alike, " The priestly and the prophetical
historians agree in this, that Mstory is for them a means, not
an end." In the field of critical inquiry into the nature of
the Mstorical books, raust the attacks of criticisra against theU
validity be faitMuUy raet. But it is quite too much, mean
time, to require, on the basis of so much conjecture, an utter
reversal of opinion respecting these sources of Jewish history.
It is still a long road frora such conjecture to the unqualified
conclusion of Kuenen, " We cannot follow the guidance offered
to us by the historical books." ^
By far the most important inquiry touching the Mstorical
verity of those contents of the Bible which lay claim to this
verity, concerns the narratives of what was said and done by
Jesus Christ. And upon these narratives all the energies of
criticisra are ready to expend themselves, whether in attack or
m defence. So far as is necessary to Ulustrate our view of the
nature of the bibUcal history, and of the proof which the Ms
torical contents of the Bible furnish for the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture, the foUowing points must be kept prominently in
mind: —
The vital question of the Gospel Mstory always remains sun
ply this: whether it is possible from the Four EvangeUsts to
construct a tolerably complete and scientifically defensible
narrative of the life, work, doctrme, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. To construct such a narrative is the true end
of Gospel harmony. To place in juxtaposition, and to subject
to comparative exegesis, the passages supposed to be paraUel,
with a view to showing their harmony or lack of harmony in
I See Prophets, p. 435 f.
2 Ibid., p. 428 f.; and Eeligion of Israel, IL, 157-173, 192-201.
8 Eeligion of Israel, I., p. l(i.

376 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
details, is a subordinate and relatively unimportant work ; i it
is work important chiefly as a raeans to the end ; that end is
to possess a coraplete and historically true knowledge of Christ.
The so-caUed destructive criticisra, whether raytMcal or of the
" tendency " prder, has at least accoraplished this good : it has
corapelled ortbodoxy to the confession that it cannot be scien
tific without rendering such an account of its historical sources
as shall stand the tests of raodern criticism. To make any
genuine atterapt at harraony is, then, to endeavor to find the
one true Gospel which preceded our Gospels, and wMch, as
preserved in raeraory, oral tradition, and written records, lies
at the foundation of the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John.2
It is, without doubt, the narratives of the rairacles in the
Gospels which have given, and stiU give, the chief grounds for
denying the general historical character and substantial Mstor
ical accuracy of the Gospels. Before real Mstorical criticism
had arisen, in the first half of the eighteenth century, Enghsh
Deism 2 refused to accept the miracles of the New Testament ,;
as historically credible. By vindicating the general fact that
Jesus wrought miracles, as proofs of Ms claim to Messiahship,
and as expressions of Ms divine Messianic power and grace,
the basis for accepting the general historical credibUity of the
Synoptic Gospels — both in their concurrent and in their un
contradicted individual testimony — is at once firmly laid. We
cannot, however, go so far as does Ebrard,* and claim that,
if the one point of the possibility of the supernatural is pre
supposed, then all the Gospel history is at once seen to be full
of unity and harraony. Zockler traces^ the modern critical
and scientific raethod, as it issues frora one point, and, divid
ing upon the question of the supernatural, forms itself into the
negative and destructive or the positive and apologetic school,
to the lectures of Schleiermacher on the Life of Jesus (deUvered j
1 Compare article Evangelien-harmonie, Herzog and Plitt.
2 It is in place here only to refer to the fact, that the course of Gospel harmony
from the Eeformation down to the close of the last century, by its neglect of that
broader view which was taken by Augustine and Calvin, and by its painful efforts
to apply to the facts the post-Eeformation dogma of inspiration, was largely the
cause of the worst forms of destructive criticism.
8 Especially Woolston, A Discourse of the Miracles of oiu- Saviour; andChuhb,
The True Gospel of Jesus Christ.
^ Wissenschaftliche Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte, Frankfurt, 1868, p
781. ' Article Jesus Christus, Herzog aud Plitt.

WORTHLESSNESS OF EXTRA-BIBLICAL SOURCES. 377
from 1819 onward several times in Berlin, but not published
untU thirty years after his death), and to those of Hase on the
History of Jesus (given in 1823 and 1824 in Tiibingen, and 1828
in Leipzig, and pubUshed repeatedly up to 1876). Our previous
discussion of the miracles in the life of Christ raay here be
referred to as evincing the possibUity of a genuinely Mstoric
account of his life which shaU represent Mra as working mir
acles. TMs possibUity, then, involves the general credibiUty of
our Synoptic Gospels.
For our Mstory of the origin of CMistianity, we are com
peUed to rely almost wholly upon the Gospels and the collateral
evidence of the other New-Testament writings. Neither favor
able nor unfavorable critics appeal to any extra-biblical writ
ings wMch can be used to test the Mstorical character of the
biblical.! The notices of early CMistianity by Tacitus,^ Sue
tonius,^ and PUny ; * the Mnts contained in Lucian, Celsus, and
other opponents of Christianity ; the comparison of Jesus with
the wise Socrates, wMch is contained in the alleged letter of
Mara to Serapion ; the letter of Abgar of Edessa, contained in
Eusebius,^ — all these neither supplement nor correct the Gos
pels. The aUeged witness of Josephus,® although found in all
the MSS. and in Eusebius, is doubtless spurious; since it is
antecedently very iraprobable, and since Celsus designates this
writer as an unbeUever in Christ, wMle Origen aUudes to his
silence. It is not unprobable, however, that sorae brief aUusion
to Jesus ui tMs passage, like that to Jaraes in Ant. XX. 9, 1,
may have corae frora the hand of Josephus, and raay thus
haye inrited the mterpolation wMch was raade by sorae later
writer. The apocryphal Gospels, even the oldest and most
trustworthy, are of littie or no direct and independent value ;
for, as Keim 7 has said, "At the end of a hundred years after
; Christ, every independent and reaUy valuable tradition concern-
¦ log this life, outside of the Gospels, is extmguished." AU the
apocryphal Christian vmtmgs do, however, afford by contrast
strong corroborative testimony to the Mstoric trustwortMness
; of .the canonical writings. The latter manifestly do not have
; many things which would mevitably be found in them were
' these writings not of the nature of history from original and
, trustworthy sources. The absence in the Gospels of aU allusion
^ Compare the discussion in Weiss, Leben Jesu, I. pp. 22 ff.
' 4 ^™-t^'.5"^" **' compare Hist., V. 5. s Nero, 16; Claud. 25.
7 T^' ^•^' ^- ' ^'^*- ^'"'^- I- 13- 8 Aut , xvm. 3, 3.
J.ne History of Jesus of Nazara, London, 1873, 1, p. 45.

378 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
to later controversies ; the fact that no declarations are put into
the mouth of Jesus upon raany questions which were of great
interest to the Church even in the days of the apostles (such
as heathen deities, idolatry, the mission of Christ to the under
world) ; the fact that none of the many designations for God
which are favorite with Justin, Athenagoras, and Tatian, appear
in the Gospels, — these and other siraUar facts of the canonical
writings, when contrasted with the phenoraena of the apocry
phal, evince the historical character of the former. The further
fact, that the later spurious Gospels do not add new groups of
miracles to those which are early and genmne shows how early
the tradition of Christ's wonders had become fixed.^ Of a
certain subordinate value are a few ancient traditions not found
in the Gospels : such are the narratives concerning the choice
of the apostles, and concerning the resurrection and the ascen
sion, in the Epistle of Barnabas (chaps, v. and xv.), the utter
ances ascribed to Papias and preserved in Eusebius, the tradi
tion in Justin Martyr about the birth of Jesus in a cave,^ and
especially the trustworthy account of the woman taken m
adultery (John vii. 53 f.).^
And yet it must not be forgotten, in considering the his
torical character of the Synoptic Gospels, how varied and
thrifty a previous Christian Uterature is UnpUed in their very
construction. The Mnts which are given to us on the authority
of Luke (i. 1 f.) are confirmed and ampUfied by uitemal criti
cisra. This criticism shows that the construction of these
Gospels implies a considerable and complex process of prerious
writing, as a basis for the results which follow the culminatmg
of tMs process. Short written notices of the sayings of Jesus,
with or without a narrative of accompanying circumstances;
other longer writings which attempted to arrange these notices
according to sorae ideal plan of the author ; shorter and longer
accounts of the deeds of Jesus, and especiaUy of those miracks
which had been grouped together in fact or in the preaching
of the apostles ; a selective and critical judgraent exercised by
those inforraed, either as being themselves dUect witnesses or
as having learned the truth through such witnesses, — must all
have preceded the accomplishment of the earliest of our Gos-
1 Compare, upon these and similar points, Huidekoper, Indirect Testimon; to
the Gospels.
2 Dial. 0. Tryph., 78.
8 For a criticism of these sources, see Keim, Ibid., I. Introduction.

THE GOSPELS CORROBORATED BY PAUL. 379
pels.i Yet aU this process consists in forming Mstoric records
wMch must have been somewhat sifted, so to speak but which
must have reached back for their origin to a brief time atter
the ascension of Christ, and thus have been forraed in a kinc^
of dependence upon the knowledge and judgment of the most
competent witnesses.
The histories are stiongly corroborated, and to some extent
supplemented, by the Episties of Paul: "than whom, says
Keim, "we have no earlier witness ; " who must have had the
life of Jesus fuUy in his view, and whose "knowledge did not
consist kl a bUnd tiaffic in unexamined CMistian tradition,"
but was obtamed "by a clear, keen, searching, and questioning
consideration, comparison, collection, and collation of such
materials as were accessible to him.^ And Weiss even goes
so far as to assert unqualifiedly, that our CMistian faith would
remain in aU important particulars the same, if it had pleased
God to deprive us, by the utter loss of the Gospels, of aU power
of sketcMng a detaUed picture of the eartMy Ufe of Jesus. For,
in the opinion of this critic, the apostoUc preaching is quite as
likely as the Gospels to be a valid historical source of informa
tion upon the main facts of Christianity, wMle its doctrine of
the person of Christ is the one which has served as the his
torical foundation for the religious consciousness of the Chris
tian Church.^ How true is the above-mentioned claim of
Keim, may be seen when we reraeraber who Paul was, that he
was converted as early as 36-38 A.D., and that he had in all
probabiUty seen and heard the Lord. The writings of this
apostle, for the tuost part, assume rather than rehearse the facts
of Christ's Ufe ; and yet even his tendency to systematize and
allegorize these facts indirectly corroborates thera. (Compare
1 Cor. xi. 1 f., XV. 1-3 ; Gal. in. 1 f. ; 1 Cor. U. 6 f.) How well
known to Paul was much history which has not come down to
us in the Gospels, but which is like the history fourid in them,
we may judge from Ms account of the Last Supper (see 1 Cor.
xi. 23 f.), and of the resurrection (1 Cor. xv.). Minute his
toric traces of the facts and words of Jesus appear not rarely
in his writings, sorae of which are quite too independent not
to suggest Ms minute knowledge of the whole Mstory. (Com
pare 1 Cor. vU. 10, ix. 14 ; 1 Thess. iv. 15, v. 2 ; Rom. x. 10,
xu. 14.) It is through Paul, by a raere chance, — one might
1 Compare Bleek, Einl. in das N. T., ed. Mangold, Berlin, 1875, § 19 f.
" Ibid., I. p. 52. 8 Leben Jesu, I. p. 15 1. and 23 f.

380 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE
think, — that we have preserved to us the saying of Christ
recorded Acts xx. 35. Indeed, all Ms loftiest doctrines and
speculations concerning the nature and office of the Redeemer
are saturated with the sarae facts wMch are given to us in
historic forra by the Gospels.
And what is true of the writings of Paul is, to a greater or
less extent, true of all the other writings of the New Testament:
they presuppose a firra knowledge of the fundaraental facts of
the Gospels. In the Epistle to the Hebrews (compare u. 17,
iv. 15, V. 7 f.), in the Epistle of Peter (ii. 21), and in the Reve
lation of John (v. 5 f., xvii. 14, xxu. 16, and frequently), the
history underlies the exhortation and doctrine. The fulness
with wMch the Book of Acts (especially in chaps. i.-iu. and
x.-xiii. and in the speeches of iv. 8-12, 23^31, v. 29 f., vii.)
rehearses the raain facts of the life of Jesus needs simply to be
mentioned. For these writings, as for the Gospels themselves,
only the credibility of the Mstory itself can satisfactorily ac
count. As to the main facts of this Mstory, there is everywhere
a coraplete agreeraent of the witnesses^
Nor can we faU to insist upon the truth, that the impossibil-.
ity of accounting for the Gospels at aU, otherwise than by the
theory of their substantial historical credibUity, adds weight to
the positive arguraent in their behalf, " The four Evangels^"
says Ebrard,^ " were scarcely brought down frora heaven ready'-
made, Uke the Koran, by the Angel Gabriel in a single night"
In order to understand how these Gospels actually did origi
nate, a lively view of the concrete fact and distinctively real
nature of the early CMistian life is absolutely indispensable.
The stories of what Jesus had done and said must have been
often repeated in the gatherings of Ms first followers. A pro
cess of selection went on unconsciously, and resulted in the
perraanent fixing of certain narratives, and groups of narra
tives. It was not critical insight, or historical curiosity, or
dograatic interest, which priraarily controUed this process of
selection : it was the siraple desire to know what Jesus had said
and done, with a view to Christian edification, according to the
siraple but pressing needs of the early Christian life. This
Christian life was in every respect unfavorable to a legendary
or raythical origin of the histories which it employed in its own
edification. The possibility being once admitted that such an
one as Jesus Christ lived, and wrought miracles, there is no
1 Kritikf etc., p. 785 f.

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS OF THE GOSPELS. 881
other theory to account for the narratives of these miracles
coraparable to that which accepts the alleged facts.^ The over
worked and worn theories which have tried to carry the burden
of the facts, without admitting the a priori possibility of their
occurrence, may fitly roU their burden off upon the firm ground
of historic truth.
Yet not all parts «ven of the Synoptic Gospels can equally
claim, on grounds of historical credibiUty, to be accepted as
authentic. Especially indubitable is the claim made by those
essential elements and features of Christ's Ufe in which all
these Gospels agree. For such elements embody the earliest
apostoUc preaching to the first congregations of believers.
Among such are the following : the preparation for the work
(Matt. Ui. 1-iv. 11 ; Mark i. 1-13 , Luke iU. 1-iv. 13) ; the nar
rative of the return from Judaea to GalUee, and of the subse
quent miracles and teaching (Matt. iv. 12-xvui. 35 ; Mark i.
14-ix. 50; Luke iv. 14-ix. 50); the narrative ofthe journey to
Jerusalera to the passover (though with a large variation on
the part of Luke) ; and finally the narrative of the death and
resurrection. No chronological arrangement of tMs material
can, however, raake the same claim to Mstoric verity which be
longs to the material itself. Yet even with regard to the chron
ological arrangement, common consent estabUshes the principal-
points. Thus aU agree to give, in substantially the same cMon-
ological order, -the preachmg of John Baptist, the baptism and
temptation of Christ, the beginning of Ms ministry in GalUee,
and the series of discourses and events recorded. Matt. xvi. 13-
xviu. 9; Mark vui. 27-ix. 50; Luke ix. 18-50. Couplets of
narratives also appear m aU the Gospels as though bound to
gether by firm historical connection in time. Such are the
stiUing of the sea, and the heaUng of the Gadarene deraoniacs
(Matt. vui. 18-34, and parallel passages) ; the heaUng of the
woman with a bloody issue, and the raising of the daughter of
Jairus (Matt. ix. 18^26). A marked agreement as to the
events imraediately preceding the death of Jesus (corapare
Matt. XX1.-XXV.; Mark xi.-xiU.; Luke xix. 29-xxi. 38) shows
how clear and firra in aU respects is the history of this irapor
tant epoch ; scarcely less irapressive is the essential agreeraent
as to the passion of our Lord. The agreeraent and discrepan
cies in detaUs of the -narratives of the resurrection are such as
are psychologically expUcable only on the basis of the belief
1 Compare Tholuck,- Glaubwurdigkeit, pp. 86-113.

382 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
that Jesus really rose from the dead, and do not leave without
sufficient historic support tMs culminating Christian doctrine.
Nor, in the lack of our information as to precisely how the dif
ferent authors obtained and used their material, can we fauly
throw doubt (for tMs cause alone) upon those narratives which
are given by only one or two of the Synoptistfe. Material pecu
liar to one author is found least of all in Mark, who has of such
raaterial only the two miracles of healing (vii. 32-37 and riii.
22-26), and the sketch of a parable given iv. 26-29. In this
connection, the long account which Luke gives of the last jour
ney to Jerusalera (ix. 51-xviU. 14) must be noticed as espe
ciaUy remarkable.
All the coraplex phenoraena of variation and coincidence do
not prevent us from maintaining fearlessly the position, that
Matthew, Mark, and Luke furnish a substantially accurate, and,
for the purpose of founding the Christian truth in Mstory, ^
sufficiently coraplete, narrative of the life of Jesus CMist upon
the earth. We cannot maintain tMs position, however, without
conceding the three following points ; (1) The nature of the
history is such, that narratives of miracles may be treated as
having only such claira to credibUity 0,s belongs to the narra
tives in general. (2) The accurate chronological arrangement
of the separate events in the life of our Lord is impossible,
and was not knovTu by the writers of the Gospels themselves.
(3) The different narratives are written frora different pomts
of view, and with different authorial peculiarities of subject-
matter and style ; and they cannot be freed from the charge of
discrepancies in details. To withhold these concessions is al
most as damaging to a secure critical estimate of the Mstory as
to withhold our consent from the main position of the general; ¦
credibility of this Mstory.
Although we cannot claim the same kind and degree of evi
dence for the historic£i,l character of the narratives of the child
hood of Jesus, we are by no pieans bound to deny them such a
character altogether. The considerations wMch seem most to
oppose the trustworthiness of the two accounts are, first, the
difficulty of reconcUing Matt. U. with Luke U. 39 (wMch seems
to demand the iraraediate return of the faraily to Nazareth);
and, secondly, the ease with which such traditions of the early
years of Jesus might have arisen as myths upon the basis oi
passages from the Old Testaraent. Araong such Old-Testament
passages are Num. xxiv. 17 ; Hos. xi. 1 ; Jer. xxxi. 16; Isa. xi-

HARMONY OF THE SYNOPTISTS AND JOHN. 383
1 (r^: = Na^ioparos). But, in reference to this point, Zockler
justly remarks, that only the passage from Numbers can be shown
to have been esteemed Messianic in character previous to the
coming of Christ, and that the reference of Matthew to the
other passages must be attributed to Ms understanding of
historical facts, ratlier than held to account for a manufacture
of aUeged facts to suit an assumed meaning. Moreover, a
comparison of the narrative of Matthew with the apocryphal
myths of the birth and cMldhood of Jesus makes an impression
exceedingly favorable to the authenticity of this portion of the
Gospel. In reference to the above-mentioned chronological
difficulty, we may interpolate a brief visit to Egypt immedia,tely
following the circumcision (Luke ii. 21), and preceding the
ceremonial presentation of U. 27. It raay also be clairaed posi
tively, that the circurastantiality of some of these narratives is
not compatible with their mythical origin. We conclude, then,
although with less critical assurance than belongs to the prin
cipal part of the mmistry of our Lord, that the accounts of the
childhood of Jesus are substantiaUy true traditions.
It must be confessed, however, that the substantial harmon
izing of the Synoptic accounts, and the construction from thera
of a veritable Mstory of Jesus Christ, would be comparatively
free from critical and historical difficulties, if only the Gospel
of John might be left out of the account. This, however, we
have neither power nor incUnation to do ; especially so long as
we hold the view that the beloved disciple was the author of
tMs writing. The question pf the historical character of our
sources for the life of Jesus is, then, very closely connected
with the question of the genuineness and authenticity of the
Fourth Gospel. This latter question wUl be briefly considered
in other connections. At present we can only acknowledge
the great difficulties which emerge in the effort to establish
criticaUy the fuU historic trustworthiness both of John and of
the Synoptic Gospels ; whUe, at the same time, we affirra that
these difficulties raay be better explained on the theory of the
genuineness of the Fourth Gospel than in any other way. We
cannot doubt that the last of the EvangeUsts gives the Ufe
of Jesus frora a different point of view frora the other three :
we may even say, — in the very intent to affirm its Mghest
truthfulness, — that his Gospel is raore ideal and less historical,
m the narrower sense, than the other three. The siraple, popu
lar, and sketchy histories of the deeds and shorter discourses

384 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of Jesus, stand in plain contrast with the raysticaUy deep, re
flective, and serai-philosophic presentation of -the person of
CMist. The contrast has always attracted attention. But
raodern criticisra has much modifled and enlarged our concep
tion of this contrast ; it has also exaggerated it into a seeming
incorapatibility with the Johannean authorship of John. It
has furtherraore increased the critical difficulties by exploring
and setting in -array the objective arguraents and testimonies.
The critical difficulties are indeed raany, and some of them
seem for the time insuperable. And yet for any critical theory
these difficulties exist and persist : they are rauch increased,
rather than at all diminished, by denying either the historical
character of the Synoptic Gospels or the genuineness of John.
For him who has no invincible prejudice against the supernatu
ral in history, or the Church view of the person of Christ, it
appears both mote tenable on critical grounds, and incompar
ably more grateful to the Christian consciousness, to accept the
favorable conclusions of writers like Meyer, Luthardt, Bey
schlag, Zockler, Weiss, and Godet.
As to the possibiUty of constructing a Mstory of Christ's life
upon the basis of all four Gospels, we raust reraeraber, that the
difficulties involved are not so rauch due to any direct discrep
ancies of fact between John and the Synoptists, as to the more
signiflcant discrepancy in point of view, and m the employment
of sources. No other so good account of this raost significant
discrepancy can be given as that which considers the Synoptic
Gospels to be coraplex growths frora oral tradition and written
sources, but the Fourth Gospel to be the direct product of re
flective insight frora an eye-and-ear witness. As to its material,
there are only four particulars of the public rainistry of Jesus
in Galilee given by the Gospel of John ; viz., the miracle at
Cana (U. 1-11), the healing at Capernaura (iv. 46-54), the feed
ing of the five thousand, and the Tvalking on the sea, with the
subsequent discourses (vi. 1-77). Of tliese, the last two, though
without the discourses, are given in the Synoptists ; and possi
bly, though not probably, the second also.^ In this common
material the amount of discrepancy is not surprising. The most
marked difference is in the discourses of Jesus. The fact that
one entire -class of miracles — viz., the heaUng of demoniacs—
conspicuous in the Synoptic Gospels is wanting in John, and
1 That John iv. 47-54 is parallel with Matt. viii. 6-f . and Luke vii. 2 f., was lieU
by Irenaeus.

HARMONY OF THE SYNOPTISTS AND JOHN. 385
the absence from the Synoptists of aU mention of the raising of
Lazarus, are indeed surprising. Of the few cases in which we
seem compeUed to make a definite choice, and assign superior
weight to the testiraony either of the Synoptists or of John, the
two foUowing may be mentioned. (1) The activity of Jesus
was not confined to GalUee previous to the last passover ; but
he repeatedly visited Jerusalem at the feasts, although the
silence of the Synoptists, and the fact that they leave no space
for these visits, seera to show their ignorance of such visits.
Aside from the probabiUties of the case, certain incidental
proofs of John's conception of the Mstory of Christ seem to be
embodied in the traditions of the other Gospels.^ Such are the
utterances of Christ regarding Jerusalem (Matt, xxiii. 37 ; Luke
xiU. 34) ; the fact that Joseph of Arimathea is mentioned as a
disciple of Jesus (Matt, xxvii. 57 f., and parallel places) ; and
the fact that Luke x. 38 f. shows our Lord in close personal
relations with Mary and Martha. (2) If we admit a real dis-
crepancy between John and the Synoptists with respect to the
nature of the Last Supper, and the date of Jesus' death, we have
stUl a choice to raake between the two. It is, indeed, very
difficult to see how the Apostle John could be raistaken in such
a matter ; and sorae raodern critics, as Bleek,^ have atterapted
to establish his stateraent as against that of the Synoptists.
But in the view of Mangold,^ the editor of the last edition of
Bleek, and in the view of raany critics, the arguments of Keira *
in favor of the statement of the Synoptists are conclusive. We
can only pronounce it one of the unsolved questions of Gospel
harmony. And the prime question of the controversy is still
unanswered, — whether there is on this point a real discrepancy
between John and the Synoptists.
We omit all consideration of the Mstorical character of the
Book of Acts, because such consideration is not needed to illus
trate the principles with which we are deaUng. The following
summary of conclusions involves our answer to the raain ques
tion : Are the alleged histories of Sacred Scripture really his
torical ?
We have m the Bible alleged Mstorical accounts which cover
most wonderful and interesting events frora the creation of raan
to the complete founding of the Christian Church under the
preaching of the aposties. These accounts, if their substantial
1 See Bleek, Einl. in das K. T., p. 205. 2 Ibid., p. 209 f.
« Ibid., note, p. 215. i Geschichte Jesu, III. p. 469 f.
VOL. L 2 B

586 THE DOCTRLNTE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
trustworthiness can be proved, form a tolerably complete sur
vey of the progress of God's kingdom upon earth, so far as this
kingdora has its seat in the religions of Judaism and Christian
ity. The credibility of the Mstorical contents of the Bible is,
then, of the greatest concern, not only to the general doctrine
of Sacred Scripture, but also to all the doctrines of our Chris
tian faith. Yet this credibility must be tested by all the severest
scrutiny of historical criticisra ; and it can, from the nature of
the case, admit only of such probable evidence as shall make
conclusive the substantial accuracy of the narratives exammed.
Uncertainty, discrepancy as to details, admixture of error, be
long to all records, — belong, it would seem, of necessity even
to the records of the developraent of the kingdom of God.
We have in the Bible the alleged history of a course of
divine self-revelation ; and therefore the facts of this history are
largely to be attributed to supernatural origin. The material
of the history is of a pecuUar kind : it is such, that, if it be
material of truth, it imparts a sanctity to its own substantially,
true record. But, while certain eleraents of the history have
their roots in the supernatural, we have no proof that the
knowledge of this raaterial — as bare facts of history — was
ever supernaturally given to those who record it. The alleged
facts of history wMch the bibUcal writers record became known
to them, as facts, in the ordinary and natural way : they learned
them, that is, from tradition and written documents whenever
a raore direct witness could not be secured. That the above
stateraent is true of all the earUest portions of the general
history, our exaraination has clearly shown. And yet the spirit
of ethical and religious revelation, which wrought in Israel and
in Christianity, largely controlled even the raost ancient and
uncertain traditions. It did not add wholly new truth to these
traditions ; but it did rauch to purify thera from error, both as
to fact and as to inference.
The large office of tradition in laying the foundations of cer
tain sections of biblical history cannot, therefore, be overlooked.
The history of the Bible goes back into those misty regions from
which we see all human history emerge. And, if we complain
that such traditions are incomplete and unsatisfying, the answer
must be : They are all we have, and God has used them to
begin the record of his dealings .with men. He has used them,
however, in such sort, that, while the religious truth is imparted
through them, the traditions are in every case left to stand for

GENUINENESS OF HISTORICAL CONTENTS. 387
what they are proved to be worth. Even the historic truths
of the Gospel corae to us largely with tradition as their source.
But the case of the traditions of the New Testaraent is far
different from that of the traditions of Genesis, or of Balaam,
Sarason, Esther, and Daniel. The former were largely shaped
by inspired eye-and-ear witnesses, were developed in the full
Ught of competent inspection, were speedily recorded, and are
corroborated by their internal probabiUty, by the Christian
consciousness, and by the existence of the Christian Church.
Thus do we have a firra Mstoric foundation laid as a centre of
faith in precisely the position where the stronghold of doctrine
and of life raust be built. On the other hand, it by no means
follows that the doctrines- of the creation and the fall of man,
of the right relations between man and woraan, of an early
divine proraise of rederaption to the race, pass away because
we are in doubt as to the origin, nature, and critical value of
those early traditions. But these doctrines have not laid their
foundations in actual and demonstrable history in the same
raanner as the doctrine of the person and work of Christ.
With the exceptions already raentioned, and other sirailar
ones which do not change the main conclusion, we may affirm
with confidence the genuine historical character of the historical
contents of the Bible. And how much tMs affirraation means,
only he who is both a Christian and a student of ancient history
can appreciate. He who best knows how little — absolutely
nothing — outside of the Bible there is to take its place, as
furnishing a substantially true account of the central reUgious
development of mankind, wUl most abundantly praise the di
vine goodness for what the Bible affords. Let us consider that
the bibUcal history is indispensable to all the blessings which we
have from revelation in the highest forra of Christianity itself.
We may weU dispense with smaU cavUUngs over the entrance
of uncertam traditions into some portions of Sacred Scripture,
when we duly appreciate the fact that even these traditions
have brought to us the germs and first-fruits of precious moral
and religious truth. And that those who, with keen insight
into this truth, so gathered and disposed and recorded these
traditions, and aU the other portions of the sacred history, had
with them the Spirit of the Eternal Guide of huraan destiny,
It would be not simply undevout, but unfair and churiish, to
deny. The second of the two inquiries, the answer to which must

388 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
determine our view of the nature of bibUcal history, is this:
What degree of accuracy, or kind of alleged infaUibihty,
belongs to the genuinely historic portions of the Bible ? Two
sources for a reply are opened by the two forms of historical
criticism, — the external and the internal. In both forms proba
bUity is frequently our safest and only guide to a choice between
conflictmg testimonies. We may compare the records of the
Bible with profane records, or we raay corapare one account
of the Bible with another. The former raethod of comparison
is most avaUable with certain portions of the Old Testament,
where rauch new Ught is now shining frora archaeological dis
coveries, and where the internal discrepancies are relatively
fewer ; the latter in the case of the New Testaraent, where
little opportunity exists for comparison with extra-biblical his
tories, and where the discrepancies are both more striMng and
more important.
Recent discoveries have given the means of iUustrating the
historical accuracy of even so ancient traditions as those of
the life of Abraham. Of Gen. xiv., Ewald declares that it is
the "oldest extant record respecting the patriarch," in which
" we see him in the clear light of Mstory." ^ The narrative
has, indeed, such raarks of high antiquity and trustworthiness
that it raay be thought of as derived from some document
contemporaneously written, which looked upon Abrahami, the
Israelitish hero, frora a Canaanitish point of view.^ It is con
firraed by extra-biblical sources, wMch, although they furnish
no account of a corresponding event, show clearly that about
this tirae Elara raay very likely have been extending its cam-
paignings over the West ; and which also give us both parts
of the narae Chedor-laoraer (Kudur, narae of several Elamite
kings ; and Laoraer, a divinity) as historical and not mythical
words. Of internal objections to its trustworthiness there are
none of account ; since it is nowhere iraplied that Abraham met
the raain body of the allied forces, and defeated them in open
battle, and since his entire conduct on this occasion accords
with his character. To regard the narrative as a mythical
attempt to glorify Abraham as a warrior (Noldeke), or as a
generous hero under divine protection, is wholly arbitrary.
The attempt of Oort to reduce it to an untrustworthy legend
I " A fragment torn from a more general history of Western Asia; " see His
tory of Israel, I. p. 308.
2 Compare Dillmann, Die Genesis, in loco.

THE TRADITIONS OF ABRAHAM. 389
by pointing out the symbolic nature of the naraes of the hostile
kings is without warrant.^ The separate incidents and the his
torical setting of the narrative of Gen. xii. 10-20 (if we except
the calculated age of Sarah) appear true to history, and betray
an accurate knowledge of Egyptian affairs. The reason for
this journey of Abraham (a famine) is surely historical enough.^
The narae Pharaoh is correctly used in the Old Testament as the
generic title for the monarch of Egypt. It is not derived, as
Rosellini and Lepsius supposed, frora the sun-god Ra (P-Ra, or
Pha-Ra), but is read in the Meroglyphics as Per-aa, and signi
fies " Great-house ; " coming, after the analogy of the title " the
Sublime Porte," to mean in the demotic language, "the king."
The zeal of the princes to bring a beautiful woraan to the
notice of their raaster is " genuinely Egyptian ; " and of the
same zeal an Ulustration is still preserved in that papyrus of
Orbiney to wMch Ebers refers.^ The attributmg of great the
oretic reverence for marriage to the Egyptians, despite their
practical corruptions, is also true to the fact. A better knowl
edge of the monuments has finally done away with the objec
tions wMch Von Bohlen * made to the Mstorical trustwortMness
of the narrative from the nature of the gifts bestowed upon
Abraham (Gen. xU. 16). That horses do not appear in this
description, is a point in favor of the narrative; for these
animals, so plentiful in later tiraes, are not found on the monu
ments preceding the Hyksos period : » whereas, as early as the
twelfth dynasty, sheep « are found there, as raany as 3,208 being
assigned to one owner ; whole droves of asses are also repre
sented on the raonuments. And although, on account of some
canon of art which is as little known as that which excluded
the representation of hens and pigeons,^ no camels appear, the
bones of the dromedary have been found at great depth in the
Nile-mud. The story of Joseph, which Mohammed is reported to have
vim ^it' '\k°* ¦" '^'"^ °^ ^^^ heathens," as Oort says, but king of the land Go-
toT;.^ t? '" r "' /'^'^'''^''='' and many other scholars have adopted
t^^w^ ^' ^^'"'^^ Bera and Birsha is not applicable, since the other two names
are plamly historical. (So Dillmann; and compare Oort, Bible for Learners, 1.
2 Compare Gen. xUi. 1 f.; and Josephus, Ant., XV. 9 2
Aegypten, etc., p. 262 f. 4 Einl. zur Gen., p. 163.
5 Ebers, Ibid., pp. 221 f . and 265 f.
E'^lnfZ^^li^^S^ *!?^' Von Bohlen might have recalled the allusion to sheep iu
¦tisypt made by Herodotus, II. 42.
, ' See Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, III. p. 35.

390 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
called " the most coraely of all histories," bears many marks,
both obvious and comparatively obscure, of its rainute historical
accuracy. The position of Dothan ^ in the very track of the
caravans frora Damascus to Egypt ; the load of spices, which
the elaborate private life and embalraing of the Egyptians made
it so indispensable for thera to import, and which consisted in
this case of resinous tragacanth frora Lebanon, and perhaps
from Persia and Arraenia, of balsam from the balsamoden-
dron of Gilead, of ladanum frora the cistus-rose which grew in
Syria, Arabia, and Cyprus (see Gen. xxxvii. 25) ; the traffic in
slaves, whose figures, raale and feraale, of light and dark skins,
appear upon the raonuraents of every period, — all these points
of the prelirainary history are true to the ancient life. Of
Joseph in Egypt, Ebers ^ declares that the narrative contains
" nothing which does not accurately correspond to a court of
Pharaoh in the best tiraes of the kingdom." The name of
Potiphar, according to the same authority (Peti-pa-ra, or "de
voted to Ra," the sun-god), was the raore Ukely to occur in a
high court officer of this tirae, because the reigning monarch
stood in special relations to that divinity. That the "captain
of the body-guard " should be a eunuch, and married, offers no
insuperable difficulty ; because, even if we do not understand
the word ono as the customary title for a court officer,^ we
know that the marriage of real eunuchs was by no means rare,
and have no reason to doubt that such persons belonged to
the Egyptian court of tMs period. The position of Joseph as
major-domo in the house of Potiphar adraits of ample illustra
tion : men clothed with sirailar responsibilities are to be seen
in every genuine picture of Egyptian life. Rosellini aud Wilk
inson have showed us that raany storehouses belonged to the
doraicile of an Egyptian of rank and wealth. The exception
raade in the case of Potiphar 's own food (Gen. xxxix. 6, and
compare xliii. 32) is true to the ancient custora. The objections
raade by Von Bohlen and Tuch to the representation of Genesis,
which allows such free daily access of Joseph to the house and
wife of Potiphar, are ill taken. Mixed company, even at feasts,
was according to Egyptian custora, and the intercourse of the
sexes was relatively free in Egypt.* Not only eunuchs, but
also norraal raales, appear in corapany with the females ; man
1 Compare Judith, vii. 3; and see Robinson, Bib. Researches, III. p. 122.
2 Ibid., p. 295; compare p. 311. s So Ebers, Ibid., 297.
* See Ebers, Ibid., p. 306 f. ; and compare the exaggerated testimonies of Heiod-
otus, II. 35, and Diodorus, I. 27.

THE TRADITIONS OF THE EXODUS. 391
and woman are represented reclining, with the arm of either
about the other, upon the banks of the Nile. A papyrus be
longing to the British Museum, and translated by Brugsch,
contains a story written for a prince of Raraeses the Great, by
an author named Anana, which gives the detaUs of a tempta
tion almost exactly simUar in form and result to that to which
Joseph is represented as exposed (Gen. xxxix. 7-23). The title
of " cup-bearer " has not as yet been met with, but of the use
of bread and wine there are plentiful signs. "Innumerable
monuments" unite with the biblical narrative to show the
mistake of those who were ready to rely upon tbe declaration
of Herodotus ^ to contradict this narrative. Even the work of
the imagination in the drearas of Gen. xl. and xli. is true to
the details of ancient Ufe in Egypt. The kine on the brink
(or '¦'¦lip" of the river, according to the Egyptian figure of
speech) of the Nile ; the word " streara " ("iS',) for this river ;
the raarsh-grass with its Egyptian title ('n?$); the nuraber
seven, which is sacred also in that country ; the wind, which
Tuch raade to be frora the east, and so found inaccurately
described, but which regarded as frora the south-east actually
has the effect of withering vegetation, — all these are genuinely
historic touches in this narrative. Even the answer to the
dreara, wMch is regarded as commg from the God in heaven
who knows all secrets, is as truly in accord with Egyptian as
with Hebrew ideas. Indeed, we find it hard to imagine what
more could be required of this tradition to vindicate its claim
to Mstoric accuracy ; since it seems, as Ebers declares, absolutely
correspondent, even in detaUs, with the ancient relations of
Egypt. _ Only slight and indirect confirraation of the biblical narra
tives of Israel in Egypt, and of their exodus frora that country,
can be derived frora external sources. The relation of the nar
ratives of Abrahara and Joseph to the period of the Hyksos
dynasties cannot be determined with certainty. According to
Ebers,2 the visit of Abraham is to be regarded as one of those
early advances of Asiatic peoples from the north-east into
Egypt, the traces of which are seen in the pictures at Beni-has-
san ; it feU in the time of the twelfth dynasty. The Hyksos,
who invade the country in the next generation, are significantly
recognized as the children of Abraham through Ishmael ; viz.,
the Arabians. It was this invasion, according to Ebers,^ which
II. 77; Oi 7op ff$i eIo-i ci. Tn x»pb a^ireAoi. 2 Aegypten, p. 250 f. a See Ibid., p. 222 f.

392 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
brought about the rule in Egypt of those mixed Phoenician and!
Arabian tribes that had long been settled in the northern par,!
of the Delta, and to the east of its boundaries. The entrance
of the Israelites into Egypt was in the eighteenth Egyptian
dynasty, and the rule of the Hyksos Ues entirely between the
visits of Abrahara and Joseph ; for Ebers agrees with Lepsius
in supposing that the court of Pharaoh tn the tirae of the latter
was purely Egyptian. It is the opinion, however, of Brugsch
and of most other Egyptologists and commentators, that the
very peculiarities of Joseph's position in Egypt, as well as the
silence in its records concerning his deeds, can be explained
only by supposing tMs dynasty to have been of Hyksos origin.^
Only by this supposition can the raising of a Semitic shepherd
to a post of such dignity be satisfactorUy explained.^ As to the
time, route, and raanner of the Exodus, we have as yet only
unending debate. Its tirae is, perhaps, best located under
Menephtah, the successor of Raraeses the Great, and about
1322 B.C. That the reranants of an ancient Egyptian tradition
of the bibUcal Exodus — a popular Egyptian version of the affair
— have corae down to us in the fragraent of Manetho, has been
held by Egyptologists like Bunsen, Lepsius, and Ebers; but
Kohler and Diestel have denied this, and J. G. MiUler^ has
urged strong grounds against its truth. Investigation has not
yet succeeded in pointing out the person of Moses upon the
raonuraents. Of the place of the passage of the Red Sea, we
can scarcely say more than that views Uke those of Brugsch
are in coraplete contradiction to the only source of mformation
which we possess ; viz., the Hebrew tradition (compare Exod.
xUi. 17 f.).
From the Exodus to David we have few external means of
testing the accuracy of Old-Testaraent history: in the reigns
of that raonarch and his successor, a few comparisons with the
records of contemporaneous history may be raade. The occa
sion, progress, and duration of David's war with Hadadezer and
his allies (see 2 Sam. viU. 3-8, x. 6 f. ; 1 Chron. xviU. 3 f., xix.)
are obscure ; and Zobah can be identified with no known locality.
The cause of the war did not lie in David's ambition to control
the routes of travel frora the Euphrates to Tyre,* but in the
1 See article Josef, by Orelli, in Herzog and Plitt.
2 Compare Dillmann, Die Genesis, p. 418.
8 See his Flavius Josephus Sehrift geg. den Apion, p. 214 f.
¦" So Oort, who invariably thinks the worst possible of the favorite charactera
of ancient Israel : see Bible for Learners, II. p. 20.

THE REIGNS OF DAVID AND SOLOMON. 393
readiness of the king of Zobah to ally himself with the Am
monites against IsraeL The fact of repeated batties and several
campaigns, which is to be only inferred from the biblical narra
tives, is confirraed by the narrative of Nicolaus of Daraascus ; ^
although he has confused the Hadad who ruled over all Syria
with this Hadadezer.2 David's victory would naturally lead
to his treaty with Tyre, — a state the rise of which is correctly
, placed by the bibUcal narrative subsequent to Sidon,^ and which
could not retain its coraraerce without having the routes of
. trade through Syria m friendly hands. The narae HUam (1
: ' Kings v., vii. 13 f. 40, D";in), like that of most Oriental raon-
^ archs of antiquity, was originally dependent upon the raythology
, of the country. According to the Phoenician sources used by
I Dius and Menander, this raonarch was the son of Abibaal, and
reigned thirty-four years (1023-990, Winer and most others ;
;, 1033-999, Ewald ; 980-947, Movers). These authorities con-
^, firm the biblical narrative of the friendship of Hiram and
- Solomon, but do not mention his connection with David. The
,-. particulars which they add to the story of this intercourse show
an independent origin in Phoenician sources, but the stories of
f. Eupolemus and Theophilus add no independent confUmation
V to the Old Testament.* Many incidental Ulustrations may be
drawn from ancient history to show the accuracy of that pic-
. ture wMch the Old Testament gives of the reign of Solomon,
t V the monarch magnificent of ancient Israel.^ Even the edifices
; of his reign resemble, in structure and arrangement, the palaces
"y:^ of Susa and PersepoUs, with their chambers whose roofs were
', supported upon a forest of cedar pUlars.^ Both Dius arid Me-
'¦ nander, according to the report of Josephus, spoke with praises
^,,^ of the buUdings of Hiram, and represented him as cutting
"^; timber from Mount Lebanon for the cedar beams of Ms temples.
',''j The early history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel offers
*";, only two or tMee points of contact with profane history. The
•-;',¦ flight into Egypt of Jeroboam, a rebellious subject of Soloraon
isi'l 1 See Josephus, Ant., VII. 5, 2.
Mf ^ ¦*¦ confusion which was the more easy because "Hadad " — the name of a
, Syrian idol — was much used in proper names. See Ewald, History of Israel,
jlltifr- III. p. 150.
rr(i*i ' See Gen. x. 15, xlix. 13; Josh. xi. 8, xix. 28; Judg. xviii. 7, 28; 2 Sam. xxiv. 6;
and mark how the newer city of Tyre comes forward into prominence over the more
ancient city of Sidon : compare Kendrick, Phoenicia, p. 340 f .
^ See Eusebius, Praep. Evangl., IX. 31-34.
. 5 See examples in the Historical Illustrations of George Rawlinson.
;, :^^^ ' See Fergusson, Palaces of Nineveh restored, 225 f.

S94 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
(1 Kings xi. 26 f.), and his stay with Shishak, — the Sesonchis
of Manetho, or the Sheshonk of the monuments, who founded
the twenty-second dynasty, — agree fairly well with the cora
parative chronology of this period. They, perhaps, account for
the change of the relations of Egypt and Solomon which seems
to have taken place between the twenty-first and twenty-second
Egyptian dynasties. The conjecture of Ewald,i that the iova-
sion of Palestine by SMshak (1 Kings xiv. 25 ; 2 Chron. xii. 2 f.)
was occasioned through Ms protection of Jeroboam agamst
Rehoboara, cannot be defended by the records until the list of
the conquered cities which is given in the inscription of Karnak
is better understood.^ For the fact which Maspero^ announced,
— viz., this list contains cities of Israel as well as of Judah,—
can scarcely be explained by the assuraption that these cities
of Israel were only such Levitical and Canaanitish cities as
refused subraission to Jeroboara, and so were conquered by
Shishak in order to be turned over to Ms ally.* The inscrip
tion of Karnak confirras the fact of an invasion, although we
are left in doubt how the detaUs shall be raade to comport with
the relations described by the Bible as existing between Israel
and Egypt. The Zerah the EtMopian, who came up against
Asa with a host of a raillion raen (2 Chron. xiv. 9 f.), has been
identified as one of the OsorchSns of the raonuments, probably |
the second of the twenty-second dynasty. We do not know,
however, how this raonarch can be called an Ethiopian ; since
we have no indication of so raarked an event as the possession
of the throne of Egypt by a Cushite sovereign. But Brugsch,
followed by Lenormant ^ and others, would make the Zerah of
the Bible to have been that Azerch-Amen whose name is read
on several Ethiopian raonuraents ; yet the size and compositioa |
of his array seem rather Egyptian than EtMopian. We can
scarcely claira, then, that the earlier history of the divided king
doms of Judah and Israel receives any especial confirmation of
its accuracy frora external sources.
From the beginning of the reign of Shalmaneser (II. or IV.?),
which is placed by Lenormant between 905 and 865 B.C., the
raonuraents of Assyria are repeatedly connected with the bibh-
1 History of Israel, IV. p. 45 f.
2 Compare Kautzsch, art. Jeroboam I., Herzog and Plitt.
3 Histoire ancienne des Peuples de I'Orient, p. 340, note.
* So George Rawlinson, Hist. Illustrations, p. 109; compare art. Shishak, Stuart
Poole, Smith's Bib. Die.
0 Lenormant, Ancient History of the East, I. pp. 153 and 274.

SHALMANESER AND THE SON OF OMRI. 395
cal history. The annals of this monarch, especially those on
the obeUsk of black basalt now in the British Museum, acquaint
us with Benhadad, whose large dominion, forces, and energy
made him the dreaded enemy of Ahab (compare 1 Kings xx.
and xxii. 1-36), under the narae Benhidri of Damascus. Over
him and his aUies the Assyrian monarch records a victory gained
in his sixth campaign. A stSl^ discovered near the sources of
the Tigris mentions among the forces confederate against As
syria in tMs battle at Karkar ten thousand men of " Ahab of
Israel." ^ In his tenth, eleventh, and fourteenth campaigns also,
mention is made of defeats of Benhidri and his allies. But in
two subsequent carapaigns Hazael of Daraascus appears. It
was at the end of the twenty-first campaign that Jehu appealed
to Shalmaneser for help against Hazael, who had ravaged his
territory. Jehu appears, under the title " son of Omri," ^ upon
the obelisk among those who paid tribute, while a bas-relief
also represents hira as prostrating himself before the Assyrian
monarch. TMs celebrated narae of Orari appears also upon the
stelS of Mesha the king of Moab, — a block of basalt brought
to the attention of Professor Petermami in 1868 by the raission-
ary Mr. Klein, and known as the " Moabite Stone," ^ — who had
raised it as a " bamah of deliverance for Cheraosh," his god,
since he had succeeded in throwing off the yoke placed upon
the Moabites by Orari and his son (corapare 2 Kings i. 1, iii.
4, 5).
Of Phul, surnaraed " Balazu the terrible," and called Belesis
by the Greeks, no inscription has yet been discovered, and no
mention by classic historians after his capture of Nineveh. He
appears (2 Kings xv. 19) as forcing Menahera to pay him a
large tribute ; but the added stateraent of 1 Chron. v. 26, that
he deported the people, is probably erroneous, since this prac
tice first appears in a subsequent reign, and belongs to the
monarchs of the second erapire.* George Smith discovered in
the monuments of the reign of Tiglath-pUeser (Tuglat-pal-ash-
ar) no less than five names of Hebrew kings.^ Two years after
his accession, this monarch celebrated his defeat of Rezin king
of Damascus, and Pekah king of Israel, the latter of whom he
1 So Oppert'and Lenormant; while Sir H. Rawlinson reads "Ahab of Jezreel : "
compare 1 Kings xviii. 46, xx. 34 f., xxi. 1 f., xxii. 1 f.
^ So called on account of the renown of the foui>der of this house : compare
1 Kings xvi. 24.
2 See the account of Dr. Ginsburg, Essay on the Moabite Stone.
* Compare Lenormant, Ibid., I. p, 390. 6 Assyrian Discoveries, p, 253 f.

396 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
dethroned, and filled his place with Menahera II.i It is prob
able that Pekah, taking advantage ofthe war of Tiglath-pUeser
with the Arraenians, regained Ms throne, allied hunself with
Rezin, and threw off the aUegiance of Israel to Assyria. Ahaz
threatened by the two, sent for help (see 2 Kings xvi. 5 f.).
According to the monuments, the campaign began with the de
struction of the kingdora of Damascus and the killing of Rezin.
The seventh Assyrian fragment in the arrangeraent of George I
Sraith represents the terror before the advance of the Assyrian
array, and raentions Ahaz by name ; while in the Ust of vassal
kings who did homage to the Assyrian monarch at his high
court at Daraascus, the naraes of both Pekah and Ahaz appear
(corapare 2 Kings xvi. 10-16). Now for the fust time we
corae upon the custora of deporting the people, afterwards so
frequently mentioned on the monuments : " The tribe and the
goods of the people and the furniture of the land of Beth Omri"
are sent to Assyria. The annals of this monarch also represent' i
hira as receiving tribute frora that Hosliea who was the assassm
and successor of Pekah. Of the events of 2 Kings xvii. 3-5,
the raonuraents furnish no account ; since no remains of this
Shalraaneser, except sorae bronze weights m the British Muse
um, have yet been discovered.^
Of that Sargon who was once identified with Shalmaneser by
scholars like Eichhorn, Hupfeld, and Niebuhr, and with Sennach
erib by Grotius and Keil, the inscriptions found in the palace
of Khorsabad by M. Botta now raake us, says Lenormant, even
better acquainted than with more than one of the Roman em
perors. Sharyakin was the Tartan, or general-in-chief, of Shal
maneser, and on his master's death seized upon the throne.
The several points of his connection with the bibUcal narrative
are mentioned on his monuments. " I besieged, took, and occu
pied the city of Samaria, and carried into captivity 27,280 of its
inhabitants," declares the longest of these Khorsabad inscrip
tions (compare 2 Kings xvii. 3, 5, and xvUi. 9 f.). It is not--,
strange that the biblical narrative is confused as to the real
captor of Samaria. We find Isa. xx. 1 f. confirmed by a de-^
taUed account of how " the king of Ashdod obstinately refused
to pay his tribute," and accordingly was treated in the custom-
1 In this way do Oppert and Lenormant explain the seeming discrepance le-^
tween the mention of Pekah 's name (2 Kings xv. 29) and the fact that the inscnp-
tions represent Menahem as tributary to Assyria.
3 So Lenormant, Ibid., I. p. 391 f. '

THE ANNALS OF SENNACHERIB. 397
ary fashion, with " his gods, his wife, his sons, his daughters,
and his treasures, all the contents of Ms palace, and the inhabit
ants of Ms land." George Sraith calls attention to the fact
that the account given by the inscriptions of Sargon concern
ing the turning of the fountains and water-courses to protect
Ashdod, reminds us of the preparations ascribed to Hezekiah
(2 Chron. xxxU. 3 f.).
The annals of Sennacherib (" Sin," the raoon-god) — con
sisting of 480 lines on six faces of a cylinder of baked earth
now in the British Museum — supply us with an account of
the Assyrian connections with the reign of Hezekiah. The dis
asters of 2 Krags xix. 35 f. and 2 Chron. xxxii. 21 f. are omitted
as a matter of course and according to Assyrian custom. These
annals represent tMs raonarch as capturing " forty-six walled
towns and an infinite nuraber of vUlages," as carrying away
200,150 persons and iraraense booty, and as shutting up Heze
kiah in " Jerusalera, the city of his power, like a bird in a
cage." 1 The tribute into wMch the king of Judah was terri
fied is also mentioned ; the number of the talents of gold cor-
. responding with that in 2 Kings xviU. 13 f., but the talents of
. sUver being increased from tMee hundred to eight hundred.
Besides tMs discrepancy, others occur between the Old Testa-
: ment and the inscriptions. According to the latter, which
make Sargon capture Saraaria in the first carapaign of the
fifteen whose annals are given, and Sennacherib besiege Heze-
; kiah in Ms third carapaign, there raust have been at least eigh
teen years between the two events , but 2 Kings xviii. 9 f. 13
aUows only eight. The detailed account of the raonuments is
almost without doubt correct. Nor does the impression of the
writer of 2 Chron. xxxU. 21 seem to have been accurate, for
the assassination of Sennacherib did not occur untU after a pros
perous reign of twenty-three years.
Esarhaddon, the events of whose reign up to 672 B.C. are
given upon another cylinder of baked clay, is rightly called
(2 Kings xi^. 37) the son and successor of the great Sennach
erib; of this fact, indeed, he is fond of boasting.^ At the
close of Ms campaign against Tyre, — " my expedition against
Bahal, king of Tyre, who to Tirhakah, kmg of Cush, Ms coun-
^ Compare Eawlinson, Ancient Monarchies, II. p. 160 f.; Lenormant, Ibid., I.
p. 400; and see 2 Chron. xxxii. 21; Isa. xxii. 1-14, xxiv., xxix. 1-8.
^ Abydenus mistakenly interpolates the reign of one Nergilus between the
two, hut the name Nergal is mythical.

398 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
try intrusted," 1 — he attacked the kingdom of Judah; and
Manasseh attempting to resist, he conquered him, made him
prisoner, and sent Mra to Babylon (see 2 CMon. xxxiii. 11).
That Esarhaddon would, ijniike preceding Assyrian monarchs,
convey Ms captives to Babylon instead of Assyria, appears from
many facts of his history. His inscriptions register Manasseh
as a vassal king paying tribute after having been restored to
his throne. Frora the tirae that he gained possession of Egypt
we find hira styled "king of Egypt and EtMopia" (compare
2 Kings xix. 9 f.).
We have no raonuraental records which may serve to test the
biblical representations of Nebuchadnezzar and Ms reign, so far
as it related to the Jews, and must therefore resort to the esti
mate of probabilities and to the derived accounts of later histo
rians ; among whora Berosus and the Greek writers Philostratus
and Megasthenes are cited by Josephus ^ for certain main events
touching the Jewish captivity. Inscriptions of this monarchy
however, celebrate his marveUous reconstruction and enlarge
ment of Babylon, and thus directly confirm the narrative of
Herodotus, and indirectly tMow Ught upon various passages
of the Old Testament. The historical criticism of the Bible
becomes at this point so closely connected with inquiries into
the authenticity of the later books, and especially of Daniel
and Esther, that the entire discussion assumes a different
shape. The foregoing illustrations may serve to confirm the position
already taken, that raodern historic researches and discoveries
tend to establish the substantial accuracy of the Mstorical books
of the Old Testaraent. We are thus brought to the point of
view frora which we can look with calmness upon such discre
pancies as belong to all historical writings, especiaUy to those
of a reraote antiquity and not coraposed in our modern critical
fasMon. We can thus also stand firmly upon our rebuke and
rejection of the extrerae resort to subjective considerations for
the reconstruction of ancient Mstory. " If by accurate knowl
edge of the East in the most recent time," says Tholuck,^ "many
narratives of Herodotus, Nearchus, Megasthenes, and Arrian,
which at the first appearance seeraed fabulous, have justified
themselves as facts, is there not in this fact for the historian
1 See George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 312. ¦¦
2 Con. Ap., I. 19 f . ; and see the comment of J. G. Muller.
8 Glaubwiirdigkeit derievangl. Geschichte, p. 444.

VALUE OF EXTERNAL CONFIRMATIONS. 399
an earnest admonition to go to work very circumspectly with
negative criticism from subjective considerations of probabU
ity ? " In our stUl more recent time, with many added confir
mations, there is additional eraphasis to be laid upon a question
like that above. Yet this proof raust be allowed to stand only
for what it is fairly worth, and used to prove only that for
wMch it may fairly be considered as proof. That the admitted
historical portions of the Old Testament have a comraendable
degree of substantial historical accuracy, is as far as the fore
going argument can lead us to affirm. Only indirectly does it
confirm our confidence that these portions are true elements of
Sacred Scripture. If the inscriptions of Assyria and Egypt, or
the Moabite Stone, or the Mstorians who drew their material
from original Phoenician, Egyptian, or Assyrian sources, confirra
the histories of the Old Testament, this, of itself, no raore
proves the Hebrew writings sacred than it proves sacred the
stones, the cylinders of baked clay, and the painted walls. Nor
can we find here alone a proof of the inspiration of the authors
of the sacred biblical writings rather than of the profane tab
lets. It is only when we can show that the raaterial of Hebrew
history was of such special sort as to render a kind of sanctity
to its record, or that the point of view frora which these authors
regarded and disposed this raaterial had a special ethical and
reUgious purity and loftiness, that we have estabUshed a real
claim for these contents to the titles sacred and inspired. On
the other hand, the coraparisons of the biblical histories with
contemporaneous extra-biblical records either throw into great
doubt, or utterly disprove, all theories of the verbal and plen
ary inspiration of these histories. For, if the extra-biblical
sources are capable of illustrating the historical accuracy of the
Bible, they are deserving of fair treatraent ; and fair treatment
 will in certain mstances, as we have already seen, accord to
them, rather than to Scripture, the superior accuracy in details.
Furthermore, an internal criticism of the histories of the Bible
 shows that its claim to the title Sacred Scripture cannot be
™ade to rest upon its historical infallibility. For such criticisra
"'" discloses discrepancies in the histories. Such criticisra should
¦ ¦ ¦ be the more convincing to those who will not admit that profane
fiistory can in any case be used to correct the sacred Mstory.
For iUustration the New Testament rather than the Old should
supply the material, since the very construction of the New
Testament makes the discrepancies it contains both, more im-

400 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
portant and raore patent. Destructive criticism, when applied
to the Gospels in its most thorough fashion, meets its own thor
ough refutation in their manifest and suificient constructive
evidence. But the Gospels contain also the complete refuta
tion of the post-Reformation dograa of infallibUity as applied
to the historical contents of the Bible. To set forth in detail
the discrepancies of these contents would be an mvidious and
unnecessary task. It vriU be more than enough for our present
purpose to give a brief classified statement of some of them.
The multiplication of instances has its value chiefly in inducmg
the conviction that the theory of Sacred Scripture which insists
upon its infallibility in matters of history has utterly miscon
ceived the nature of such Scripture. Our method of treating
biblical discrepancies should conform to fair prmciples of criti
cisra, — a rule which alraost all apologetic critics continually
violate through their unwillingness to adrait the fact of dis
crepancies in the Gospel histories. Westcott, for example, after
asserting that the two pictures of our Lord's infancy are m
their details "exactly capable of harmonious adjustment," ^
and that there is not " any discrepancy " in " the one divine
testimony " ^ to Jesus at his baptism, and after idealizing vari- [
ous different accounts in order to get rid of their plain historic
differences, is forced in the case of the resurrection to announce
the truth which has thus far been kept in the background:
" The existence of difficulties in brief records of such a crisis
is no more than a natural consequence of its character." ^ •
But he nevertheless assumes that these " natural " difficulties i
are not real discrepancies, and constantly shifts his argument
against " the opponents of the literal accuracy of the Evan
gelists " between the ideal and the historic points of view.
In illustrating the rainute verbal or other discrepancies of
the Evangelists we raight, for instance, inquire : Whether the
icrpvprnrp-evoi oii/os of Mark XV. 23 cau be the same as the ofos
pera xoX^s p.epiyp.evov of Matt. xxvU. 34 ; or whether the four
forras of the inscription over the cross can be verbally recon-
ciled. We raight exaraine the instructions given to the Twelve t
in their trial journey, — Matt. x. 9 f., prjSe J;ro§i;/iaTa p-ii^e p^Sov; j |
Mark vi. 8 f., et prj pd^Sov p.6vov ; Luke ix. 3, p-^re pd^Bov, without
mention of sandals, as in the two former, — and conclude that ,
the detail as to two tunics was irapressed indelibly, whUe the
1 Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 314.
s Ibid., p. 315. 8 Ibid., p. 327.

MINUTE DISCREPANCIES OF THE GOSPELS. 401
command as to a staff was indefinite in their minds. So raio-ht
we notice, that, in the accounts of Christ's teacMng upon the
Mosaic law of divorce, Matthew (xix. 1-9) raakes the Pharisees
introduce the appeal to Moses (Xeyova-iv airw), -while Mark (x.
1-12) puts it into the raouth of our Lord (o 8e awoKpiOel's el-n-ev
airoU). Of such rainute discrepancies the origin may be not
infrequently described with more or less of probabUity. Thus
the two forras of the reply of Jesus to the ruler — rt p.e ipwra's
¦n-epl TOV dyaOov (Matt. xix. 17) and Tt p.e Aeycis ayaOov (Mark X. 18
and Luke xviU. 19) — both take their rise frora the question
addressed to Mra, wMch may have been in some such forra as
to suggest both (At8dcrKaA.€ ayaOe Tt dyaOov, etc.) ; but of the forras
given, one answers to the application of the terra "good" to
CMist's person, and the other to the work demanded for salva
tion. Both forras of the reply cannot, however, be correct ; and
that in wMch Mark and Luke agree is doubtless the original
one. The prraciple of repetition raay be used to a certain extent,
either to harraonize apparent discrepancies or to account for
real ones. In the case of sententious and gnomic sentences
(see Matt. v. 15 ; Mark iv. 21 ; Luke viU. 16 ; or Matt. xiii. 12,
25 ; Mark iv. 24 ; Luke viU. 18 and xix. 26), the observation of
Euthymius Zigabenus may be deemed satisfactory : " It is likely
that CMist spoke such things upon different occasions." We
may with more doubt apply tMs principle to the words of Luke
xii. 22 f., wMch raust be held to be reported in erroneous chrono
logical connection ; ^ unless we say with Meyer that Jesus raay
have in tMs place " rerainded Ms disciples of this piece of Ms
Sermon on the Mount." Nor can the assuraption of two
"caUs" be used to reconcUe the differences in general features
which characterize Luke v. 1-11, as compared with Matt. iv.
18-20, and Mark i. 16-20. For in tMs case the chronological
discrepancy at least resists aU atterapts to force a harraony ;
since in Luke the sequence can be distinctly traced backward
to the healmg of the raother-in-law of Peter, while in Matthew
and Mark it can just as distinctly be traced forward to the
same act.^
^ Notice how the irphs tous (laSiiTas of verse 22 stands in contrast with the etirei.
«t irpo! auToiJs of vcrse 15, and so establishes the intention of a chronological con
nection. ' In Luke the iv tu . . . ixoveiv refers to the oi oxAoi of verse 42, and KnpvacrMv of
verse 44; the yevonivr)^ Si ^^epis of 42 to the Avj/oi-tos 6e TOU ijAi'ov of 40; and this to the
section just preceding. In Mark the air^Mov oTrio-io mtoS of verse 20 is followed by
VOL. I. 2 C

402 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
In stUl other cases it raay be doubtful how far a seeming dis
crepancy is due to the fact that one Evangelist gives a more
expanded account of sorae event than is given by another.
Thus it is difficult to harmonize the account of Luke iv. 14-30
with Matt. iv. 12-25, the section in Luke appearing to be an
expansion of Matt. xiU. 53-68 and Mark vi. 1-6. But Meyer
would consider the account of Luke as an expansion of Matt.
iv. 12 f., and the later record in Matt. xUi. 53 f. as the account
of a second visit ; wMle Ewald supposes that Luke has blended
incidents of the two visits in one account. And here we must
refrain both from accusing the Evangelist of chronological
error, and also frora entire satisfaction with either form of the
proposed harraony. We certainly, however, cannot press this
raanner of arranging apparent conflicts of testimony so as to
believe that there were two different discourses of Jesus to be
known by the one title, " Sermon on the Mount." Yet these
two accounts of the one discourse are so essentially two differ
ent, and in some respects discrepant, accounts, that no harmony
is possible. We are thus, at the best, left in difficulties both
critical and dogmatic.
Of the nuraerous discrepancies or inaccuracies in matters of
fact, both minute and more iraportant, sorae cases admit of a
probable solution, but raany others must be left to stand as
discrepancies. To show how sometimes a partial explanation
of an inaccuracy may be arrived at as the result of patient
research, the instance of Luke ii. 1 f. may be given. The state
ments which involve the Mstorical accuracy of the Evangehst in
this place are chiefly the following (whether or not we retain
the article wMch seems to have been rejected on rather inade
quate grounds) : that this enrolment is to be distinguished as the
first of two, the second of which is narrated by Josephus (Ant.,
XVIII. 1. 1), and referred to. Acts v. 37 ; and that this first
enrolment took place when Quirinus was governor of Syria.
But no such general enrolment, as is here asserted, is known
to have taken place at this time ; and Quirinus is only known
to have been governor of Syria once, and that ten years
later. Now, we can neither allow ourselves to be driven by the
the eitriropeiiovTctt of 21; the eifleius of the same verse by the evWs of 23; and this
by the eieus ix Tij! o-uvayojv^s.of 29. Very similar to the case of the Sermon on the
Mount is that of the two discrepant narratives of the cleansing of the temple
(compare Matt. xxi. 12 f,, and parallel passages, with John ii. 13 f.); although in
the latter case the supposition of a repetition is not so rigidly excluded by the
narrative.

THE GOVERNORSHIP OF QUIRINUS. 403
difficulties into the resort of those (including Olshausen) who
declare the entire sentence an interpolation ; nor can we accept
the theory of Strauss and Baur, who would show that the state
ment was mtroduced into the history by the Evangelist as the
result of a motive. Nor, finally, can we accord the verdict of com
plete success to the most notable and elaborate of the efforts at
harmony.^ Even the conclusion of A. W. Zumpt (in his mono
graph "De Syria Roraanorum," etc.) that Quirinus was twice
governor of Syria, rests on slender and conjectural evidence,
and cannot at any rate be accepted as a satisfactory explanation
of the stateraent in Luke ; since we know that either Saturninus
or Varus was governor of Syria when Jesus was born. But it
is equaUy irapossible to suppose that the Evangehst is in error
as to the entire event ; since he has shown Ms knowledge of the
later enrolment under this Roman ruler, and has distinguished
the two. We may, then, if the view of Grotius, Neander, and
others, that he here uses the title rjyep.ovevovro'; in the wider sense,
be made inapplicable by the addition of tjjs Suptas, still assurae
that an enrolment took place at this time under Quirinus as
a commissioner extraordinary : ^ we thus reduce the error of
Luke to the false irapression that Quirinus was at that time
governor of Syria. " Thus," says Meyer, " has Luke narrated
what actually happened, in the erroneous forra in which he re
ceived it frora tradition." IMore corapletely successful, perhaps,
may we consider the efforts wMch have been raade to remove
the aUeged inaccuracy of Luke iii. 2. This passage, especially
v/hen compared with Acts iv. 6, leads us to think that the
Evangehst supposed Annas at this tirae actually to have held
the office of Mgh-priest. We are inforraed, however, frora the
concurrent testiraony of Matt. xxiv. 3, and Josephus (Ant.,
XVIII. 2, 2) that Caiaphas was then Mgh-priest. And to the
charge of error even Meyer steadfastly adheres. But if we con
sider that the narae could cling to the raan after the office had
been discharged,^ and that the great dignity and authority of
Annas are elsewhere plainly acknowledged in the fact that he
could, either as the organ of the Mgh-priest or as the president
^ The conjecture that irpia-ni yjyeftovevovro^ may bear the sense of irpo rov rjyeiJLOvevetv,
although it has been adopted by many commentators (including Tholuck), merits
the remark of Winer: " One must know nothing at all of Luke's style if one sup
poses that he has written such gibberish " (Eealworterbuch, II. p. 293).
2 We know from Tacitus (Annal. , III. 48) that Quirinus was in great favor with
the emperor.
' As is proved by the usage of Josephus himself. Compare Ant., XX. 9, 3.

404 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of the Sanhedrin, hold a trial of Jesus (compare John xviii.
13 f.), we raay very probably acquit our Evangelist of error.
What a large araount of painstaking and passion has been
spent in the deterraination at all hazards to reconcile even the
rainutest discrepancies of the Evangelists, raay be Ulustrated
in the case of Matt. xx. 29-34, and paraUel passages. The
illustration would even provoke amusement, were it not so
grievously suggestive of false views and untenable issues con
cerning the important subjects of inspiration, revelation, and
Sacred Scripture. We are not compeUed to examine a long
row of differing opinions regarding these unimportant varia
tions ; from the pious fraud wMch would solve the discrepance
of tirae by quoting the rabbinical canon, non est prius aut pos-
terius in Scriptura, to the petulant outburst of Alford, "It is
just thus that the harraonists utterly destroy the credibility
of the Scripture narrative." The student of thoroughly fair,
scholarly, and devout mind, will indeed hesitate to pronounce
the efforts at harraony of raen like Lightfoot, Tischendorf,
Wieseler, Ebrard, and Neander, in the words of the above-
raentioned coraraentator, "perfectly monstrous;" but neither
wUl he pronounce them " perfectly," or even partially, satisfac
tory. He wUl therefore call attention to the fact, that since
Mark seems to stand midway between Matthew and Luke, and
is raost circurastantial in details (even giving the name of the
raan healed), Ms narrative is probably nearest the original tradi
tion; and he will, raoreover, refuse in any measure to bmd
Ms confidence, either in Christ or in the sacredness and author
ity of Scripture, to the possibUity of completing all this patch
work of detailed harmony.
It is scarcely necessary to raultiply exaraples of simUar minute
discrepancies in fact : so abundant are they, and so difficult is
it to thread our way through the windings of testimony, and
thus reach the real truth regarding rauch raore important mat
ters in the Mstory of our Lord.
The form of certain other discrepancies is such as to give us
a nearer view of the raental condition in which certain Mstori
cal contents of the Bible were coraposed. That Paul did not
consider the erabarrassments of a faulty raeraory as working
any interference with his inspiration, when trying to state in
writing raatters of fact, we have his own confession (1 Cor. i.
14-16). That the EvangeUsts were not in this regard more
infallible than the Apostle to the GentUes, we might prove, not

LAPSES OF MEMORY IN THE GOSPELS. 405
only from their quotations of the Old Testament, but also from
their stateraents in raatters of fact. In Matt, xxvii. 9 we find a
quotation which is actually taken from Zech. xi. 12 f., ascribed
by a lapsus memoriae to the prophet Jeremiah. In the effort
to escape the harmless confession of this very natural fact,
orthodox harraony has been ready to imitate the most unscru
pulous and dangerous methods of destructive criticisra. It has
adopted the unsupported conjecture that the Greek text of
Matthew is in this passage corrupted ; it has even, deliberately
corrupted tMs text by introducing the word Zaxapiov into a few
inferior MSS. ; it has declared without proof that the last six
chapters of Zechariah were really written by Jereraiah ; it has
ascribed the passages to an apocryphal Book of Jereraiah, thus
running the risk of introducing additional quotations frora
apocryphal writings into our canonical books ; it has resorted
to the quibble that Matthew could properly quote Zechariah as
Jeremiah, because he was intending to bring forward the pre
dictions recorded in Jer. xviii. and xix. And when it has been
alleged in all fairness that our good and trustworthy Evangelist
Matthew raight possibly faU in a detaU of raeraory without ruin
to Ms piety or credibiUty, this harraony has repUed that such a
lapse of raeraory would corapletely annihilate our confidence in
the testimony of the writers of Scripture.^
But another similar phenomenon is raet with in the sarae
Evangelist (xxiii. 35). The Zacharias, the murder of whom is
mentioned 2 Chron. xxiv. 21, — the last raurder of a prophet
'in the order of the Canon, — was the son of Jehoiada : he is
• • • • here, however, caUed by a lapse of raeraory the son of Bara-
chias. The conjecture of harraony espoused by Hug, who would
- - - - refer the words of Clirist as a prophecy to the death of that
- - - - Zacharias, the son of Baruch, to whora Josephus refers,^ is quite
- - ' ' untenable ; and the confusion of tenses, of which Matthew is
' ' ' ' thus made guUty, impairs Ms historical credibUity more than an
admitted error of memory or of information. Christ, as we see
from the narrative of Luke (xi. 51), did not give the father's
'''-'-'¦ name ; but the writer of the Gospel, confusing this Zacharias
- - - with the prophet whose father's name was really Barachias
¦ : ': : (Zech. i. 1), has brought an historical error into the text. So
also, although with less certainty than in the above-mentioned
cases, may we account by a lapse of raeraory for the fact that
• the Evangehst Mark (i. 2), in quoting two passages from the
( ( ( ( 'So Henderson, Minor Prophets, p. 418. 2 Bell. Jud., IV. 5, 4.

406 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Old Testament, the first of wMch is from Mal. iu. 1 and only
the second frora Isa. xl. 3, combines the two under the one name
of Isaiah the prophet.
The matter of historical inaccuracies and discrepancies in the
Old Testaraent has been sufficiently iUustrated m other connec
tions, and to what has been said we need only add the foUowing
reraark. The histories of the Bible, Uke all other Mstories of
antiquity, are especiaUy Uable to inaccuracies in the three mat
ters of naraes, numbers, and sequence of time. Indeed, the
attainment of perfect accuracy in these matters is not possible
for raan : the best results have been reached in more modern
tiraes only as the reward of much critical effort, and by the use
of many new instrumentalities.
An inquiry into the validity of the bibUcal genealogies is, of
course, closely connected with this portion of our subject, but
need not be undertaken in detail. We may affirm in general
with Lenorraant,! that a good critic can attribute to the bibhcal
genealogies only such characteristics — validity, accuracy, and
corapleteness — as belong to the " genealogies habitually pre
served among Semitic people." We have already seen the
mixed and uncertain character of the genealogies previous to
the time of Abraham. The uncertain use of the terms signify
ing descent, the admixture of mere tribal with blood relation
ships, the indeterrainate use of the principle of adoption, the
supreraacy of fanciful and subjective considerations in fixing
the nuraber and arrangeraent of generations and of representa
tive naraes, the unanswerable question as to how many terms
in the series have been dropped out at any given point, — and
all these difficulties in connection with the constant uncertainty,
as to iraportant points or detaUs in chronology, — render it quite
impossible to vindicate a claim to historical completeness and
perfect accuracy for the later genealogies. Of aU these geneal
ogies, the raost important by far is that of Jesus CMist. But
even this is by no raeans freed frora the suspicion of aU the
above-raentioned peculiarities. Its construction, indeed, could
be no raore accurate and coraplete than was raade possible by
the sources frora which it was constructed, unless we assume a
special revelation for the correction and corapletion of these
sources. The disproof of such an assuraption would then at
once follow on an exaraination of the genealogy, and a com
parison of it with the sources frora which it must, iu part at
I Ancient History of the East, I. p. 40.

THE GENEALOGIES OF JESUS. 407
least, have been drawn. Even so favorable a critic as Zockler ^
asserts, that, on coraparison of Matthew and Luke with Gen. v.
and xi. and 1 Chron. i.-ix., we must notice in these biblical gene
alogies "a certain carelessness of construction, an effort for the
predominance of those relations which have symbolical signifi
cance, at the expense sometimes of completeness, and soraetiraes
of accuracy." Nor can we gain any satisfaction frora the best
efforts to reconcUe the apparent discrepancies of the two Evan
gelists when compared one with the other. That their arrange
ment of the generations is largely ideal, appears upon the face of
their work ; for this arrangement makes according to Matthew
(i. 1-17) 3x14 generations between Abrahara and Christ, and
according to Luke (iU. 23-38) 7x11 between Christ and Adara.
Nor does the raaterial used by both writers seera any less diffi
cult of historical verification than the forra into which they
construct it. "If it be morally certain," as Hervey claims,^
"that the genealogy of Jesus Christ was extracted frora the
public registers," then it is also raorally certain that each edi
tion of it could have only so rauch of historical validity as be
longed to the registers frora which it was extracted. And the
impossibUity of attributing even substantial accuracy to both
seems the clearer, the raore nuraerous the unsatisfactory efforts
at a coraplete harraony becorae. Even the painstaking explana
tion of Hervey, besides raany raakeshifts and the decided in
congruity of passing the lines of descent back and forth between
natural and legal descendants, is forced to admit — although
entirely without MS. evidence — that the name Rhesa has been
slipped into the text of Luke by sorae scribe. It is difficult to
see how two genealogies which coincide in only two naraes
(Zorobabel and Salathiel) in so long a list (twentj^-five in
Matthew and forty in Luke lying between Joseph and David),
and which diverge at the second step of removal frora their raain
subject (Joseph being given as the son of Jacob by Matthew and
as the son of Heli by Luke), can ever be harraonized, unless we
resort to the absurd claira raade by the forgery of Annius of
Viterbo, that all of our Lord's ancestors frora David down
wards had two naraes. It should not be forgotten, however,
that the doctrine of the Davidic descent of Jesus, and the facts
of descent so far as they are necessary to make good this doc
trine, are not dependent upon our abUity to prove in detail the
1 Article Jesus Christus, Herzog aud Plitt.
2 Article in Smith's Bib. Diet.

408 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
harmony of Matthew and Luke, or the perfect accuracy of
either one of the two.
The special difficulties of chronology have already beeu brief
ly and indirectly considered. Devout students of the Bible
have not hesitated to affirm the impossibility of constructing an
absolute biblical chronology : just as impossible is such a rela
tive arrangeraent of the sequence of biblical events as shall
harraonize all the biblical narratives. Frora the Church Father
who considered the reconciling of the chronological difficulties
of Scripture to be the fit task of weak minds, to the French
Abb^ who concluded the task to be too difficult for the strongest
rainds, the testiraony is sufficiently uniforra : " There is no real
biblical chronology." It seems strange indeed that we should
be unable to fix upon absolutely certain dates even with respect
to the birth of Christ, and the duration of his rainistry ; but so
it is. The so-called " Church chronology," as established by
Dionysius in the sixth century upon the assuraption that Jesus
was thirty years old in the fifteenth of the reign of Tiberius
(corapare Luke iii. 1 and 23), is uncertain on account of the
indefiniteness of the wa-ei; nor can we tell whether the years of
the emperor are reckoned from his regency with Augustus
or from the beginning of Ms independent reign (765 or 767
A. U.C). Moreover, the calculations which are based upon the
view that the kUling of the infants was soon followed by the
death of Herod (Matt. ii. 19), as the stateraent of Macrobius
also proves, enable us to pronounce the date of Dionysius erro
neous, and to fix with considerable confidence upon 748 or 749
A.U.C. (4 or 5 B.C.) as the date of Christ s birth. The length
of his public rainistry raust be fixed to a considerable extent by
our opinion as to the genuineness and authenticity of the Gos
pel of John. But even the testiraony of John does not furnish
an absolutely certain settleraent of this question ; since we can
not be sure whether the correct interpretation of Luke vi. 1
necessitates the interpolation of a passover between John ii. 13
and vi. 4, nor whether the feast of John v. 1 indicates another
passover. The uncertainty of the relative chronology of the Synoptic
Gospels is obvious. It is, indeed, an easy raethod of dismissing
chronological difficulties to assert unqualifiedly, " The Gospels
are unchronological in order," and then conjecture subjective
principles of general arrangeraent for the materials of each
Gospel, and special motives for the detailed arrangement of

THE BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY. 409
these materials by the author of each.^ But this method of
idealizing and schematizing the order of the evangelistic history
hes perilously near to far greater dangers than those which the
method seeks to avoid. No satisfactory harmony of the se
quences of incidents as given by the different Synoptic Gospels
is, indeed, possible : such harmony is not necessary to the high
est usefulness and substantial accuracy of these Gospels. But
criticism will not bear out the view which relieves us from all
responsibility as to our conclusions in respect to the entire
accuracy of the writers. We cannot adopt the claira of West
cott : " Definite marks of tirae and place are extreraely rare,
and general indications of teraporal or local connection are
scarcely more frequent : " ^ therefore, it is argued, the harmo
nist, having shown " that the few incidental fixed dates in the
Gospels are consistent with one another," ^ raay aver, " All ob
jections drawn frora the discordant order which they present
otherwise fall to the ground." On the contrary, the different
incidents in each one of the Synoptic Gospels are in general
somewhat closely interwoven in the supposed sequence of tirae ;
not always, indeed, by teraporal particles, but by raany other
more delicate indications of the language and thought. To
escape, for instance, the plain chronological discrepancy in the
case of the Sermon on the Mount, by saying, " That which was
for St. Luke but as one discourse araong raany, was for St.
Matthew the introduction and key to all," * will only satisfy a
mind that has, for the tirae at least, relaxed its grasp upon his
torical criticisra.
It would be superfluous to reraark further concerning the
uncertaraty of the nurabers eraployed in the Bible, so far as
they enter into questions of chronology. With regard to the
enumeration of arraies, or of heads of people or farailies in a
census, and with respect to suras of raoney and nurabers used
to indicate distance, we know that all ancient history is very
uncertain, and that the sarae uncertainty belongs to rauch of
more modern history. In the Ught of this universal experience
must all the sirailar biblical stateraents of nuraber be consid
ered. Coraplete accuracy is not to be expected in such mat
ters, but a wide departure from accuracy cannot be used to
1 Compare Westcott, In*TOduction, etc., especially chap, vii.; and Gregory,
"Why Four Gospels?"
' Ibid., p. 344. 3 Ibid., p. 347.
* See Westcott, Ibid., p. 351; and compare the erroneous note on p. 378, where
the lack of " temporal sequence " is one of the critic's own creating.

410 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE
disprove the Mstorical value in general of the narrative in
which it occurs.
We close this chapter upon the relation of the Mstorical con
tents of the Bible to the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, obserring
that the conclusions derived from our critical survey must be
largely negative. It was clairaed at the beginning of the dis
cussion, that the dignity of the biblical history is self-evincing.
The impression of this dignity which the Bible makes upon the
thoughtful reader is not removed, but rather confirmed and
deepened, by criticism. Nor does the most searcMng examinar
tion prevent our cherisMng the conviction, that a certain dirine
origin and nature belong to tMs class of the scriptural writings.
Such examination does, however, quite forbid that we should
place the grounds of this conviction in any theory as to the
trustwortMness of all the alleged historical narratives of Scrip
ture, or as to the complete freedora of any of these narratives
frora inaccuracies and discrepancies in details. After complet
ing our survey, as before beginning it, we see that the dirine
characteristics of scriptural history are evinced, primarily, in
the nature of the subject which furnishes the materials for the
history, and, secondarily, in the forra given to the materials
by the ethical and religious consciousness of the writers of
Scripture. The cMef positive value of the criticisra of scriptural history
lies, then, in this : Such criticisra estabUshes on the firmest
foundations our confidence in the Mstorical character and sub
stantial accuracy of just those narratives of the Bible with the
fate of which our Christian doctrine and Christian lffe are most
intiraately connected. To a large extent, history and doctrine
are joined in fact and in fate by the narratives of the Bible ;
the doctrine is abstracted frora the . Mstory, which is itself a
concrete expression and erabodiment of the doctrine. And yet
to distinguish between shell and kernel is even raore necessary
iu' the case of the historical contents of Scripture than else
where. That destructive criticisra does not touch tMs sound
kernel of historico-doctrinal truth, it is the chief office of the
criticism of apologetics to make both objectively and subject- j |
ively certain. Beyond this raost iraportant service and chief
value of historical criticisra, it has no Uttle evidence which it
may display to show the high degree of historical credibility :
and accuracy which is in general reached by the narratives of
the Bible.

INSPIRATION AND HISTORICAL ACCURACY. 411
But besides such general conclusions of a positive kind, the
remaining conclusions are for the most part negative. It can
not be said that criticism is able to show that all the portions of
the Old Testament, wMch are historic in form, are genuinely
Mstoric in character. It cannot be said that uncertain and
diverse traditions have not blended in the sources of the Mstory
of Israel, to an extent difficult of exact deraarkation along its
subsequent course. It can by no means be claimed that any of
the biblical narratives are certainly free from all inaccuracies
and discrepancies of details. Indeed, the total result of minute
Mstorical criticism undeniably contradicts this latter claim. It
will perhaps be thought possible by sorae, despite all evidence
of such maccuracies and discrepancies, in sorae way or other to
force upon the biblical writers at least the serablance of perfect
harmony with fact and with one another. To attain the show
of success in such forcing, the appeals to ignorance and to prej
udice are most potent, and the opportunities for suborning and
perverting the witnesses are many. But the cost of the process
must be paid by loss of confidence, first of all, in those who
thus deal with Scripture histories, and perhaps, in the next place,
in the histories themselves. And the fundamental inquiry
perpetually recurs : Is there, then, any tMng whatever in the
nature of Sacred Scripture rightly understood to make either
necessary or desirable such methods of defending its authors ?
As to the historical accuracy of the biblical narratives, it can
simply be clairaed that it is, of itself, such as neither to prove
nor to disprove the view that they are valid parts of Sacred
Scripture. The supernatural eleraents of the historical contents
do not consist in the characteristics of Mstorical and critical
infallibUity, neither do these eleraents require for their proof
perfection in such characteristics. Indeed, it is only as the
historical accuracy of the narrative portions of the Bible is
influenced by the etMcal and religious spirit which pervades
them, that this accuracy is not just as purely natural as is that
of any of the so-called profane histories of antiquity.
There is much, however, in the nature of the raaterial, and in
the form given to this raaterial by the influence of the ethical
and reUgious consciousness, that gives to the historical contents
of the Bible a claira to the title of Sacred Scripture. The
record of the kingdora of God on earth is frora its very nature
a history, pragraatic and prophetic, of a process of divine self-
revelation. And in order that this process may be not only

412 THE DOCTRINE Q'F SACRED SCRIPTURE.
realized, but recorded, the minds and hearts of men must be
prepared by divine illuraining. In this sense of the words
revelation and inspiration are necessary correlates, with respect
to the historical as with respect to all the other portions of the
Bible. The histories of the Old Testament are due to revela
tion, in so far as the pragraatic connections of the kingdom of
God, its prophetic anticipations and other ideal truths, are made
known to raen in these Mstories. Their writers were inspired
in so far as they were put into such raental and spiritual con
dition by the Spirit of revelation as that these connections,
anticipations, and other ideal truths could be grasped and ap
propriated by thera. In other words, it is the spirit of prophecy
pervading the narratives of the Old Testaraent wMch gives them
all their claira to be called inspired. It is, then, those portions
of the Old-Testament Mstory which bear raost obvious marks
of the prophetic spirit, that have best claira to this title. We
are without .conclusive evidence as to whether aU, or the greater
nuraber, of the historical books of the Old Testament, were
written by raen acknowledged as prophets, technically so called.
But the instinctive judgraent of the Jewish Church, which
ascribed certain of these books to men prophetically inspked,
and enrolled their works araong the prophets, is true to the
principal facts involved. To a large extent the books them
selves bear before us the raarks of their prophetic spirit. They
do this, however, variously, and so as fitly to be divided into
two classes, soraewhat after the fasMon of the Jewish Canon.
In their ethical and reUgious spirit, the historical portions of
the prophetic books, the Pentateuch, and the other earlier his
torical books, in general rauch excel the later works.
It is the Christian consciousness, the raoral and religious
illumining which coraes frora seeing the facts of Christ's life
and death as the Spirit of God causes thera to be seen, that
inspires the histories of the New Testament. We can, indeed,
have no hesitation in affirming with Weiss,^ that the facts which
criticisra discloses quite prevent us frora attributing inspiration,
in the older dograatic raeaning of the word, to the Synoptic
Gospels. But just as the apostolic message of salvation may
claim to have been announced under the irapulse and guidance
of the Holy Spirit, so raay the historical delineations of the life
of Jesus, which originated in the sarae era through the work of
apostles and the pupils of apostles, claira to be derived from
1 Compare Leben Jesu, I. p. 21 f.

INSPIRATION AND HISTORICAL ACCURACY. 413
tlie same Spirit. And, under this claim, the inspiration of the
writers of the Gospels guarantees the exclusion frora their his
tory of whatever is essentially unchristian, and guarantees the
essential trustworthmess of their picture of Jesus ; just as, to
reverse the argument, the nature of this picture, its exclusive
ness and sympathetic appreciation, guarantees the inspiration
of the writers.
In both the Old Testaraent and the New, the Mstorical por
tions may be spoken of as inspired and sacred writings, with no
less confidence because the final shaping of such portions in
many cases involved the work of many minds and hearts. For
these minds and hearts may aU have shared in the same divine
revelation and divine Ulumining, and may have imparted the
divme mfluences wMch they thus received to the traditions and
written records they helped to perpetuate.
But should the anxious inquiry arise, " In what respect, then,
do the writers of biblical history differ frora all others who have
showed insight and foresight in deaUng with the facts of his
tory?" the answer is not far away. In raany respects they do
not differ, and we are glad to know that they do not. But
these writers are unUke all others in at least two iraportant par
ticulars. The subject of their Mstory — tMs subject being the
historical developraent of Israel in its preparation for the cora
ing of the Redeeraer, the story of his life and death, and the
founding of the Christian Chureh — differences them from all
others. Their Mstory is the history of the self-revelation of
God as the Redeemer of mankuid. To no other writers have
been given the privUege and power of writing the history of
such a subject as this. These writers differ frora others also in
that some of them at least show an incomparably Mgh degree
of moral and religious insight into their sacred subject. To
discern the pragmatic connections and to intuit the ideal truths
of the Mngdora of God, in the midst of surrounding heathen
ism and in the remote and misty places of antiquity, is a power
that is born of no merely earthly parentage.
We have sufficiently illustrated the extent to which the in
fluence of the Spirit of revelation, as it began raost obviously
to work in the writings of Mosaism, has purified the raore
ancient traditions frora certain forras of error. AU through the
histories of both Testaraents, he who has any genuine faith in
the SpUit of Providence will not fail to see its guiding force.
We cannot, indeed, tell why some traditions have been pre-

414 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
served, and others lost ; why many precious narratives of the
sayings and deeds of the Lord are gone, whUe the camping-
places of Israel in the desert and the genealogies of the Penta
teuch and of Chronicles remain. Nor can we indulge in the
fanciful opinions that the Church would have been injured by a
fuller knowledge of certain features of Christ's life and teach
ings, or that the Bible, as a whole, would be injured if there
had perished frora it sorae of its minor parts. We can still he
grateful that we have so rauch, — enough to found Mstorically
and perpetuate in fact the Christian Church and the religious
life of the individual believer. That what is only historically
iraperfect should be providentially cared for in Sacred Scrip
ture, is analogous to the methods of aU providential care.
It raust be admitted, that prophetic inspiration does not secure
Mstoric infaUibUity to the writers of sacred history. The prophet
discerns that truth in the past to which his mspiration makes
hira nearest akin. But such inspiration conveys no new knowl
edge of bare events, and cannot be used as a substitute for criti
cal care in the collection and use of materials. Nor have we
any proof that it guards the writer against accepting any merely
historical mistakes wMch have corae to him m ancient traditions
or documents, or in the testimony of eye-witnesses. It is not
history, but the meaning of history, which is revealed to a
prophetic soul. The inspired historian must gather and judge
and dispose his materials with the same general UabUity to mis
take in matters of fact which belongs to aU raen. In certain
most iraportant respects, however, the spirit of prophecy in
directly guards the writer of history against grave historical
errors. It represses self-conscious fraud or depravation of the
facts of Mstory ; it secures a certain discernment between the
essential and the unessential ; it favors steadfastness to the main
truths of history, and constant recognition of the presence in
history of a divine plan. And all that is true of tbe spirit
of Old-Testament prophecy is pre-erainently true of the spirit of
Christian inspiration.
This prophetic quality being wanting to any portion of the
Old-Testaraent writings, such portion drops into the lower class
of narratives, whose only claim to the title "inspired" rests
upon their connection with other inspired writings, and upon
the place providentially secured to them in the Bible. This
title can then be used only in the lowest and loosest sense
applicable at all to Sacred Scripture.

CHAPTER V.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACKED SCRIPTURE AS EELATED TO THB
PREDICTIVE CONTENTS OP THE BIBLE.
We have already examined the chief characteristics of Old-
Testament prophecy, so far as they are evinced in the inspired
personality of the prophet, and in the claims raade for his raes
sage both by the New-Testaraent writers and by the Hebrew
prophets theraselves.^ The exaraination has led us to observe
the distinctively etMcal character of the prophetic contents
of Sacred Scripture, the organic nature of the developraent
through wMch the prophecy passed untU its alleged fulfilraent
in CMistianity, and the free typical and symbolic view of the
fulfilment which was held by Christ and his apostles. These
results of our past exegesis and criticisra must serve both as
hghts and as landmarks in the present discussion. The discus
sion must make itself both raore restricted and raore coraplete
by a constant tacit appeal to the previous results.
The reference of the New Testament to the Old authenti
cates pre-emraently the etMcal and predictive contents of the
latter. Araong these predictive contents the New Testament
regards the Messianic as of especial significance and value for
its purpose ; it considers both the ethical and the predictive as
so united in one that they cannot be separated ; for even the
Torah is predictive of Christ, and the prophets are a part of
that Law which is fulfiUed in him. We only follow, then, the
example of the New Testament, when we insist upon giving
predonunance in our discussion to a few great ideas. And if
we were obUged to rest the case, after simply stating these ideas,
upon the authority of Christ, it is by no means clear that we
should not have secured truth enough as a basis for a satisfac
tory doctrme of Sacred Scripture. The nature of the predictive
contents of the Bible is, however, so peculiar, and the views
held as to prophecy and its fulfilraent are so deterrainative of
1 See Part I., chapters iv. and v. 415

416 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
all other related views, that these contents demand a separate
treatment. Their treatraent, like that of all the other classes
of contents, is dependent upon phUosophical inquiries into the
supernatural, and upon critical inquiries into history and into
the date and authorship of the biblical books. Concerning the
subjects of these inquiries, then, we raust either refer to what
has aUeady been said, or assurae the truth of that which will
be hereafter raore carefully exarained.
The Hebrew prophets obviously clairaed, on the authority of
divine revelations raade to them, to predict future events ; and
just as obviously the writers of the New Testament claimed,
both in a general and in a more precise way, that these proph
ets had foreseen and foretold the things of Christ. Yet such
claims, whether accepted or rejected, do not serve to settle some
of the most interesting and iraportant inquiries which are raised
by them. When, for instance, the author of Isa. xiu. 9 asserts,
" New tMngs do I declare ; before they spring forth I tell you
of them," he certainly claims a power of prediction for his
prophetic utterance. He does not, however, give us any infor
mation as to the precise origin and the perfect clearness of his
convictions, or as to the details of their development in his
mind. Critical and philosopMcal questions as to the nature of
prediction, as to its limits of possible error, and as to the rela
tions of different predictions to one another, are, of course, not
even considered by the biblical writers. Yet these are the very
questions wMch raost concern ms, to whom raany of the more
particular warnings and proraises of prophecy have become as
matters of the reraote past.
The opinion of every critic as to the nature of the alleged .
predictions of the Old Testaraent will be alraost wholly deter
rained by his theological point of view. Each critic should,
indeed, be required to earn Ms right to an opinion by showing
hiraself capable of a thorough and candid historical criticism of
the predictions theraselves. But such criticism, when applied
to the phenoraena of Old-Testaraent prophecy as they are elu
cidated by an equally thorough and candid examination of the
phenomena of Christianity, wiU always leave room for choice
as to the explanation of raany facts. TMs choice wUl necessa
rUy be deterrained by the position which the critic holds toward
the whole question of the supernatural origin of bibUcal reli
gion. We do not wonder, then, that Kuenen ^ is at such pains
1 See especially Prophets and Prophecy, pp. 1-4 and 91 ff.

THE NATURE OF PREDICTION. 417
to define his own position as that of simple naturalism: his
definition is, indeed, a necessary preliminary to his entUe treat
ment of Hebrew prophecy. He who rejects the supernatural
in toto rejects also, of course, its manifestation, both as an
external syrabol and as an inner word ; and rejecting the inner
word of revelation he cannot hesitate to reject the predictive
elements of that word. Nor is there any hope that an agree
ment upon critical results will produce an agreeraent as to the
rational explanation of those results. The raost precise predic
tions of individual events, if they were to be produced by Old-
Testament prophecy, would be explained by sorae critics as
examples of ordinary psychical phenoraena ; while others would
continue to ascribe the entire organisra of this prophecy to a
supernatural origin, although such precise predictions were
wholly wanting.
The nature of prediction as one eleraent of genuine prophecy
must, then, be understood in accordance with our conception of
prophecy as a whole. The hypothesis which would explain the
rehgion of Israel as a natural outgrowth of prophecy, and then
explain Hebrew prophecy as a natural outgrowth of heathen
soothsaying, seeras to us inadequate in every respect. In oppo
sition to such an hypothesis we tMnk that KeU^ is right in
assertmg both the transcendent origm and the transcendent
character of tMs prophecy. Its prediction is not mere premo
nition or calculation of the future : it contains witMn itself, not
only the gerra of the future, but also a foresight of the raanner
in wMch this gerra wiU unfold itself.
It must be at once adraitted, however, that the view of the
so-caUed " old orthodoxy " concerning the nature of biblical pre
diction cannot justify itself before raodern criticisra. Sorae of
the chief critical objections to this view will corae before us
when we consider the liraitations of prediction. It is enough
at present to notice, that the atterapt to regard prophecy as
making its pre-erainent claira upon our attention by definite
predictions of individual futui-e events (perspicuae rerum futura-
rum earumque contingentium praedictiones, quibus eventus respon-
dit, per divinam omniscentiam) degrades it even below heathen
mantic.^ For even this raantic originates in that longing for
communion with God which forras the indispensable pre-rcqui-
Bite of Hebrew prophecy. It is, indeed, pre-erainently true of
1 Einl. in das A. T., p. 230.
'' Compare Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, II. p. 345.
VOL. L 2d

418 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the latter, that its predictive elements have their rise in its ethi
cal eleraents. The genuine prophet of the Old Testament is
never siraply, nor priraarily, an announcer of future events: he
is rather, priraarily, a preacher of righteousness to the present,
a spiritual critic of raen and measures and events which belong
to his own time. His apocalypse, so far as regards the future,
is an expected exeraplification of the principles of righteousness,
which are to be applied in their fuller force and glory when the
seeds of the present have gerrainated and borne fruit. That
one should speak for Jehovah in righteousness, is necessary to
the title and functions of a prophet ; but not primarily that one
should speak beforehand the things wMch will come to pass.^
We are, then, perfectly justified in declarrag that "prediction
of the future is not the centre of gravity (Schwerpunkt) of the
perfect prophetic activity." ^
Yet we can by no raeans consider prediction as an unim
portant or unessential feature of prophecy. Indeed, we can
scarcely conceive of the great changes which would have to be
effected in the whole nature of biblical revelation, and even of
the Christian religion, if we should leave this forecasting of the
future entirely out of our account. To attempt this would be
to aira at destroying the organic nature of revelation ; it would
be to endeavor to disconnect the Redeeraer and his work from
the historic roots of Old-Testaraent religion. And it would
certainly be most plainly to contradict important and expHcit
teachings of our Lord himself. The great facts of revelation
and inspiration form both a guaranty and an explanation of
a certain kind and degree of prediction. For revelation, as
a divine word, must come through prophecy ; and in order that
revelation may run a course in history, anticipations and fore-
shadowings of the future must be spoken by the prophets, as
well as embodied in the real forras of law, institution, and
syrabolic ritual. To deny that prophecy can have elements
of genuine prediction is to deny that the divine revelation,
through prophecy, can be any thing better than a sporadic and
disconnected declaration of moral truth. Moreover, an inspired
view of the past and the present — a consideration of events
from the divine point of outlook, and as they appear to an
1 "Upd in irpo4»iTi)!," as says Tholuck (Die Propheten und ihre Weissagungen,
p. 22), " is not temporal, but local." The false derivation of the word, which Tho
luck justly accuses of darkening the thought, he finds first in the eleventh cen
tury, as shown by the form wtssagcn.
2 So H. Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 230.

PREDICTION NOT CALCULATION. 419
ethically and spiritually enlightened consciousness — involves
a certain knowledge of the future.^
All these considerations are especially iraportant with respect
to that kind of Old-Testament prophecy which concerns Mes
siah and the Messianic kingdom. For it is in the ideas and
expected developments of the Messianic kingdora that the
foresight of the prophets has its clearest outlook and grand
est scope. And if we are to shut in the horizon around them
just where their shrewd calculations of probable results cease
to Ulumine it, we shall make it narrow indeed. But this we
must do, unless we admit the vaUdity of the prophetic claira to
receive in some sort divine revelations as to things that should
come to pass. Nor is there any more difficulty in attributing
the foresight of the prophets to its origin in revelation than in
attributing to the sarae origin their insight into the right moral
relations of their own present. Indeed, the insight and the
foresight are so closely correlated that they must both be con
sidered as alike due to the same supernatural origin. The ethi
cal and religious ideas which God comraunicated to his inspired
messengers were vital throughout ; they were compelled to grow
by an inward necessity. They were germs of future ideas and
events, and, therefore, by their very nature predictive ; they
could not be comraunicated to these messengers without carry
ing with thera revelations of the future. The threatenings and
promises which the Lord gave to the prophets to bring to Israel
were theraselves predictive. We might, indeed, alraost agree
to declare with Rothe, that prophecy, so far as it is predictive,
is essentially " a proraise of salvation."
We are, then, secured by the true position regarding the
nature of prophetic revelation and inspiration against all terap-
tation to reduce the predictions of the Bible to raere calcula
tions. For the presence of miscalculations araongst genuine
predictions would no raore reduce the latter as a class to raere
calculations than the presence in the record of certain alleged
but not real miracles would compel us to attribute all of
Christ's works to mesmeric influences. The question to be
asked is this: How shall we account for the seeraing raiscal-
culations in accordance with known principles of supernatural
revelation ? That the convictions of the Old-Testaraent proph
ets regarding the future were not the result of calculation, is
also apparent frora the nature of the convictions themselves.
1 Compare Rothe, Zur Dogmatik, pp. 113 ff.; and Schultz, Ibid., p. 231.

420 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTLTSE.
They have not the characteristics of calculations. They did
not present theraselves as such to the prophetic consciousness.
They are rather to be corapared to the certainty of religious
faith; Uke it they are the product and gift of divine revela
tion. It is true that in certain cases calculation and prophetic
foresight may result in the same convictions regarding the
future. But the latter, unlike the former, is the work of the
divine Spirit upon a receptive soul. The grounds of the con
viction are, moreover, different in the two cases. In the case
of calculation the grounds lie in certain admitted reasons
which can be imparted to others as reasons, and to wMch
an appeal can be raade when disputes arise as to a probable
or nearly certain guide of the judgraent. But in the case of
prophetic foresight, the reason of the conviction lies primarily
ill the alleged divine comraunication, and secondarily in an
application of divine laws of governraent made clear to the
apprehension of faith. Nor can the conviction be demonstrated
to others as probable, or nearly certain, on the ground of rea
sons generally adraitted by the huraan judgraent.
Moreover, the nature of the predictions theraselves seems
to us to prove that they are not due to raere calculation. We
do not see how Isaiah could have trusted to calculation m the
confident prediction (see chap, vii.) of the downfaU of Israel
and Syria at the very tirae when they were pre-eminently
strong in their confederate enterprises ; or how, moreover, he
could have calculated this downfall as about to happen within
three or four years from the date of the prediction (see vm. 4).
For that part of the prediction which was fulfilled is not to be
set one side by pressing the word " forsaken " (vU. 16) so as to
make the prophet expect a raore complete desolation than
really occurred.^ Nor are we satisfied with the explanation
of Kuenen,^ when he atterapts to account for the predictions of
the same prophet regarding Judah and Assyria in the time of
Hezekiah and Sennacherib, on the principle that Isaiah's con
fidence in the failure of Sennacherib's enterprise "rests properly
on the conviction that Israel has been chosen by Jahveh, and
Zion is his dwelling-place." That Isaiah had this general con
fidence, we have not a doubt. But this confidence is quite too
general to account for his special foresight that disaster was
coming upon this particular Assyrian enterprise (see x. 12,
16-19, 24-34, xiv. 25, xxix. 7 f., xxx. 31); that the disaster
1 So Kuenen, Ibid., pp. 166, ff. 2 itjd., p. 297.

PREDICTION NOT CALCULATION. 421
would be sudden and overwhelming (xvii. 14) ; ^ and that it
would be due in part to rumors of revolt in his own land
(Isa. xxxvii. 6 f. ; compare 2 Kings xix. 6 f.). In this case,
again, our attention is not to be turned from the nature of the
prediction, tMough an effort to involve Isaiah in self-contradic
tion by maMng hira announce (xxxvii. 33 ; corapare 2 Kings
xix. 20 ff.) that Sennacherib should not even lay siege to the
city, and also announce elsewhere ^ that the Assyrian raonarch
should invest, blockade, and perhaps partially conquer it.
Jeremiah also, even before the Chaldeans had raade theraselves
independent of Assyria, and when they could not be viewed
by the eye of political foresight as dangerous to Palestine, nev
ertheless threatened Judah with this eneray out of the North
(see i. 13 f., iv. 5 f., 13, vi. 1-5), and subsequently (vii., vui.,
xxri.) announced the desolation of Jerusalera, the teraple,
and all the land, by the sarae force. We find no adequate
satisfaction for these predictions in the theory of calculation,
even when the calculation is based upon a general confidence
in Jehovah and Ms reUgion. EspeciaUy do we need a further
account of such phenoraena, when we find the sarae prophet
foretelling the deportation of Ms nation, their long captivity in
Babylon, and subsequent return frora exUe (see Jer. xxv. 9 f. ;
xxvU. 1 f., xxix. 10 f.). The precise declaration of Amos
i. 3-5, that " the people of Aram shall be carried away into
Kir," which Kuenen adraits ^ to have been written " about half
a century before the Syrian-Ephraunite war," and to be "a
most reraarkable coincidence," seems utterly unlike a shrewd
calculation. We cannot hold that the eleraents for such a
calculation were all given in the previous history of the Ararae-
ans, and in the custom of the Assyrians ; especially if we may
trust the stateraent of Lenorraant* and other Assyriologists,
that the custom of wholesale deportation did not origmate
until the fulfilment by Tiglath-pUeser of this very prediction.
How, then, could all this "easUy have been anticipated by
Amos " ? In brief, the subterfuges and assuraptions which are
made necessary by the unaided theory of calculation are quite
as marked as those needed by the dogma of the old orthodoxy ;
^ An item of the prediction which was fulfilled; although we should question
the historical accuracy of the words, "and it came to pass that night," which
do not occur iu the text of Isaiah. See xxxvii. 30, 36 f ., and compare 2 Kings
xix. 35.
2 See xxix. 1-8, xxx. 19 f., xxxi. 4 f., xxxii. 14; compare Kuenen, Ibid., p. 292.
' See Ibid., pp. 282 and 284. ^^ Ancient History of the East, I. p. 390.

422 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
while this theory has not the soul of truth in an adherence to
supernatural verities which belonged to that dogma.
We conclude, then, that Old-Testament prediction is a true
and necessary eleraent of that revelation and mspiration in
which it has both its origin and its explanation ; but that it is
an eleraent correlated with, and subordinated to, the ethical
truths and ideas of revelation. Revelation gives us the only
adequate account of both the ethical and the predictive ele
raents of Hebrew prophecy ; the latter eleraents, however, are
specifically dependent upon the forraer. The true thought is,
then, substantially that of Riehra,i who affirras that the greater
part of the prophecies arise from an inward certainty concerning
the truth of salvation which was wrought in the spirit of the
prophet by the Divine Spirit ; and which is, therefore, akin to
the convictions of the Christian consciousness, regarded as hav
ing their origin in the- so-called testimonium internum Spiritus
Sancti. Of Messianic prophecy the sarae author says, " Messianic
prophecy grew out of the very vital marrow of the Old-Testa
ment religion with a kind of inward necessit3^" So far is it
from being true, that prediction is accounted for as a merely
natural phenoraenon by showing its relation to the religion of
the Old Testaraent, that we raust the rather consider the entire
organisra, its ethical and predictive organs alike, as filled with
the same life. History furnishes the soil and shapes the mani
festation of these ideas; revelation is the constant source of
their life.
Let tbe above-raentioned truth be Ulustrated by pointing out
two or three of those ideas of revelation with which the Messi
anic predictions were raost intiraately connected. The idea of
a coraraunity under a covenant with God is, as we have already
seen, a leading idea of Old-Testament revelation. In this idea
are the germs and roots of many Messianic conceptions and
predictions. In the convictions which underUe these predic
tions, the Law and the Prophets unite. God as the King of
Israel (Isa. xxxiii. 22) gives to the nation just laws and ordi
nances (see Deut. iv. 8 ; Isa. xiii. 21) ; as royal Judge he pro
vides for righteousness in his land (see Isa. IxUi. 11; Hag. ii. 5).
And when the prophets predict the fulness of aU spiritual bless
ings upon the obedience and loyalty of the people, they bring
1 See his exceedingly interesting and suggestive articles on this subject— Zur
Charakteristik der Messianischen Weissagung und ihres Verhaltniss zu der
Erfiilluug — iu the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1865 and 1869.

THE IDEAS GERMINATING PREDICTIONS. 423
forward the thought of a nation which is royal and priestly
(compare Exod. xix. 5 f., xxxi. 13 ; Lev. xx. 8, xxi. 8, xxii. 16,
32, and Ezek. xx. 12, xxxvii. 28; Amos ii. 7). As under the
covenant with Jehovah, the nation is assured by the prophets
of that sarae divine wiUingness to forgive sins, the announce
ment of which is incorporated into the Mosaic Torah (compare
Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7 ; Num. xiv. 18, and Isa. i. 18 ; Mic. vii. 18 ;
Joel U. 13 ; Jon. iv. 2). With the idea of God as Judge and
King is connected, of course, the idea of the kmgdora of God.
That the reality of this kingdora wUl satisfy its idea, is a hope
wMch springs directly out of the conviction that God has raade
an indestructible covenant with his people (see Isa. xxiv. 23,
lu. 7; Mic. iv. 7). Thus coraes the prediction that this king
dom wUl be accorapUshed, and will include the whole earth.
All things and persons — Assyria, his tool (Isa. x. 5, 15),
Nebuchadnezzar, Ms servant (Jer. xxv. 9, xxvii. 6, xlUi. 10),
Cyrus, Ms anomted, his shepherd (Isa. xliv. 28, xlv. 1, xlvi.
11) — are subordinate to the Kmg in accomplishing the pur
poses of Ms kingdom. Even in the Jehovistic portions of the
Pentateuch, according to Riehra,^ this consequence of the
domgs of God to Israel is definitely indicated (see Nura. xiv.
21). Out of these ideas of revelation springs the idea of the theo
cratic Mngdora, and with it arises Messianic prediction in the
more restricted sense. It is this idea which is so clearly and
prominently embocUed in the Messianic Psalms. To it becomes
attached the idea of a royal house in whose line the reign of
Jehovah over Ms people shaU be rightfully and satisfactorily
represented. The scion of the royal line is the "anointed of
Jehovah " (Ps. Ixxxix. 20), the chosen of God (IxxvUi. 70) ; Ms
majesty and righteousness represent the divine raajesty and
righteousness (xxi. 5, xlv. 3, corapare xcvi. 6, civ. 1, cxi. 3);
his throne is the tMone of God (xlv. 6, ex. 1). Such a king
by his obedience secures, as the gift of Jehovah, an unlimited
rule (ii. 8, Ixxii. 8-11, Ixxxix. 25). Ble is " the personal raeans
through which Jehovah dispenses help, salvation, and blessing
to his people." He raust be also a priest (ex. 4, and corapare
the predictions of Jer. xxx. 21 and Zech. in. 7), for the right
eousness and raercy of the Lord have frora of old been raade
manifest in the cultus of the sacrifices. And yet, if we except
" See Zur Charakteristik der Messianischen Weissagung und ihres ''T'erhaltmsa
2Q der ErfiiUung, Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1805, p. 54.

424 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Ps. ex., not one of these Messianic Psalras appears to be in the
stricter sense of the word "Messianic; " that is, what we have
called, in the use of the terra selected by Delitsch, "prophetico-
Messianic." 1 Out of these ideas of revelation did the predic
tions of the Old Testament have their origin and growth.
It is also necessary, in order to a correct knowledge of the
nature both of prediction and of its fulfilment, that the organic
development of the predictive contents of the Old Testament
should be taken into the account. Upon the great truth that
prophecy raust be considered as an organic development, we
have repeatedly insisted. Although Hebrew prophecy was a
raatter of divine revelations in an inspired consciousness, it was
none the less also a raatter of growth. It is the increasing pre-
erainence of the ethical eleraents which cMefly distinguishes it
frora the surrounding heathen raantic. It is the growth of pre
diction away frora the practice of raere soothsaying which gives
their pre-erainence to the predictive contents of the Old Testa
raent. The two forras of prophetic knowledge of the future
are, according to Schultz,^ prediction ( Weissagung) and prog
nostication (Wahrsagung). The forraer is an immediate cer
tainty wrought by the Divine Spirit concerning the divuie will
and plan, and rests upon the recognition of the unchanging
laws of the Divine Being ; its subject is exclusively the history
of the Mngdora of God. But the latter is "the alleged or
actual knowledge of an approaching event, to whatever circle
it raay belong, with its particulars and incidents." In the light
of this distinction we cannot faU to see that prognostication
belongs rather to the earUer and cruder forras of Hebrew proph
ecy ; but prediction is an inseparable eleraent of the ripest and
latest forra. It is true that particulars soraetiraes belong insep
arably to the prediction of events which are of the greatest .
raoraent to the kingdora of God. The prediction of such par
ticulars is seen in all the later developraents of Hebrew proph
ecy. But the particulars are rather to be regarded as included
in the announceraent of those great events which spring forth
in history as God wills to bring in the coramg of Ms promised
salvation. Thus the raore definite individual occurrences which
Jereraiah predicts — xxii. 12, 19, 30, xxix. 21 f., x-^-s.-n. 30,
1 Compare the articles of Riehm, already referred to, and those of Diestel, —
Die Idee des theocratischen Konigs (Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1863,
pp. 536 ff.), — and H. Schultz, Ueber doppelten Schriftsinn (Theol. Stud. u. Kiit,
1866, pp. 28 ff.).
2 Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 231 f.

THE EARLIER PROGNOSTICATIONS. 425
xxxvU. 7, 17, xxxviU. 17 f. — are to be considered for the raost
part as individual instances included under his general predic
tion of the captivity ; this latter event was one of the great
events which God had willed, and revealed to his raessenger as
necessary in the course of Ms kingdom.^ There can be little
doubt that rauch of raere soothsaying was raingled with the
genuine prophetic activity of Israel, especially in its earlier
days and stages; nor shall we ever be in condition to prove
that none of this soothsaying has been adraitted into the bib
lical Mstories. We undoubtedly find instances in the Old Tes
tament of those iraperfect ideas which wrought upon the minds
of all antiquity with regard to the nature of prophecy, predic
tion, and mspiration ; as when, for exaraple, we are inforraed by
Micaiah (1 Kings xxU. 5 f., 22) that Jeliovah puts a false word
into the mouth of the prophet, in order to deceive the people.
We can neither, on the one hand, affirra that the writers of the
Old Testament had perfectly correct and authoritative notions
of the nature of their own prophecy; nor, on the other, can we
affirm that rauch which reserables raere soothsaying in the
earlier Mstory of prophetic activity may not have been divinely
imparted foresight.
We shaU find, then, not a few difficulties in attempting a criti
cal vindication of many of the earlier prognostications which
are recorded chiefly in the Mstorical books of the Old Testa
ment. We are inforraed (Nura. xxiv. 22 ff.) that Balaara in
his prophetic ecstasy foretold the carrying of the Kenites into
captivity by the Assyrians, as well as the hurailiation of the
Assyrians themselves by sMps frora the quarter of Chittim.^
But the critical questions as to the date and nature of the tra
ditions of Balaara prevent us from establishing these utterances
as genuine predictions of particular events in the future. The
entire prophecy of Num. xxiv. is, however, so entirely one in
thought and spirit with all Hebrew prophecy, that its claira to
be predictive — whenever or by whorasoever originally uttered
— cannot be denied. Predictions of particular events abound
in the books of Sarauel and Kings. The principal events of
David's life — the death of his child, and other doraestic disas
ters (2 Sam. xii. 1-25), the pestilence in punishment for the
census (2 Sara, xxiv.), the continuance of the sovereignty in
his family, and the building of the teraple by Soloraon (2 Sam.
1 In similar manner are we to regard Ezek. xiv. 1-8, xx. 1 f., xxiv. 1 f.
2 See Knobel, Die Bucher Numeri, Deuteronomium, u. Josua.

426 THE DOCTRIXE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
vU.) — are said to have been announced beforehand. An un
known raan of God (1 Sara. ii. 27-36) foretells to Eli his ap-
proacMng raisfortunes. Repeatedly ^ does Elijah announce what
is coraing upon Israel in his own day. Elisha foretells the
deliverance of Israel frora the king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 16-
19), and of Saraaria from the Syrians (2 Kings vi. 24--vii. 20);
he also forecasts the great events in the life of Hazael (2 Kings
vUi. 7-15), and Joash, the son of Jehoahaz (2 Kings xiu. 14-19).
In the case of these and all simUar passages from the historical
books of the Old Testament, our raeans for establishing the
genuine predictive nature of the alleged prophecy are relatively
raeagre. Nor does the genuine idea of Old-Testaraent prophecy,
as an organic growtli of the great conceptions and truths which
concern the kingdora of Messiah, perrait us to lay the chief stress
upon such passages. Nor, furtherraore, can we depend upon
necessary assumptions of faith for the claira that all such prog
nostications must be ascribed to cUvine revelation. We see,
however, the genuine and characteristic predictive elements of
Hebrew prophecy gradually disentangling themselves from the
soothsaying and prognosticating of heathen mantic and false
prophets amongst the Plebrews ; just as we see the ethical ele
ments of the sarae prophecy undergoing a sirailar process of
growth. Moreover, we find throughout the Mstorical books
certain instances of prediction that bear unmistakably the dis
tinguishing characteristics of revelation. The effect of these
characteristics in evincing, so far as the predictive elements of
Hebrew prophecy are concerned, the presence of the Divine
Spirit, is beyond the reach of criticisra. The seeds of Messianic
prediction^ are already laid in proraises like those made to Abra
hara (Gen. xii. 2 f., xviU. 18, xxii. 16-18), and contained also
in the blessings of Isaac and Jacob (see Gen. xxvii. 27-29, 39,
40, and xUx. 1-28, especially 8-10). It is in theU organic con-
nectio js, rather than as individual prognostications of events
shortly to come to pass, that we can best understand even the
earlier (and critically most doubtful) predictions of the histori--
cal books. In this regard, the inner miracle of prophecy resem
bles the outward miracle in raaterial nature. Each instance is,
in part, to be judged according to the relation which it sustains
1 Among the instances, note 1 Kings xvii. 1, xix. 15-18, xxi. 17-24, 27-29 ;
2 Kings ix. 30-37, i. 14-16.
2 That we cannot properly make this claim for Gen. iii. 14 f . see Dillmann, Die
Genesis, in loco.

THE PREDICTIVE CONTENTS ORGANIC. 427
to the entire course of revelation. The spirit of revelation was,
indeed, working in Israel to forecast its future in the rainds of
Jehovah's messengers from the call of Abraham onward. And
yet we do not find in the earlier prognostications that invincible
proof of unique character wMch belongs to the noblest Plebrew
prophets. Especially difficult are instances of alleged prediction like
that ascribed (1 Sara, xxviii. 16-19) to the shade of Sarauel,
and said to corae through the Witch at Endor. The oracle of
this same prophet concerning the lost asses of Saul (see 1 Sam.
ix. 20), as an isolated statement, reserables raere soothsaying.
The parenthetical note in verse 9 of chap. ix. indicates a state
of affairs in Israel at this tirae which raust have given rise
to much of intentional deceit or unintentional self-deception.
Yet such instances of apparent soothsaying are not to be re
garded merely as isolated phenomena : they are rather iteras in
the general Mstory of Israel, and in the particular history of
its prophetic developraent. . The view which we take of them,
however, does not affect in any iraportant way the raore valid
of the proofs which are furnished by the predictive contents of
the Bible to the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. As the ethical
and religious ideas of the Old Testaraent were purified and
unfolded in preparation for the New, so were its predictions
piirified and ennobled for their fulfilraent in Christianity.
We affirra, then, both the reality of divine revelation and in
spiration in the predictive contents of the Bible, and also the
historic fact that these contents are an organic developraent.
The ideas of growth and revelation are by no means mutually
exclusive : they are rather in this case necessarily corapleraent-
ary. We see the prophets of Israel concentrating their gaze
into the future upon the things of God's kingdora. We see
them drawmg nearer in prospect to the forra of a personal
Messiah, in whora, and in whose reign, all the prophetic ideas
and inspiring promises of their reUgion should find their fulfil
ment. Thus does prediction becorae no longer a mere prog
nostication of events interesting to the individual, but a power
of foreseeing the unfolding of the divine plan, as that unfold
ing hes in the divine raind. Prediction seats itself in the
organism of religious life, and becomes a part of that Ufe.
Revelation is no less truly a divine work within the soul of
the individual prophet, because it is ministered through great
ethical and religious ideas which are themselves given by revela-

428 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tion, or because it is made in progressive stages wMch are con
nected together under the conditions of an Mstoric development.^
The earlier prophecies thus throw their Ught forward upon the
later facts and prophecies, and these in their turn illumine
those. The seed can be understood only by him who has seen
the perfect plant. Hence it coraes that naturaUsm, relying
upon negative criticisra to furnish an account of biblical pre
dictions, destroys thera at the very root. Their root is in that
. view of the world which looks upon both the world and the
inspired raind which propheticaUy surveys it as under the con
trol of the sarae divine force. But a right conviction of the
reality of the clairas of the prophets to enjoy a divinely nn-
parted foresight of the future does not at all conffict with a right
critical estiraate of the degrees and modes in which this fore
sight was obtained and exercised.
In order to a correct estimate of this entire subject, it is
further necessary that we should consider the limitations of
prediction. Of these limitations we observe three general
classes ; viz., the etMcal, the historic, and the personal.
The etMcal and religious ideas which underlie all Hebrew
prophecy limit its predictions. The principal forms ui which
the later prophets express the convictions of faith as to the
stabiUty of the principles of the divine government are tbe four
following : viz., the threatening of Israel for its sins against the
divine covenant ; the threatenrag of other nations for standing
in the way of the advance of the divine Mngdom, which is
looked upon as centralized, so to speak, in Israel ; the promise
of corafort and salvation to the faitlxful reranant, and of Mes
sianic blessings to the redeeraed nation ; the promise to other
nations of a share in these blessings, and the promise to all
mankind of the realizing of the perfected divine kingdom.
But each of these four forras is necessarUy Umited by the
very nature of the raoral truths which enter into it. The
threatening of evil, or the promise of blessing, must corre
spond with the raoral conditions of the divine government,
and with the moral relations of the objects concerning which
the prediction is raade. The prophet can by no means predict
blessings as the fruit of sin ; he cannot praise and promise well
to those whose infideUty calls for punishment. His unchanging
confidence is not so rauch in the certainty of the events which
he predicts, as in the certainty that Jehovah wiU continue to
1 Compare Beck, System der Christlichen Lehre, p. 190 i.

ETHICAL CONDITIONS OF PREDICTION. 429
deal with men upon the same principles of justice, and of
chastening and redeeming love (compare Isa. xli. 17-27, xiii.
9, xlviu. 5 £). His prediction is not, then, the utterance of
an inevitable fate, but the declaration of the will of a living
and personal God. And inasrauch as the principles upon which
the divine governraent is founded can never change, but the
relations to this government of those whose fate is involved
in the predictions may change, the fulfilraent of the predictions
cannot be accoraplished in contradiction of the principles.
This conditional — ethically conditional — character of their
predictions is thoroughly well understood by the Hebrew
prophets theraselves. It is tacitly assuraed in the repentance
and prayers of David (2 Sam. xU. 13 f.), and definitely an
nounced, 1 Kings xxi. 28. Thus does Araos (vii. 1 f.) repre
sent Mmself as having raore than once turned aside, or delayed,
the threatenrag judgraents of Jehovah by his iraportunate
¦ prayers. A detailed treatment of tMs truth is given us in
Ezek. xviii. and xxxiii. ; it is also definitely taught by the noble
words of Jer. xviU. 7 f. The heart of the true prophet must
be so in sympathy with the divine ways of justice and raercy
that to secure repentance will be esteeraed of raore value than
to attain success in detailed prediction. His call is that men
should turn to the Lord, and so He will turn to thera (compare
• Joel ii. 12-14). One of the characteristic thoughts of the
Book of Jonah is tMs UabUity, so to speak, that the Lord
would fail to fulfil the prophetic predictions which he had
inspired, even when the prophet might be thrown into great
confusion by the faUure. No Uttle experience in Hebrew
|,i; prophecy is doubtless involved in the complaint of this prophet
(iv. 2), that Ms unconditional threat of judgraent had been left
in the lurch by the very power which had coraraissioned Mm
to make it. But the answer to the complaint is involved in
the cry of the people of Nineveh (iU. 9) to the same God
whose prophet had threatened thera; and the prophet is re-
¦ minded, that neither he nor any other raan can tell whether —
if the people turn every one frora his evU way — God will not
turn and repent. The connection of Mic. Ui. 12, in wMch it is
prophesied that Zion shaU be ploughed as a field, and Jerusa
lem shaU becorae heaps, gives us to understand, that, according
to the expectaticn of the prophet, the fulfilraent of his predic
tion would be iramediately accoraplished by the approaching
Assyrian army. The history of the causes which prevented

430 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
this fulfilment may be read in Isa. xxxvi. and xxxvii.; but
the one theocratic cause is announced (Jer. xxvi. 18 f.) in the
statement, that, because Hezekiah turned to God, God repented
him of the evil which he had pronounced. TMs confession of
technical failure to foresee precisely what would come to pass
is raade in behalf of Micah without any visible embarrassment.
Indeed, instances appear where the prophets announce that
their predictions have failed to be fulfilled in the precise form
which had been expected, even when we have no warrant in
their language for ascribing the failure to ethical considerations
(e.g., corapare Ezek. xxix. 17 ff. with xxvi. 1-xxviu. 9). The
very subordination of the predictive to the etMcal element in
prophecy raakes necessary the non-fulfilraent of some predic
tions, or at least leaves it a raatter of doubt whether changes
in the ethical relations of the actors wUl not occasion a change
in the anticipated result.^ Praedixi non fixi raust be the per
suasion of the true prophetic consciousness.
Other liraitations of biblical prediction are more properly
classed as historic. It has been clairaed, that the very concep
tion of history is incorapatible with the prediction of the future
by those who are actors in history. A predorainance of defi
nite and absolute predictions would undoubtedly be inconsistent
with a course of history regarded as dependent upon human
freedora ; ^ but such aUeged predictions are comparatively rare
in Hebrew prophecy. The course of history is dependent, for
its steadfast adherence to the great features of an unchanging
plan, upon the same divine will and thought which are revealed
in the predictions of genuine prophecy. We cannot hold, then,
that all prediction is precluded by the course of history; for
this course is just as truly subject to the divme will for its
direction as a course, as it is dependent upon human freedom,
for any of its particular events. And even with regard to the
particular events, we raay fitly admit the caution of Bleek'
against being too sure as to just how much circumstantiality
of prediction is possible. We cannot even justify the un
reserved application of the rule of Tholuck,* that such detailed
prediction as is uttered in the presence of those who are to be
actors in the predicted event destroys history, — a rule which
1 See Bertheau, Die alttestamentliche Weissagung von Israel's Eeichsherrlich-
keit in seinem Lande. Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1859, pp. 372 ff.
2 See Nitzsch, System der Christlichen Lehre, § 35.
8 Theol. Zeitschrift von Schleiermacher, etc.. III. p. 235.
* Die Propheten u. ihre Weissagung, p. 105.

THE DATES OF PROPHECY NOT PRECISE. 431
he illustrates by saying that Zedekiah could have known noth
ing of the very detailed description of the future which Ezekiel
was announcing to the exiles hundreds of railes away (corapare
Ezek. xii. f. with Jer. xxxix.).
Upon examination of the writings of the Hebrew prophets,
we do find, however, that certain kinds of cUcurastantiality
rarely characterize their predictions. Precise dates for future
events are not generally given ; the exact naraes of predicted
actors, rarely or never. Naraes like Iraraanuel, Lo-ruhamah
and Lo-ararai, El-gibbor, and other siraUar naraes, carry their
own explanation with thera. To this rule we cannot regard
Isa. xliv. 28 and xlv. 1 as exceptions ; since those who still hold
to the unity of Isaiah, and, therefore, to the earlier date for
these predictions, are fain to prove that the name Cyrus is used
in these passages as the general title of the Persian monarchs.
The name of Josiah in 1 Kings xiii. 2 is undoubtedly an inter
polation. The dates of prophecy are more frequently given in
general phrases or round nurabers. We are told, as in Joel
i. 15, ii. 1, and Isa. xUi. 6, that the day of Jehovah is at hand ;
or that the threatened event is near (see Isa. xiii. 22, and cora
pare Ezek. vU. 8), and wUl happen in a Uttle while (Isa. xxi.
4, 11 f. ; corapare xvii. 14, and Jer. li. 33), or without rauch
delay (as Hab. ii. 3) ; or that the expected trouble wUl last raany
years (Isa. xxxii. 10). In Isa. vU. 14 and viii. 4, the event is
promised within the time when a chUd can be begotten, born,
and then come to years of coraparative discretion. The definite
number of tMee years (Isa. xvi. 14), or of one year (Isa. xxi.
16), is made a somewhat indefinite expression for a brief tirae
by adding, "as the years of a hireling," — that is, scant raeas
ure. In similar manner the time during which it is announced
(Isa. xxUi. 15, 17) that Tyre shall be desolate is measured by
the " days of one king : " it will correspond to the indefinite
length of a dynasty.^ The raost iraportant and seeraingly defi
nite description of future tirae which is found in Hebrew proph
ecy is that given by Jereraiah for the length of the captivity.
This prophet announced in the fourth year of Jehoiakira (see
Jer. i. 3), that Judah would go into captivity to Babylon sev
enty years (compare xxvii. and xxix.). The prophecy is
declared to have been fulfilled as respects . tirae (Ezek. i. 1 ;
2 Chron. xxxvi. 21 ; Zech. i. 12). We can, however, neither
understand the words as raeaning a perfectly indefinite long
1 The threescore and five years of Isa. vii. 8 is probably an interpolation.

432 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTL"RE.
tirae, nor cau we press the exact nuraber so as to require
precisely so raany years for the captivity. We are quite unable
to decide beyond doubt, either upon the terminus a quo or the
terminus ad quem of the designed period. The nearest fair
approximation to this precise number is that which places the
beginning of the seventy years in the third or fourth year of
Jehoiakim (604 or 603 B.C.), and the termination in the year
of the permission to rebuild the teraple (536) : we thus have
secured sixty-eight years toward the seventy. But both the
terraini raay more justly be regarded as somewhat movable,
wMle the atterapt to force precision at once exposes the whole
prophecy to adverse criticism.^ The prediction is, however, no
less divine and convincing because it is raade in round num
bers, and the attention not directed cMefly to the precise tale
of years which raust be told between two perfectly infiexible
boundaries. There is, then, a certain important truth in the so-caUed
"theory of perspective" in the bibUcal predictions. "Proph
ecy," said Bengel,^ "is like the picture of sorae landscape,
wMch in the foreground shows distinctly waUs and roads and
bridges; but in the background crowds closely together the
valleys and raountains, although in fact they lie very far
apart." But this theory is chiefly true in the confession which
compelled its adoption ; viz., that the Old- Testament prophets
no more had a clear and adequate conception of the coming
tiraes and seasons than had the disciples of Clirist. Indeed,
our entire interpretation of prophecy is dependent upon the
truth involved in this confession. It is one result of the
peculiarity of the prophetic raethods of reckoning time, that
they are favorable to typical interpretation.^ The day of
Jehovah seeraed even to the latest prophets, as it has often
seeraed to all faithful and longing hearts, soon to be realized.
" My salvation is near," is the assurance of Jehovah to the later
Isaiah (li. 5) : " Seek ye Jehovah while he raay be found, caU
ye upon hira while he is near" (Iv. 6). As the weary years
and centuries of delay dragged on, the cause of the delay
was found in the sins and unbelief of raen ; and yet the pur
pose of God did not change toward his people, for Ms love
toward thera is an everlasting love (corapare Jer. xxxi. 3).
In saying that the Old-Testament prophets had but an imper-
1 Compare Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy, pp. 308-320.
a Gnomon N. T., Matt. xxiv. 29. s Compare Beck, Ibid., p. 193.

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS OF PREDICTION. 433
feet and faulty, and soraetiraes a mistaken, notion of the tiraes
of future events, we only accord vrith the manifest oxDinion of
New-Testament writers.^ The same opinion underlies the doc
trine of Paul, that the prophets dimly foreshadow the gospel,
revealmg it, and yet concealing it as a "mystery."
And at tMs point we touch upon a larger consideration
which concerns all Hebrew prophecy with respect to the his
toric limitations of its predictions. Prediction, as to its sub
stance of truth, is a product and expression of certain great
etMcal and religious ideas and principles; but prediction is
not made in abstract forms. The formal elements are fur
nished from history and individual experience. The special
and more concrete form wMch the prediction raust take is
largely deterrained by historical conditions. History furnished
to the Hebrew prophets the moulds in which their burnmg
and Uquid thought took on its solid shape. In respect, for
example, to the tirae when a prophecy should be fulfilled, the
substantial and ethical elements generaUy so blended with
the formal and Mstoric, that the two were one in the conscious
ness of the prophet. Thus does Joel (ii. 28 f., and iU. 2, 18)
connect the time for a general divine judgment and a spiritual
blessmg with the return of those Jews who had been sold as
slaves by the Phoenicians (Ui. 3). The historical and tem
poral element cannot be thrown off like clothmg, to leave the
naked truth revealed : it is rather as the living body which
bears in itself the soul of ideal truth. The means which history
furnishes to hand are used to embody the divine threatenings
and promises. Isaiah threatened with the Assyrians; Jere
miah, with the Chaldeans. The history of the people of Israel,
being regarded as a kind of rallying-point for all the forces
and interests of Mstory, shows itself in all the prophetic con
ceptions of the future. The prophet foresees all coraing events
as forecast in the present course of Jehovah's dealings with
his own people. It happens, therefore, that the differences in
the adjustment of the different factors of this history, — the
priests and people, prophets and rulers, kings and nobUity, —
make themselves felt in differences of prediction as to the
final result of each adjustment.^ The different ages and indi
vidual prophets, under the influence of different historic con-
^ See 1 Pet. i. 10, and compare Matt. xi. 11; Luke vii. 28.
" Seethe articles of Kiehm already referred to, Stud. u. Krit., 1865, pp. 402 ff.;
and Bertheau, Jahrbiicher, 1859, p. 599.
VOL. I. 2 B

434 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ditions, form different conceptions both of the precise nature
of the salvation wMch is proraised to the nation and the world
and of the raeans which will be eraployed to accomplish this
salvation. For the proraise of redemption did not descend
to the people as a finished product, but grew with them as a
living organism. The fruitage toward wMch the faitMul turned
their longing eyes was to come from a plant whose roots were
in the earliest experiences of the nation, and which drew its
vital sap with equal readiness from all vicissitudes of expe
rience. Besides the ethical and Mstoric liraitations of prediction, we
raust take into account certain others wMch are more strictly
personal. The historic and the personal elements are so inti
mately united in the whole product, that we can scarcely tell
in many cases to which of the two we should refer certain
phenoraena. Each prophet received the measure for Ms own
conceptions frora the store of religious ideas which were the
coraraon inheritance of the nation; fideUty to these ideas
corapelled hira to picture the plan of the Lord for the future
within certain fixed lines. Each prophet also received from
the history of his own tiraes those forras and shapes which
controlled the filling-in of his picture. But each prophet was
also an inspired personaUty, — an individual soul standing
over against Jehovah to hear the raessage which should be
revealed to Mra as an inspired person. As the complex result
of all these classes of influence, we find the individual prophets
differing in respect to their position toward the Mosaic Torah.
Araos, Hosea, and Isaiah, says Riehm,i do not show by a single
word that they ascribe reUgious significance and authority to
the cereraonial laws. We find thera also differing notably as
to the conception of Messianic salvation. In Joel the idea
of a people, prophetic and filled with the Spirit of Jehovah, is
the ruling idea ; in Araos, that of the Davidic kingdom restored
to the prosperity of its best days under David and Solomon
(see ix. 11). Hosea (ii. 2, Ui. 5) foresees Ephraim converted
and turning its allegiance to the house of David. But the
author of Zech. ix.-xi. predicts a personal Messianic king,
through whose reign salvation shall come to the people. This
Messianic king is further especially exalted to notice by the
prophecies of Isaiah and Micah (Isa. ix. 6 f., xi. 1 f., Mic.
V. 2). In Jereraiah and Ezekiel, although the Messianic kmg
1 Stud. u. Krit., 1865, p. 428 f.

GENERAL MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 435
is spoken of,^ the idea of a Davidic kingdom with a succession
of kings is raade prominent (Jer. xvii. 25, xxii. 4, xxxiU. 17, 21 ;
Ezek. xvii. 22 f.). The element of priestly character is added
by Jer. xxx. 21. The idea of a kingdora and nation of priests
is, indeed, connected with the blessings of salvation as pre
dicted in Exod. xix. 6. The priest enters into the conception
of the restored kingdom, as found in Jer. xxxi. 14 and xxxiii.
18. But it is only after the exile, in Zech. iU. 8 f., and vi. 11,
that the priest becomes the antitype of Messiah as standing
at the head of a redeeraed coramunity.
The principles already announced find their best Ulustration
and enforcement in that one coraprehensive subject of Old-
Testament prediction, viz., the future glory of Israel to be real
ized m the Messianic kingdora. The reality of revelation, the
orgamc nature of the developraent of prophecy, its threefold
Umitation, and especially the alraost inseparable union of the
permanent and ideal with the Mstorical and forraal eleraents,
— aU these truths are here raade iraportant and irapressive.
The Messianic prophecies, in the wider sense of the words,
are " all such as have reference to the actualizing of that salva
tion wMeh was proraised to the people of God even as early as
the time of Abrahara ; and, in tMs sense of the words, nearly
all the prophecies of the Hebrew prophets have a Messianic
character." ^ The three questions, In what does this salvation
consist ? Who shaU share in this salvation ? Who wUl intro
duce this salvation ? — are ever raised and answered afresh by
the noblest of the prophets. In the answer to these questions,
the elements wMch have reference to Messiah are blended
with those which have reference to a teraporal -reign of Israel,
in the land of Canaan, under a native prince, and triuraphant
among the nations. The Messianic kingdora is, in the thought
of the prophet, the future restored Israel. In the picture of its
blessmgs both material prosperity and spiritual favor unite.
The elements wMch have reference to the teraporal reign
of Israel mclude an extraordinary fruitfulness of the soil ; so
that it abounds in corn, new wine, and oil, and so that " the
ploughman overtakes the reaper, and the treader of grapes hira
that soweth seed." Even the waste places of Canaan becorae
hke a garden in fertUity (corapare Araos ix. 13, 14 ; Hos. xiv.
5-7; Jer. xxxi. 5, 12-14 ; Joel iU. 18 ; Zech. xiv. 8, 10 ; Ezek.
' Jer. xxiii. 5, xxx. 9, 21, xxxiii. 15, Ezek. xxi. 27, xxxiv. 23, xxxvii. 24.
" So Riehm, Stud. u. Krit., 1865, p. 5.

436 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
xlvii. 1-12). The multiplication of IsraeUtes is so great, and
the length of life so extended, that the sacred gates and streets
of Jerusalera are crowded with aged and young (Jer. iii,
14, 16, 18 ; Zech. U. 4, viU. 4 f. ; Isa. Ixv. 20 f.) ; peace, safety,
and righteousness abound in all the intercourse of the redeemed
people (Mic. iv. 3 f., v. 10 f. ; Isa. ii. 4, ix. 7 ; Hos. ii. 18).
Ezekiel, although, according to the opinion of Bertheau,ihe
raore than any other prophet escapes frora the historical hmita
tions of Ms own tirae, foresees a restored and rauch more splen
did teraple and teraple-service, which is to be the seat and
syrabol of redeeraed Israel after the fasMon of the Mosaic
cultus; he also foresees a redistribution of Canaan amongst
the twelve tribes (xliU. 12 f., xlv. 1-8, xlvi.-xlviu^). The
raising of the tabernacle of David is connected in the mmd
of Araos (ix. 11 f.) with the extension of the rule of Israel
over Edora. This expectation is doubtless, as Kuenen asserts,^
" purely a political expectation ; " but it is followed by the im
plied expectation that the narae of Jehovah wiU be proclaimed
over many nations. The re-union of the tribes in one undirided
nation (Hos. i. 11, xiv. 2-9; Isa. xi. 13, xxvii. 12 f.; Jer. iii. 18,
xxxi. 1-9 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 22), and the supremacy of the house
of David (Hos. iii. 5 ; Araos ix. 1 f. ; Jer. xxxiu. 17, 20 f. ;
Ezek. xxxiv. 23 f.), are important factors in the prediction of
the future glory of Israel.
Such predictions were not indefinite and colorless figures of
speech for those who made and heard thera : they were meant
and understood to be full of definite contents. The prophets
did, indeed, consciously resort to raetaphor and hyperbole to set
forth the ideal truths which were revealed to them ; as, for m-
stance, when Isaiah depicts (xlv. 14) the captive nations march
ing on in chains after Israel, or the kings and queens of earth
acting as her foster-fathers and nursing-mothers (Ix. 1-lT).
But probably Micah (iv. 1-5) and Isaiah (U. 2-4) looked fo^
ward to the time when the whole earth should actually come as
proselytes to join in the teraple-service of Israel. And, in
general, we treat the prophets fairly only when we understand
thera as they understood themselves. They have in general
indicated when they are to be interpreted as designedly employ
ing merely figurative descriptions. The raaterial and temporal.
blessings were in their thought inseparably connected with the
spiritual. The time of the blossoraing of the former is also the
1 Jahrbucher, 1859, p. 360. 2 Prophets and Prophecy, p. 243.

TIME OF MESSIANIC SALVATION. 437
time when the divine grace wiU purify the people frora their
sins, and sprinkle pure water over them (see Ezek. xxxvi. 16-
38). This time of salvation is, in the minds of all the later proph
ets, connected with the oppression and exile of the nation by a
foreign power. In the minds of Joel, Araos, and Hosea, the
contact of Israel with Assyria forras the point of turning for
its Mstory: just beyond this contact lies the Messianic tirae.
Isaiah and Micah assurae the punishraent which the sarae
nation wiU mflict upon Judah. According to Isaiah, a sacred
remnant, even though it were only a tenth of the nation, will
remain as the nucleus of a new and restored coraraunity of
beUevers (vi. 13) ; they will have turned again with all their
hearts to Jehovah (x. 20 f.) ; and those who have been left
after the laying-waste of the land by Assyrians and Egyptians
(vii. 22) will rejoice over the destruction of their eneraies, and
share in the blessings of the restored Davidic kingdora.^ The
; conception of all these prophets connects the Messianic bless-
ing with the dwelUng of the nation in the land of Canaan ; for
this is the land of Jehovah (Hos. ix. 3), and exUe from it is
almost eqmvalent to banishment frora the presence of Jehovah
(compare 1 Sara. xxvi. 19). The proraise of a return frora exile
is, then, the indispensable prerequisite and forerunner of the
restored and perfected kingdora of Jehovah (Araos ix. 11-15 ;
Joel ui. 1-7, 18-21 ; Hos. xi. 8-11 ; Mic. iv. 1-8 ; Isa. xi. 11 f. ;
- Zech. ix.-xi.). The triumphant and glorious return of the
nation is set forth (Isa. xxxiv., xxxv., xl.-lxvi.) in the most
beautfful and irapressive forras of speech.
That the brUliant expectations which had found expression
in earUer pictures of the condition of restored Israel were not
. yet reaUzed, is admitted by the latest prophets of the Old Tes
tament (compare Zech. i. 12, vii. 5). Anew does Zechariah
predict (Ui., iv.) the speedy coraing of the proraised glory;
Zerubbabel, the head of the restored coraraunity, receives the
1 promises which were of old made glorious. The predictions
¦which occur after the exile recognize the faUure hitherto of
those previously raade, but they do not expect another cap
tivity with a nobler deliverance. The proraises are stUl re-
:jgarded as, in their old forra, just on the eve of fulfilment".
iAecording to Haggai (U. 6, 21 f.), Jehovah wUl soon visit the
Barth with judgraents and rederaption. Zechariah foresees
^ Such in substance is. also the representation of chaps, xxviii.-xxxiii.

438 THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCRIPTURE.
(vi. 13) that the activity of Messiah will soon result m re
buUding the teraple and restoring its cultus. The cry of
Malachi (iU. 1, 5) is heard proclairaing the day of the Lord
stUl close at hand. And the author of Daniel sees the people,
who are oppressed by the tyrant, delivered by that great Helper
whora Jehovah will send ; then will a kingdora of God's people
be raised upon the ruins of the hostile power (compare Dan.
ii. 44, vii. 8, 11 f., 21 f., viii. 17, xi. 35, xU. 1 f., 7). That this
sarae general conception of the nature of Messianic salvation
was prevalent in the tirae of our Lord, we have abundant
proof; as it is prevalent with certam of the Jews,^ and even
with not a few Christians, in the present time.
The answer which Hebrew prophecy gives to the inquu-y,
Who shall share in the expected Messianic salvation? is also
determined by religious ideas that are unfolded in the midst
of liraitations frora the course of history. Joel predicts that
judgraent wUl so fall upon and crush the Phoenicians, Philis
tines, Egyptians, and Edoraites, that they will no more oppress
Israel ; and then the latter will dwell unmolested in its own
land. But Israel was never delivered, as this prophet pre
dicted, from the oppression of surrounding nations : other his
torical connections took the place of those prevalent in the
tirae of Joel. On the whole, even under this oppression, the
prediction of the prophets becarae one of salvation rather than
of judgraent and destruction to the GentUes. The idea of
Messianic salvation lost its cast of particularity; Israel in
the person of her prophets raore and raore opened her arms
to receive all the nations of the earth to a share in her own
blessing. This liberal view of Messianic salvation, although
on the whole gaining ground, was, nevertheless, constantly
subject to historic liraitations. In the opinion of Riehm,^ the
earliest proclaraation of the idea of universal salvation is found
in the prophecies of Isa. ii. 2-4, and Mic. iv. 1-4, it recurs
again and again in Isaiah (viii. 9, xviii. 3, 7, xix. 18-25) ; it
forms an iraportant eleraent in the predictions of Jeremiah,
1 For the later Talmudic view of Messiah and the Messianic time, see some
interesting remarks by Hirsch B. Fassel, Die mosaisch-rabbinische Tugend- uM
Eechtslehre, Gr.-Kanizsa, 1662, pp. 100 ff. " The denial of the Messianic time,
says this author, " is a demolition of prophecy, and calls in question the mission
of Judaism and the special goal of humanity. . . . But faith in the coming of a
personal Messiah, in order to establish again the earthly kingdom of Zion, does
not belong to the fundamental truths of the religion of Israel."
2 Stud. u. Krit., 1865, p. 483.

THE MESSIANIC KING. 439
Zephaniah, Habakkuk, and Zechariah.^ Yet this salvation is
connected with the acceptance by the nations of the ordinances
and cultus of Mosaism. The redeeraed Israel will be a bless
ing to aU the nations of the earth, a light to all the heathen
(Isa. xlv. 14). The sarae idea is conveyed, in words which
were understood as partly realistic, partly syrabolical, when
(Isa. xi. 6-8) aU creation is affected with the peace of God's
people. Then is the light of sun and moon increased (Isa.
xxx. 26), and sorrow and death are banished (Isa. xxiv.-
xxvU.) ; then a wide and deep streara of healing flows forth
from the temple of Jehovah (Ezek. xlvii. 1-12). Egypt is to
be converted (Isa. xviii. 7, xix. 18 f.), and Assyria numbered
among the people of Jehovah , to him the wealth of Tyre will
be consecrated (Isa. xxiii. 17 f.). Jehovah, we are told (Zeph.
ii. 11 and iii. 9), wiU give pure lips and docile hearts td the
GentUes. With a figure of speech which is thorougMy bibli
cal, we are assured (Isa. xxv. 6-8) that God will take away the
veU that covers the face of all peoples. He of the burning
heart and glowing pen, whose holy inspiration has left on record
words for the unceasing cheer and corafort of all believers, de
clares that the servant of Jehovah, whom he predicts, shall be
Ught and righteousness and salvation, alike for Jews and Gen-
tfies (Isa. xlix. 7, Ix. 2 f.).
Who, then, shaU introduce this glorious Messianic salvation ?
Under varying conditions and liraitations, and yet by the power
of a progressive divine revelation, this anxious question receives
its more and raore coraplete answer. It is only at a corapara
tively late period in Hebrew prophecy that the answer is found
in the prevalent expectation of a personal Messiah. It is never
found m such forra as to correspond in other than ideal and
typical fasMon to the facts of historical Christianity. The con
ception of the Messianic king whora Isaiah predicts (vii. ff.) is
woven mto closest connection with the events of Ms own tirae.
Immanuel is to be born soon after Judah is delivered by Jeho
vah from the combined attacks of Israel and Syria (vii. 16).
He wiU, together with all his people, suffer the effects of the
wastmg of the land by the Egyptians and Assyrians, since he
must be nourished on the natural products of milk and honey
(17-25). Yet he wUl live to rejoice in the freeing of his people
fi^om the Assyrian yoke (ix. 3 f.). The two kingdoms of Israel
1 Jer. iu. 17, iv. 2, xii. 15 f., xvi. 19, xlviii. 47, xlix. 6, 39; Zeph. ii. 11, iii. 9;
Hah. ii. 14; Zech. xii.-xiv.

440 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and Judah will be united in one under hira, and will thus make
subject the Philistines in the west, and the Edoraites, Moabites,
and Araraonites, in the east (xi. 1-14). Micah seems to expect
that the Messianic ruler will not be born in Jerusalem, which
had been ruined and desecrated by its eneraies, but out of the
ancient faraily of Ephrathites frora Bethlehem, from the family
and place from which David sprang (Mic. iU. 12, v. 2 f.).
Jereraiah expects him as a Branch of righteousness which will
sprout forth unto David (xxxiii. 15 f., compare xxiii. 5).
He will be a ruler who will have courage and permission to
approach Jehovah (xxx. 21) ; he wUl be, as it were, a new
David (xxx. 9). Hosea (iii. 5) and Ezekiel (xxxiv. 23 f., xxxvii.
22 f.) predict Mra as the true servant of Jehovah, the Shepherd
and Prince over Israel forever. It is he whora the writer of
Zech. ix.-xi. sees entering Jerusalera after having won peace
frora his eneraies, righteous and triuraphant, and yet lowly and
riding upon an ass.
But Bertheau ^ may with reason claim, that it is the later
Isaiah who, most definitely foresaw how it was that the salva
tion of Israel and of the world should finally be accomplished.
For of all the Old-Testament prophets he is most free in his
moveraent, raost grand in Ms sweep of thought, amidst the
ideal eleraents of the true Messianic salvation. The comfort
ing word of the Lord is spoken to his people (xl.). They, of
all nations in the earth, have no need to fear the advancing
power of Cyrus (xli.) ; for through hira will God carry out his
plans of salvation. Israel is the servant of Jehovah (xiii.),
and God will place his Spirit upon hira ; God, who alone is God,
has chosen Israel for Ms servant (xliv.). The return from exile
is not now expected in a triuraphal horaeward raarch like that
of Isa. xxxiv. f. : the servant of God, the faithful Israel, is
to labor and suffer in huraUity for the spread of Jehovah's
kingdora. It is not enough for Jehovah to do for his servant,
that he shall siraply bring back the ransoraed of Israel (xlix.
1-3) : his servant shall be a source of salvation to the ends of
the earth. But the path to triumph in the conflict with hard
ened Jews and opposing Gentiles lies through self-surrender
and self-sacrifice. Obediently, then, must the suffering servant
of Jehovah bare his back to receive the stripes of scorn from
the scorners among his own people.
With the stateraent of the limitations of prediction is closely ;
1 See Jahrbiicher, 1860, p. 495 f.

THE FULFILMENT OF PREDICTION. 441
sonnected the answer to the question which concerns the
aature of its fulfilraent. Indeed, this answer has already been
indicated in the present chapter ; and, so far as the view of
Christ determines it, has also been given in detail in a previous
chapter.^ The interpreter who beUeves in supernatural reli
gion, and in the valicUty of the claims to revelation and inspira
tion wMch are raade by the Old-Testaraent prophets, and who,
at the same tirae, reraains faithful to historical criticisra, has
proposed to hira these two cUstinct and yet closely related
inquiries : What did the prophets theraselves understand, and
intend that their hearers should understand, by their words?
What did the SpUit of revelation which wrought in thera
intend to convey to the world through them ? ^ The forraer of
these two inquiries is a purely historical and critical inqiUry ;
the latter is a raixed Mstorical and dograatic inquiry. We can
by no means maintain with Hengstenberg,^ that the historical
and critical mquiry is of no great importance. For that which
the Spirit teaches through the prophets was given in historical
form: and to disregard or pervert the historical form is not
simply to be untrue to criticism ; it is also to repress and injure
the substance of religious truth.
In considermg the fulfilment of prediction, we must con
stantly bear in raind both the difference and the close connec
tion of the two above-raentioned inquiries.* Did that really
happen wMch the prophets predicted would happen ? Did the
result correspond to the forra in which they understood their
own words, and wished thera to be understood by their con
temporaries ? Or did not, the rather, all prophecy in its spirit
and mtent fulfil the design of the Spirit who gave it through
the prophets ? And does it not, so far as it is Messianic in
the broadest sense, reaUze all its ideal eleraents only in the
work and Ufe of Jesus Christ? To the forraer of these inqui
ries we must give in sorae cases a doubtful, and in sorae a
negative, answer: to the latter, we can give in all cases an
undirided afSrraative. In the Old-Testaraent prophecy, faulty
formal elements entered into the shell which covered the kernel
of ideal truth. Even in the Messianic prophecies there are in
dividual predictions, and there are prevalent forraal eleraents,
which have never yet raet with a realization in history. The
' Viz., the first in Part I. 2 See Eiehm, Stud. u. Krit., 1865, p. 9 f.
' In his Christologie, 2": aufl., III. 2, p. 204.
* Compare Riehm, Ibid., 1869, p. 211.

442 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ideal elements of the forgiveness of sins, of restored com
munion with God, of wider and deeper influences of the Holy
Spirit to be bestowed upon the world at large, have aU been
fulfilled in Christ. Moreover, the fulfilment has m its form
shown so many raarked correspondences with the form i^
which the prophets expected the ideal eleraents to be realize||
as to create the well-founded irapression that the same Eternal
Spirit spoke in the prophets what he performed in Christ. But
Jerusalem has not become the centre of true worship, or the
city of special divine self-revelation (compare Jer. iu. 16 f.,
and John iv. 23 f.) ; nor are the Jews re-estabUshed in Canaan
in a permanent state of great teraporal prosperity and domin
ion. The King, the Priest, the Anointed, the suffering Ser-,
vant of Jehovah, the mighty Hero and Prince of peace, was
not such an one as the prophets expected. Shall we, then,
continue to expect soraething raore precisely like what they
expected, waiting in the hope that the precise forms of
their prediction will be realized in the tirae yet to come? All
the analogies of prophecy itself, aU the Mstoric probabilities,
and aU the spirit of the New-Testament teacMng, are against
such an expectation. We confess, therefore, the imperfection
in form of Old-Testaraent prediction, and the faUure of some
of its raore particular expectations ; but we affirm our confi
dence that its proraises are aU yea and amen in Jesus Christ.
That the Christian Church has taken the place of the Jews to
receive in different forra the substance of the salvation which
they expected for theraselves, is the teaching of the Apostle to
the Gentiles (Acts xiU. 46 ; Rora. i. 16 and iU. 1 f.). The
Christian Church is, then, the true Israel, the seed of Abra
hara, the inheritor and recipient of the Messianic prophecies'
(Rora. iv. 16 f., ix. 6 f., 24 f. ; 2 Cor. vi. 2, 16 f. ; Gal. iii. 7, iv.
27, vi. 16, corapare 1 Pet. U. 9) ; it is the heir to the promises
of Messianic salvation (Rora. in. 29 f., x. 12; 1 Cor. xii. 13;
Gal. iU. 28 f. ; Eph. U. 11-22 ; Col. iU. 11).
As to particular predictions which relate to the fate of Israel
and the surrounding nations in their future political relations,
we raay even follow the example of Kuenen, and speak of
prophecies as fulfilled or unfulfilled. But the prophecies them
selves, and the causes of their fulfilment or non-fulfilment, we
regard in a totally different way from that author. The his-
1 See Bertheau, Ibid., p. 340 f.; but for a different view, see Auberlen, Jahr
biicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1858, p. 778 f.

UNFULFILLED PREDICTIONS. 443
tory of Old-Testament prophecy shows us unfulfilled predic
tions. Tyre was not, according to the prophecy of Isa. xxUi.
1, 15 (compare Ezek. xxvi. 1-xxviU. 10), subjected to the
Assyrians so as, after lying waste for a long time, to resume
its ancient comraercial importance. Babylon did not fall into
destruction before the attack of Cyrus as was predicted (Isa.
xiu., xiv., xxi., xl.-lxri.). The Egyptians were not led into
exUe to Babylon, as Isaiah (xvii., xix.), Jeremiah (xlvi.), and
Ezekiel (xxix.) threatened.^ The condition of Jerusalem after
the exUe never corresponded with the predictions of the proph
ets. Nor can we escape from these admissions of unfulfilled
prophecies by any so-called " theory of perspective," or spiritu-
ahzing of the priraary and historical meaning of the predictions.
We cannot claim that the destruction of Tyre by Alexander was
a fulfilment of its predicted destruction by the Assyrian forces,
nor look upon the decline of Babylon, in coramon with most
Oriental cities, as the fulfilraent of the threat that it would be
laid waste by Cyrus. But, on the other hand, we cannot
reduce those predictions of this class which have been fulfilled
to the level of ordinary political calculation. And, further
more, the fact that the fulfilment of prediction depends in
certain cases upon conduct which is to be affected by the
prediction itself, was weU understood by the prophets them
selves (see Jer. xxvi. 18 f.), and in no way injures the validity
of their clairas. Even the eagerness which the Old-Testament
writers of history sometimes display in recording all such
phenomena as might be looked upon as fulfilments of prophecy,
may be urged in behalf of their historic fidelity, and of the
reality of the alleged fulfilments. Thus Ewald, Niebuhr, Tho
luck, and others, although we have no independent historic
proof for the fulfilraent of Isa. xxi. 16, nevertheless suppose
that the event must have corresponded to the prediction : they
do tMs on the ground that such a written prediction could not
have estabUshed itself,' if it had not appeared fulfilled.
We are m truth without sufiicient data to answer in every
case the question, Why, and in how far, did the particular
prophecies of the Old Testaraent reraain unfulfilled ? In raany
cases we can only conjecture how rauch of the seeraing failure
was due to the mingling of mistaken impressions in the minds
1 Unless, indeed, we adopt the doubtful explanation that they were led away
in the person of certain selected individuals of note : sea Tholuck, Bie Propheten,
etc,, p. 130.

444 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of those who uttered the predictions; how much, rather, to
changes in those Mstorical and ethical conditions in view of
which the prediction was understood to be made. If it were
true, as Kuenen and Kamphausen claim, that Jeremiah, be
tween the verbal utterance of his prophecies (i. 15 and u. f.)
and the coraraission of them to writing, had changed his view
as to the particular nation from the North which should be
the instrument of God's chastisement of Israel, we could not
argue that therefore Ms forraer prediction was merely an unful
filled calculation.
We affirm, then, our fidelity to the truths of history and
criticisra in the adraission that certain particular predictions
of the Old Testament, so far as any facts known to us would
indicate, have been unfulfilled in their primary and historic
meaning. We recognize also the general truth which criticism
establishes as applicable to all even of the Messianic prophe
cies : they are not given in such forra that we can either prove
or expect for thera a precise fulfilraent according to their pri
raary and historic raeaning. But we also affirin, that these
prophecies, and especially all the Messianic prophecies in the
broader sense of the terra, show in their predictive elements
the proofs of divine revelation ; that they give to us the sub
stance of the truth which was to be raore fully revealed in the
gospel ; that they give this substantial truth in forms, wHch,
on account of their wonderful correspondences with the Mstory
of Jesus Christ, are to be ascribed to inspiration ; and that, in
brief, all the Old-Testaraent predictions of Messianic salvation
are, both as to substance and form of truth, typically fulfilled
in Jesus Christ.
And, furtherraore, essentially this sarae view of the nature
of prediction and its fulfilraent is that held by the writers of
the New Testaraent. In this view they evince their own
inspiration, because they are taught it by the Spirit, and did
not reach it as the doubtful result of uncertain critical analysis
and historical study. But since they did not possess the ac
quaintance with facts of history which such analysis and study
raay bring to us, and since they were not in these respects
guarded by their inspiration against raistakes, we cannot always
expect frora them fideUty to the primary and historic meaning
in their discernraent of the secondary and typical. We actu
ally find in their citation of the predictions of the Old Testa
ment a blending of two seeraingly adverse qualities. We find

NEW-TESTAMENT VIEW OF PREDICTION. 445
a rare insight into the ideal truths of the predictions, and into
tbe providential correspondences of form in which these truths
are announced in the Old Testament, and fulfilled in the New.
We also find certain mistakes as to alleged correspondences
of form. We may ascribe the insight to inspiration, and the
mistakes to rabbinical training and lack of hermeneutical skill.
We find in the insight a proof that the writers had received
the promised Spirit of Christ: we find in the hermeneutical
mistakes a proof that they had not always spoken with that
reserve, where critical inquiries seem involved, wMch charac
terizes the speech of Christ. Moreover, the different authors
of the New Testaraent show different special tendencies in
dealing with Old-Testaraent precUction. The first Gospel is
pre-eminently Jewish and rabbinical in its tendencies : it there
fore shows a correspondingly large nuraber of herraeneutical
mistakes. But for all such raistakes it far raore than corapen-
sates, and tn spite of thera establishes its claira to inspiration,
by the insight into Messianic truth wMch it displays. In these
respects Mark stands in contrast with Matthew, since he rarely
asserts the typical fulfilraent of the predictions of the Old Tes
tament. In certain cases, however, the view of Mark is iraplied
iu an aUusion, rather than directly asserted.^
The conclusions of criticisra regarding the fulfilment of Old-
Testament prophecy, as understood by the writers of the New
Testament, have already been Ulustrated.^ We add in this
connection, however, a number of more specific Ulustrations.
When, for instance, it is declared (Matt. i. 22 f.) that the pre
diction of Isa. vii. 14 was fulfilled in the birth of Jesus from
the Virgin Mary, we cannot overlook the plain fact that the
author has erred in supposing the prophet to have used the
word np'7£ in the strict sense which belongs to its translation
in the LXX. (TrapSevos). A study of the passage in the Prophet
also shows us, that by the Iraraanuel who should be born he
intended to designate the theocratic rescuer of the land of
Judah frora the oppression of the corabined forces of Syria
and Israel. The divine rescue by one born of woman within
the nation was, however, raost corapletely and ideally fulfilled
in Jesus. That the sarae Evangelist has (U. 15) quite over
looked the Mstorical raeaning of Hos. xi. 1, and has changed
1 Compare Matt. xiii. 14, and Mark iv. 12; Matt. xiii. 35, and Mark iv. 33 f.;
Matt. viii. 17, and Mark i. 34; Matt. xxi. 4 f .. and Mark xi. 3 f.
" Part I., chap. v.

446 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the utterance of a fact into a prediction, we must confess:
it is only upon the general principle, — a fact in the history
of Israel may foreshadow one in the Ufe of Jesus CMist, — that
the return of the holy family from Egypt can be referred to
the exodus of Israel frora the sarae land. The primary refer
ence of Isa. ix. 1 f., which is quoted inexactly (Matt. iv. 13 f.)
frora the LXX., concerns the relief of a region of Palestine
frora Assyrian oppression: its fulfilraent is, however, alleged
to have taken place when Christ established himseff in Caper
naura. Theocratic salvation carae to this region as the Evan
gelist saw, but in a different raanner from that in which the
prophet foresaw its coraing. The sarae Evangelist affirms
(viii. 17) that the prophecy of Isa. liii. 4 concernmg the unde
served and vicarious suffering of the servant of Jehovah is
fulfilled in the syrapathizing and self-sacrificing effort of Jesus
to reraove the sicknesses of the people. The affirmation is
true : although we must doubt whether the Greek word toVos
correctly represents the Hebrew 3kdd ; although we must also
conclude, according to the analogy of Christ's own view of other
similar passages, that Messiah was only typically set forth by
the ancient prophecy. It is only upon the principle, that the
teacMng of the ancient seer may be regarded as a type of the
teaching of Christ, and as containing the latentes rerum Messiae
figuras which Christ realized, that the quotation of Ps. Ixxviii.
can be justified in the case of Matt. xiii. 34 f.^ Thus does the
presence of the Messianic idea in Isa. xiii. 1 ff., which both the
Chaldee paraphrase and Kirachi refer to Messiah, justffy the
quotation in Matt. xii. 18-21. Yet even here we cannot hold
that the prediction had primary reference to a personal Messiah,
and raust moreover reraeraber the caution of Meyer : In the
longer citations frora the Old Testaraent it is not every con
stituent part which is an integrant element of the prophecy,
and which is therefore to be fulfilled as such. Other in
stances of the typical interpretation of Old-Testament predic
tion occur throughout the New Testament, which need give
no offence to any critic who is able to enter into the divine
ideas of the writers. Such an instance is that where John
1 This quotation follows the LXX. in the first clause, but departs from it
widely in the second (Matthew, iptv(op.ai. /ceicpujiei'a iirb kotoPoA^!; LXX., *WyJii(»"
Trpo^\r„j.<na. air' ipxtr!). The designation of the author as "the Prophet" maybe
justified by the position of the psalra in the Old-Testament Canon, and not hy
the Hebrew ascription of the psalm to Asaph, who is called a seer (2 Chron.
xxix. 30).

PSALMS CITED AS MESSIANIC. 447
Baptist (Matt. iii. 3, and parallel passages) applies to himself
the mission and cry of the herald whom Isa. xl. 3 represented
as running before the Israelites on their return from exile with
Jehovah as their leader. Another such is where our Lord
applies to himself, as pre-eminently inspired for the pity and
relief of the poor, the passage (already referred to) frora Isa.
xiii. 1 f. Forever true, and irrespective of the question whether
the apostle has made the right grammatical connection of the
words, is the prediction of that prophet who was inspired to
make firm Ms confidence in Jehovah, even when it had been
disappointed after much patient waiting : "• The just shall live
by Ms faith" (corapare Hab. ii. 4, and Rora. i. 17).
It is the unity of religious experience which runs throughout
all Scripture, that gives in large degree a certain predictive cast
to many passages not in theraselves strictly predictive.^ It is
tMs characteristic of Scripture which raakes it possible for
CMist to apply to hiraself, and to Ms entry into Jerusalera, the
sacred festival-song of Israel (Ps. cxviii. 26), and to draw an
argument appUcable to his own work frora Ps. Ixxviii. 24 and
Ps. Ixxxii. 6 (John vi. 31 and x. 34). As predictive of Messiah
in the stricter sense, the consciousness of the Christian Church,
following the leadership of the Jewish, selected certain ones
from the entire body of the Psalras. The psalras cited as Mes
sianic in the New Testaraent are, according to H. Schultz, the
foUowrag: viz., U., vUi., xvi., xxii. (Ixix.) (xli. ?), xlv. (Ixviii. ?),
cii., ex. (cxviii.) (xl.) (xcvU.). Of these the Apostolic Church,
in essential dependence upon Christ's own words, regarded ii.,
viii., xri., xxii., ex., as predictive of Messiah in the first rank ;
Ixix, and cxvUi. in the second rank , but xl., xli., xlv., Ixviii.,
xcvii., cii., were considered as Messianic frora the raore artificial
point of view, and as a result of the rabbinical art of inter
pretation. The keenness and fidelity of their insight are justi
fied and evinced in this selection ; wliUe the liraitations which
belonged to thera, as interpreters of their own Scriptures, are
also exemplified.
Comparatively few instances of herraeneutical error in inter-
pretmg prophecy raore serious than those already raentioned
occur ra the New Testaraent. Yet a few such do undoubtedly
occur. The passage. Matt. xxvU. 9 f., contains several raarked
adaptations which exhibit considerable departures from both
the Hebrew and the LXX., and which seera designed to raake
1 See the article in the Stud, und Krit., 1866: Ueber doppelten Schriftsinn.

448 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the fulfilment of prediction more rainute and impressive.
Moreover, the special detail which asserts a fulfilment in that
the price of Messiah's rejection went for the purchase of a
"potter's field," appears to rest upon a corruption of the text.
The Hebrew here translated " to the potter " should quite cer
tainly read " into the treasury " (see Zech. xi. 13).^ But even
in adraitting that the Evangelist has aceoraraodated language
very freely to the Mstory in which he saw the fulfilment of
prophecy, and has laid stress upon a corruption of the Hebrew
text, we still assert his fidelity to the raain ideas and facts.
He sees truly when he sees, in the q-ob of whom the ancient
prophet speaks as so despised and rejected by Israel that he
was estimated at a paltry sum, the type of Jesus, betrayed,
despised, and actually disposed of by the same Israel for the
sarae paltry sura. Philological play like that of Matt. ii. 23,
although probably justified by the real derivation of the word
Nazareth, would seera Uke a kind of soleran trifiing, did we not
reraeraber the grounds upon which the writer considered even
the rainutest portions of Old-Testaraent prophecy and of New-
Testaraent history as alike under the control of one dirine Spmt.
An instructive exaraple of the way Ua which the writers of
the New Testaraent raay at the sarae tirae disregard and employ ;;;
the verbal pecuUarities of the Old, is furnished by Luke iv. 16-
30. The Evangelist, while referring to a passage from Isaiah
(Ixi. 1 ff.) as read by our Lord from a manuscript-roll, never
theless quotes the words with the utmost freedom, and in a
form in which they could not have been read from any MS.
While citing a passage which should be given accurately fromAs
the Hebrew, he gives the LXX. freely and frora memory, and
introduces an inaccurate Greek translation of one Hebrew^
clause,^ together with another clause taken by an maccuracy
1 "IXlNn-bx being substituted for ISvn-Ss by a not infrequent interchange
of N and ''; and so Kimchi explains it, and two MSS. actually have it (see
Meyer). This change is necessitated by the Hebrew text, and is almost uniformly
adopted by modern scholars. Henderson, who pronounces it "worse than giar
tuitous," makes no attempt to explain the words "house of Jehovah," which
Matthew has omitted, or the very significant substitution by the Evangelist of the
word iSi^Kdv for the word pi>as. Nor are any of the attempted explanations of
these points, which do not admit the corruption of the text, at all satisfactory.
But why, it corruptions of the Hebrew text occur as they certainly do, should the
Evangelists be inspired so as infallibly to avoid them?
2 The words Kal rucjAort ivifikvpi.v, found in the LXX. and adopted in the quotar
tion of Luke, are either a mistranslation of the present Hebrew text, orperhapsa
translation of a Hebrew text which differed from the present, and corresponded
more nearly with the parallel passage of Isa. xiii. 7.

THE NEW-TESTAMENT PREDICTIONS. 449
of memory frora another passage of the sarae prophet. Yet he
is none the less in heartfelt and inspired sympathy with the
great thought of the ancient prediction and of the teaching of
our Lord.
All the above-mentioned considerations find a special exem-
phfication at almost every step in the argument of the Epistle
to the Hebrews. On the one hand we are constantly called
upon to adraire the penetrating insight of the author into the
essential characteristics of both Judaism and Christianity, and
into that wonderful correspondence of formal eleraents which
undoubtedly exists between the two. But, on the other hand,
we are as constantly forced to confess that he quite neglects,
or even perverts, the plain historical meaning of many of the
passages wMch he cites from the Old Testaraent. Nor can we
refrain frora feeling that his argument, in its details and in its
general course, is chiefly valid as an argumentum ad hominem,
addressed to contemporaries who were in accord with the prin
ciples of hermeneutics which it assuraes.
The sarae considerations must largely control our interpreta
tion of New-Testament prediction also. But as to the matter
and manner of its fulfilraent we are left alraost wholly in doubt,
because history has not yet furnished the light in which to con
sider the fact of fulfilment. The prophecy of the New Testa-
, ment must in general be conceived of after the analogy of the
Old, especially so far as its predictive elements are concerned.
These elements are given to us cMefly in certain parables of
our Lord, in his eschatological discourses, and in the Apoca
lypse : they are, however, by no means wanting in sorae of the
Epistles. Their general subject is, of course, the kingdora of
God on earth in its new and final form of Christianity. In the
critical exaraination of Matt. xxiv. ff. and parallel passages, we
must raise two questions ; the answers to which are connected,
and yet both involved in special difficulty. We have first of
aU to consider, as does Iraraer,^ that the several features of
the eschatological discourses are essentially raoulded after the
prophecies of Daniel. But, inasrauch as we know frora other
¦writings of the New Testament that the early disciples expected
the speedy fulfilment of these predictions, criticisra raises the
inquiry : To what extent has tMs expectation raade itself felt
in the accounts which we have received of the predictions thera
selves? Criticism also inquires : How, and to what extent, did
1 Hermeneutik des N. T., p. 202.
VOL. I. 2 F

450 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Christ intend to predict the particular events of the future?
The destruction of Jerusalem and the (rwreXeia toS aiSros are
inextricably interwoven in the records. Did Christ designedly
give these predictions in forms which corresponded to those of
Old-Testaraent prediction? The predictions certainly left Ms
hearers in inevitable doubt as to the precise times and ways of
their fulfilment ; and as to how rauch was to be understood in
an historical, and how rauch in a typical, sense.
Hebrew prophecy was, then, correctly understood by the
New-Testaraent writers to be, in its Messianic elements, typi
cally predictive of Christianity. This view of prophecy springs
unfailing forth from the consciousness of Jesus Christ: it is
deraanded by a rational estiraate of revelation and of its phe
noraena in Scripture ; it is justified by an organic view of
history as developed under the control of one Holy Spirit; and,
finally, it is corroborated by the witness of the CMistian con
sciousness. Nevertheless, under the impetus of the general.
endeavor to find all the predictive elements of the Old Testa
ment fulfilled in Christ, the New-Testaraent writers have fallen
into certain errors respecting the details of hermeneutics and
of textual criticism. The safer liraits for the typical interpret ,f
tation of prophecy are sufficiently suggested in the reserve of
Christ, and in the raost general and defensible practice of his
apostles. Neither the Church nor the individual interpreter
has any call or right to enlarge the doraain of types beyond
these liraits.
But what is the effect upon the general doctrine of Sacred
Scripture which follows frora this raodification of view as to
the nature of prophecy and its fulfilraent? The modification
is corapulsory upon all who are not willing to close their eyes
to the plainest of scriptural phenoraena. The general reply to
the above question raay be given in these words : By fidelity to
historical interpretation we lose nothing from the faith that all
the divine promises are yea and araen in Christ Jesus.^ We
gain rauch, however, in conformity with organic views of his
tory and revelation, and in the enlargement of our conceptions
as to that wide and varied divine work which was done tMough
prophets and apostles, and left on record in the Sacred Scrip
tures. The office of the prophets, in furthering the Messianic
salvation which they predicted, was rauch raore truly divine
than it would have been had it consisted chiefly in giving pre-
1 Compare Kiehm, Stud. u. Krife, 1869, p. 281 f.

'*'

THE HISTORICAL AND THE IDEAL. 451
eise details of time and circurastance. Surely the proofs of
CMistianity and of the Bible would be in no way strengthened
if, instead of the far grander ideal which sacred history has
furnished, the exact forra predicted had been ushered in. We
shoiUd be no better convinced bj'' the testimony of prophecy if
we could at this moment behold the Jews rulmg over Canaan
and the surrouncUng regions by an exalted race of princes from
the DavicUc line, with plentiful harvests, and crowds of young
and old to flock into the temple, which, enlarged and beautified,
was sitting upon its ancient seat in Jerusalem.
The divine plan included, however, both the raore iraraediate
and historical raeaning and effect of prophecy, and also the
more reraote and ideal. We thus have a twofold proof of
the work of revelation and inspiration as it is given in diplo
matic forra within the Sacred Scriptures. There is, first, the
prophet, who utters the raind of the Spirit with Ms own raore
or less clear recognition of the principles he proclairas, and
with no Uttle ignorance and error as to the precise form in
wMch these principles wUl be realized in the history of the
future ; there is, secondly, the Christian writer, who, although
not a thorough critical exegete after the modern type, aU the
better recogmzes in the ancient prophet the predictions which
are typically fulfiUed in the actual history of his own time.
The self-conscious intent of the former does not exhaust the
meaning of the truths he proclaims ; the interpretation of the
latter does not concern itself with scrupulous adherence to
details. But when we corapare the prophets with all that the
most consumraate political sagacity has been able to suggest as
to God's dealings with the world ; when we also corapare the
ideal principles of the apostles with the rabbinizing of their
own time, and the yet worse rabbinizing of the later Christian
Church, — then we are indeed convinced that the Spirit of God
was, in a pecuUar manner, with both prophets and apostles.
We conclude, then, that the predictive contents of the Bible
confirm essentially the same truths concerning the origin and
nature of Sacred Scripture as those with which we are already
famiUar. These contents must be referred to revelation, and
they imply the inspiration of those who uttered or interpreted
them. But these contents, like those of all the other classes,
are not pure ideas and truths of revelation : they are raingled
with imperfect and erroneous formal elements. We have tMs
treasure also in earthen vessels. The process of separating

452 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
between the divine and the human, which are so intimately
joined as to seem like body and soul together, is one which
cannot be wholly declined : it is one, however, which caUs for
both reverence and critical skill. The best results can be at
tained only when this process is guided both by scholarship
and by devotion to the Spirit of Christ. Moreover, it is only
by an inference, soraetiraes rather reraote and uncertain, that
we can carry our convictions regarding the utterers and inter
preters of the prophetic contents over to the writings wliich
hold these contents. Revelation and inspiration have primary
reference to prophetic and apostolic, or siraply Christian, per
sonality ; they refer to writings only in a secondary and figura
tive way. We can speak of revelation and inspiration as ap
plied to the predictive contents of the Bible, not only because
they were originaUy uttered, but also because they have been
recorded and interpreted, under the influence of that Spirit of
revelation which fulfiUed thera all in Christ.
But, masrauch as the predictive contents so largely concern
the development of the Messianic kingdom, they fm-nish in
some respects a special prooii for the divine nature and origin
of Sacred Scripture. The prophetic writmgs exhibit a special
insight and syrapathy with respect to the things of God's salva
tion. The very centre of the claira which the Bible makes to
the title Sacred Scripture lies in its Messianic contents: the
predictive contents are alraost wholly Messianic contents, in
the larger sense of the words.
Moreover, these contents bind together the two Testaments,
and the different books of each, in a raanner which does not
belong to the other classes of contents. By their very nature
they awaken that desire which looks backward and forward;'
they are uniting bands and organizing forces in all the details
of those writings in which their presence may be discerned.
They discover and evince an organic view of the biblical
history, and of the different stages and ways of divine reve
lation. They enable us to see all things fulfiUed in Him who
is the goal in prospect, the centre in contemplation, the guide
and exaraple in retrospect. They then present at least a Mnt —
and we should rather say, a strong intiraation — of that view
of the records of revelation which considers thera as possessing
a kind of organic unity under the control of the Holy Spirit.
It is this view which raakes the study of the history of the
Canon so important to a right understanding of Sacred Scrip-

THE SYSTEM OF PREDICTIVE CONTENTS. 453
ture. The very appearance in writing of a large body of pre
dictive contents is a divine promise of future corresponding
revelations of the Divine Spirit. It is also a challenge to the
pious to preserve and venerate such writings, for these writ
ings are to furnish prenipnitions and tests for the coming work
of God with his people. And when we see lying within the
Bible a Mnd of well-rounded sphere of predictions concerning
CMist and Messianic salvation, we are raade the readier to
believe that in some sense an organizing and unifying Spirit
of God has wrought throughout the whole.

CHAPTER VI.
THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCEIPTUEE AS DEPENDENT PPON
THB BTHICO-EELIGIOUS CONTENTS OP THE BIBLE.
The relations in which the discussions of this chapter stand
to those of both the preceding and the following chapters is
pecuUar ; and the peculiarity of tMs relation is such as to neces
sitate, to a considerable extent, a change in the nature and
raethod of inquiry. For, in the first place, it may be assumed
as an undisputed truth, that the etMcal and religious contents
of the Bible are the contents which give to it ¦pre-eminently the
title of Sacred Scriptures. It is to these contents, regarded in
their widest significance, that we subordinate all the others ;
it is in thera that the claira of the Hebrew and Christian writ
ings to the gifts of revelation and uispUation is, so to speak,'
located and raanifested. The very gist and core of whatever
truth the Bible raay contain is in its truth upon moral and
reUgious themes. The very heart of an inquiry rato the origin
and nature of Sacred Scripture is reached only when we come
into contact with the etMco-religious life of that Scripture.
And yet it is raanifest, in the second place, that the ethico-
religious contents of the Bible cannot be wholly separated and
considered apart frora the other. classes of contents. The gist
and core of biblical truth is not to be reached by a merely
superficial analysis, which results in unloosing the more natural
connections so as to form fictitious classes of raaterials. We
have not been deceiving ourselves with the thought that we
could tear truth from truth, while we have been considering, in
detaU and in order, the so-called scientific, miraculous, histori
cal, predictive, and finally the ethico-religious contents. Just
at this point it needs to be said, that the theory of inspiration
which makes the biblical writings inspired and infallible m
moral and religious matters, and in those only, is at once con- ¦
demned by a clear view raerely of the nature of the case.
Yet agam, it is manifest that the method of inquiry into
41)4

|i

THE METHOD OF ETHICAL TRUTH. 455
matters of ethical and reUgious truth cannot be raerely histori
cal and critical, Uke that of the inquiiy into matters of fact,
historical br scientific. Criticisra raay be competent to estab
lish either the composite or the integral structure of the Pen
tateuch, the Mosaic or non-Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy,
the genuine or spurious character of the Second of Peter and
the TMrd of John. Historical research may succeed in pro
nouncing, with more or less of evidence and corresponding con
fidence, upon the trustworthiness of the traditions concerning
the patriarchs, the chronicles of tho kings of Judah and Israel,
or the narrative of the Book of Acts. Science may assert, and,
as far as can be, pu'ove, a theory of world-building, which shall
confirm or contravene the impressions of the writer of the bib
lical cosmogony. But neither criticisra, nor historical research,
nor scientific discovery, can tell us whether the Mosaic Torah,
the imprecatory Psalras, and the historians of the bloody wars
of Israel, have held and taught a pure righteousness ; rauch less,
what are the inner meaning and spirit of the moral and reli
gious truths set forth in Christ. Neither can unaided criticism
even exhibit, in a faithful, systematic forra, the great ethico-
religious principles which are found in the Old and New Testa
ments. For the discovery and testing of such truths, another
kind of instrument is needed ; and this needed organ, or sense,
or instrument, is an enlightened moral and religious conscious
ness. Criticisra, Mstorical research, and even scientific dis
covery, are not, however, wholly useless in the inquky after
the nature and origin of tMs class of contents : on the con
trary, they are all of real but subordinate — they raay become
of indispensable — importance. It is only by scientific exe
gesis, as used, indeed, by the eye of an enlightened moral con
sciousness, that we can deterraine what are the ethico-reUgious
contents of the Bible. Without doubt the Christian critic wiU
regard thera quite differently from the mind which approaches
them without the insight and favorable attitude that charac
terize such a critic. What would Deraocritus, Plato, or Seneca
judge concerning the excellence of these raoral and religious
truths, if they could be submitted to his judgraent? What
would these worthies judge to be true as to the very nature
of such truths? But the raost Christian critic cannot even
assume to know what the Scriptures of the Old and New Tes
taments really teach touching raorals and religion, without
subjecting these sarae Scriptures to a critical and exegetical

456 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.^
examination. The Scriptures must speak for themselves in
order that truth raay be spoken concerning them ; and this is
undoubtedly so, however much depends upon the kind of ear
and mind which listens to them. Moreover, there are many
things taught in the Bible, the morality and religious bearing
of which we cannot accurately judge without that knowledge of
the circurastances and characters of its teachers, and also of the
cognate raoral and religious teachings of a like antiquity and
grade of civUization, which only critical and Mstorical researches
can bestow.
It is plain, then, that we raust, for the tirae being, somewhat
change the nature and raethod of our inquiry. For confirma
tion of rauch which will be either said or iraplied regarding
moral and religious truth, an appeal must be taken to the moral
and religious consciousness. For an appreciation of the truths,
in the setting-forth of which the offices of revelation and inspi
ration culmUiate, the appeal must be taken to the Christian con
sciousness. At the same tirae we raust do no violence to any
laws of exegesis and criticism : we must rather raake what use
we can of these laws.
But from the very beginning of our inqiury into the claims
and phenoraena of the Bible, we have been dealing largely with
the same etMco-religious contents. Frora the point where we
heard the voice of Christ in Matt. v. 17 ff., declaring his own
position toward the Law and the Prophets, up to the present
point, these contents have been proramently in riew. In all
the subsequent, and especially in the latest, parts of this in
quiry, the stress of eraphasis and endeavor wUl fall upon the
sarae truth. For the raoral and religious contents of the
Scriptures invite us over the entire circuit of revealed truth ;
pre-eminently, of all that fact and doctrine which constitutes
the truth of Christianity itself. It will not be necessary, how
ever, to corapass a coraplete systera of biblical ethics or bibhcal
theology. We shall, in the raain, take the validity and incom
parable excellence of these contents for granted.
What is proposed at present raay, then, be very briefly ac
compUshed under the following three divisions : First, the rela
tions in which the ethico-religious contents of the Bible stand
to all its other classes of contents vrill be pointed out ; it will
thus appear in what special sense we may regard them as locat
ing the central point of its revelation, and as servrag for the
veMcle and manifestation of its inspiration. Second, the ques-

SUPREMACY OF THE ETHICAL CONTENTS. 457
tion as to the relative or absolute perfection and infallibility of
these contents will be raised, and very briefly answered. Third,
mention wiU bo made of some of those raore distinguisMng
characteristics of these contents which serve to define the
nature of the claira made by the writings of the Old and New
Testaments to the title Sacred Scripture.
The intimate connection of the ethical and religious truth
of the Bible with the claims raade for it by its writers and
teachers, and with all the lands of truth alleged to be taught
in its writings, has been made obvious by all our previous exe
getical and critical researches.
. It is claimed in the Bible, that its writers speak raoral and
rehgious truths revealed to thera by the Divine Spirit, and
narrate facts more or less closely connected with the history
and interests of the divine kingdom. Such clairas are, indeed,
only implicitly raade for certain raoral and religious truths ; and
there are certain other contents of the Bible to which such
claims are entirely inapplicable. But the claims which are
either made or implied are all cUrectly applicable cnly to one
class of contents. For instance, the claims which Christ indi
rectly makes for the writings of the Old Testament were all
seen to concern the ethical and predictive contents of those
writmgs. The Mosaic Torah — so he taught — shows its divine
nature and origin by the eleraents of absolute ethical truth
wMch it contained, and wMch were communicated as self-reve
lations of God through inspired servants. The words of the
Lord, contained in this bundle of legal writings, are divine
deliverances of ethical and religious import. The predictions
of the inspired messengers of Jehovah, the prophets, Christ
viewed not as thauraaturgic displays, but as revelations of
moral and religious concernment, and as preparatory and an
ticipatory of his own mission and teaching. His proraises to
his disciples were a guaranty of accurate knowledge and clear
insight, not as regards all raanner of truth (even when closely
connected with their teaching), but as regards the truth Kar
f&XV") — that is, the raoral and religious truth which Christ
both manifests and is. Nor did we find that the claims which
the writmgs of Mosaism and Prophetisra raake for theraselves,
when considered in their substance and true intent, extend
further than the claims of Christ for thera. We raeet, indeed,
with certain clairas which iraply a knowledge of obscure
questions of Mstory and of tradition : such as, for instance, the

458 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
claira that Moses wrote the list of the caraping-places in tlie
wilderness, or the Torah which forras the central portion of
Deuteronomy. Such claims we are to consider, in each case,
for what their history and the testings of criticism prove them
to be worth. We cannot maintain that such claims are on an
equality with those raade for the ethical and religious contents
of the books, unless we also raaintain that revelation and inspi
ration include in each case an infallible knowledge of the date
and authorship of ancient books.
The clairas of the New-Testaraent writers for the Old Testar
ment, and for their own utterances, cover substantially the
same ground as that indicated above : they are all made with
the intent of verifying the moral and religious truths of Scrip
ture. It is Christ as the fulfiUing of the Law and the Prophets,
whora these later writers hold to have been revealed in the
ancient Hebrew writings ; it is the same One, as having in
hiraself the fulness of all law and prediction, whora they claim
theraselves to receive and teach by revelation.
Moreover, it is not the so-called scientific, the miraculous,
the historical, or the predictive contents of Sacred Scripture,
considered of theraselves, but as themselves serring to contam
other contents of moral and religious verity, which excite and
fix the interest of our therae. The connections of the Hebrew
writings with raodern scientific discoveries would concern us no
more than the connections of the Vedic legends with the same ¦
discoveries, were it not that they appear to involve with them
selves the raoral and religious teachings of the Bible. The
rairacles of the Old Testament, and even the miraculous resur
rection of Jesus, would be to us as the myths of Buddha, were
it not that the verity of Christian ethical and religious truths is
inextricably involved in the verity of certain biblical miracles.
The sacred Mstory, also, is not like other history to us, because
it is the alleged history of the kingdom of redemption through
Jesus Christ. Except so far as the bibUcal statements of his
torical fact involve, directly or indirectly, our views upon moral
and religious truths, we have only the ordinary archaeological
interest in the correctness of those statements. Even the mar
vellous phenomena of prediction by the ancient Hebrew seers
do not chiefly interest us as the occasions of a merely psycho
logical investigation. We do not treat them as other visions
and presages of men who have a natural gift in such matters;
because these phenomena of prediction concern the method

THE ETHICAL CONTENTS NOT ISOLATED. 469
of the divine dealings in the kingdom of redemption, and
especially the significance of the personality and work of
Christ. Biblical prediction, that is to say, stands before our
minds as a question of moral and reUgious truth.
If, then, we could neatly and securely isolate the ethico-
religious contents of the Bible, we should be ready to affirm
that our theory of Sacred Scripture should take these contents,
and these only, into the account. But there are obvious objec
tions to such an easy method of conducting the inquiry. The
objections are such as quite forbid the cherishing of any hope
as to the result of so easy a method. For, in the first place,
we cannot isolate the distinctively ethico-religious contents
of the Bible frora all its other classes of contents. And, in
the second place, we cannot .aflBrra that all such contents are
so like one another in respect to origin and characteristics, that
a consistent doctrine of Sacred Scripture can be framed by
considering thera alone. Indeed, if we could so isolate the
etMco-religious teachings of the biblical writings as to consider
them without the erabarrassments arising from historical and
critical researches, we should by no raeans have reached the
end of our inquiry. Difficulties which pre-eminently concern
just these truths are by no raeans wanting. It is certain of
the ethico-reUgious contents of Sacred Scripture with which
Christ and the apostles raost distinctly find fault, and which
they most definitely abrogate. Moreover, the ethico-religioua
contents of the New Testament not only furnish us with the
necessary point of view frora which to criticise the similar
contents of the Old Testaraent, but also compel us to pass
judgment upon thera.
The ethico-reUgious contents of the Bible, then, do not appear
as separated frora its g'Masi-scientific and avowedly Mstorical
truths; but the forraer are rather presented to us for our
recognition as entangled, so to speak, or erabedded, in the
latter. For exaraple, the biblical teachings concerning the
origin of the physical universe, the duration and unity of
the human race, the relations of man's moral disorder to the
apparently wide-spread disorder of organic nature, touch many
questions upon which the natural and physical sciences have
information to bestow. But the biblical teachings are all
originated and proraulgated frora the ethical and religious point
of view. The truth which the writer of the Mosaic cosraogonj^
wishes to inculcate is the divine origin of the sabbatic law,

460 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and the religious foundation of the nation upon the divine
covenant so closely connected with that law. The genuine
miracles of the Bible are always presented as items or moments
of the divine self-revelation in power and grace. Its history
is not only definitely ethical and religious in tone, and written
from the providential point of view ; but it is also regarded,
even to its trivialities of genealogies and other lists of names
and places, or of nurabers and rainutest details of facts, as the
Mstory of a chosen people. It is all pragraatic, with God as
a covenanted Redeeraer for its cause. It is, then, the etMco-
religious eleraents, not as separable from the others, but as
pervading all the others, wMch claira pre-erainent interest and
iraport. Furtherraore, within the ethical and reUgious contents we
raust distinguish between ideal and absolute truths of morals
and reUgion, and iraperfect elements, either material or formal,
with which these ideal and absolute truths are mragled. And
if the truths of morals and religion should be spoken of as the
heart of the Bible, this heart has within itself also another
interior heart. The heart of the heart is the doctrme of re
deraption by Jesus Christ, considered m all the essential ele
ments of that doctrine. Or, if the etMco-religious truth be
corapared to the nervous raatter wMch furnishes the tracts of
force to every part of the organisra, then the truth of redemp
tion by CMist must be called the brain wherein reside the
central powers of raotion and life. It is not surprismg, then,
to find that it is the ethico-religious contents of Sacred Scrip
ture to wMch the terras of revelation and inspiration pre-emi
nently apply. It was not the facts of the past, as historical
or pre-historic facts, which were dirinely revealed to the histo
rians of Sacred Scripture : it was not in order that they might
dispense with tradition or previous written documents, that
the gift of inspiration was bestowed upon thera. The revela
tion covered only the import and connections of the historical
facts, the ethical and religious truth which was seen to be in
the facts : the inspiration was given in order to reveal and
promulgate through fit minds and hearts this import and these
connections. In other words, the pre-eminently etMcal and
religious coraraunications of bibUcal truth have come through
raen who have been ethically and religiously quickened into
susceptibility for the coraraunications. The Apostle Paul, for
exaraple, did not look upon himself as gaining by revelation

REVELATION LOCATED IN ETHICAL TRUTH. 461
the mere historical fact that Jesus rose frora the dead, nor as
inspUed and commissioned to communicate such a mere his
torical fact. The ethical and religious import of the fact
constituted the substance of the revelation raade to him: he
was inspired in order to understand and coraraunicate this
import. Eevelation and inspiration, then, so far as they enter into
the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, have primarily to do with
only etMcal and religious truths. If the Bible, then, were a
mere record of facts coramunicated by rainds who had no
insight into the ethical and religious iraport of those facts, it
would lose one entire half of its claira to the title Sacred
Scripture. Its contents raight be sacred because of their in
trinsic nature : frora tMs sacredness of their nature, it raight
perhaps take the title " sacred." But whatever of sacredness
belongs to it, as coming through any thing in the personaUty
of its authors, would be lost if the iraport of the facts were
not communicated to us by the recorders of the facts thera
selves. All the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, so far as we
have doctrine distinguished frora bare presentation of facts,
is pre-eminently dependent upon the minds and hearts of those
who commumcate it. As moral and reUgious doctrine, it re-
quUes etMcal and spiritual quickening frora the divine Source
of etMcal and spiritual Ufe.
We have no adequate reason to regard the historical writings
of Sacred Scripture as products of revelation and inspiration,
except so far as these writings show the pervasive influence
of moral and religious ideas. They have not been found free
from faults of arrangement and stateraent, frora defects of
information and forra. Even when the writings are narratives
of miracles, or especiaUy of the life and death of Christ, we
do not find thera freed frora such faults and defects. The
scientific views of the writings are certainly not of the raodern
kind: many of thera, even when closely connected with dis
tinctively religious views, cannot be defended against charges
of inaccuracy and mistake. But these writings, even when
thus MstoricaUy and scientifically defective, show another side :
they show a side which is always turned toward God and
righteousness, and which ever draws nearer to the highest
revelation of God and the highest ideal of righteousness in
Christ. It is in this heavenly side that the source of radiance
is located: it is the ideas of the Bible with respect to God

462 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the Redeemer, and his righteousness, which evince its claim
to the titles "sacred" and "inspired."
We may, then, draw certain provisional conclusions from the
relations in which • the ethico-religious contents of the Bible
stand toward its other classes of contents. Such contents
are not distmguished as separable in extenso from the others:
they rather form the pervading Ufe and spirit of the others.
Yet they, too, have their varying degrees of perfection or
iraperfection, strength or weakness: they all have their cul
mination and centre, as well as their means of testing and
appraisal, in the truth of God as the Redeemer of the world
by Christ. To these contents, as spreadmg tMough the Scrip
tures, the naraes of revelation and inspiration properly apply;
through thera pre-erainently coraes the claira of the Scriptures
to the epithets " sacred " and " inspired."
It will, of course, be objected that the foregomg views re
quire us to introduce difficult and uncertain distinctions into
the biblical books. They compel us to consider the subject
yet further before we announce any single statement as to the
Uke nature and origin of all parts of Sacred Scripture. They
raay even corapel us to say that certain books, and portions of
books, present no evidence of the inspUation of their authors. ¦
The beautiful unity and consistency attained by certain forms
of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, especially by that form
which we shall describe as the post-Reforraation dogma, would
thus be daraaged or lost. But it raust not be forgotten that
at present we are engaged, as far as possible, with facts, and
with inferences raade directly frora the facts. And does not
the only place within the Bible where the quaUty of inspiration
is assigned, by a figure of speech, to the sacred Hebrew writ
ings as a whole (2 Tira. iU. 16) raake the theopneusty of these
writings co-extensive only with their usefulness in ethical dis
cipline ? Moreover, — and this fact is decisive, — Christ him
self distinguishes the ethical and religious eleraents as the ones
to which, even when the form is historical, the qualities
imparted by revelation and inspiration belong. He also makes
distinctions even within the etMco-religious elements. It is
both the gift and the obligation of his religion, that its fol
lowers shall raake the same distinctions. To co-ordinate, for
ethical infallibility and perfection, the Mosaic Torah, or the
imprecatory Psalras, with the Serraon on the Mount, is to own
allegiance to a dograa rather than to the word of Christ.

PERFECTION OF THE ETHICAL CONTENTS. 463
The fact raust not be overlooked, however, that the raeans
for criticising the ethico-religious contents of Sacred Scripture
are largely furnished us by Scripture itself. It is only by use
of the sacred Hebrew writings, that we are able to trace that
very progress of the divine self-revelation which culrainated
in Christ ; it is in the exercise of this ability that we are able
also to estiraate the value and relations of the different stages
of the progress. It is only in the sacred Avritings of the New
Testament, that we obtain the record of the life and teachings
of the Lord ; these writings bring us the only objective form of
the mfaUible word of that Lord. It is by this word of Christ
in the later writings, that we test and estimate the earlier
writings ; it is by the same word in the same writings, that
we test and estimate the apostolic teachings regarding Christ.
We have, then, in Sacred Scripture as a whole, the means for
judging of its various parts ; and in sorae of these parts we
have the means for arriving at that infallible and abiding
ethico-reUgious truth which gives the exact raeasure of all
the other parts. But we have no truth, even of ethical and
religious kind, which does not require for its apprehension and
appUcation the painstaking of raaking distinctions, wMch does
not also involve the danger of raaMng raistakes.
There is, then, no real reason to shrink from atterapting the
answer to the second of the above-raentioned questions. This
question concerns the relative or absolute perfection and infal-
libihty of the ethico-religious contents of the Bible. There
are various degrees of approach to absolute raoral and religious
truth indicated in the different portions of Sacred Scripture.
There are not wanting instances where morally faulty concep
tions, enactments, or institutions are wrought into this Scrip
ture. Even its more distinctively religious ideas and doctrines
are reached objectively as the result of a long historic process
of revelation, and are to be subjectively appropriated in the
order, and with the confidence, which correspond to the facts
of this Mstoric process. Many of the lower steps in this
process are blameworthy, when considered as human acts and
ideas. Our appropriation of the etMco-religious truths re
vealed in the process raust take the relative iraperfections and
positive moral blemishes into the account. The record of the
Mosaic Torah, for example, is the record ot a process of divine
self-revelation and discipline which was conducted along many
stages and against many difficulties. The raoral and religious

464 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
quality of the Torah is the matter primarUy to be considered
in this case • it does not, however, differ substantially from the
raoral and religious quality of the record of the Torah. Both
the law and its record have the irapress which comes from the
presence of absolute truths of raorals and religion : both have
also the impress of etMcal iraperfections and faults. The
prophets announced true words of Jehovah, moral and reli
gious truths which were revealed to them, and which they were
inspired to teach ; but their revelation and inspiration did not
free their conceptions and raessages touching raoral and reli
gious truth frora certain imperfections. The New-Testament
writings, both as respects the truths they announce and as
respects the spirit of those who make the announcement, rise
far above those of the Old. They maintain a valid claim to
the raoral insight and purffying which the Spirit of Christ
brings to the followers of CMist. Many of them can claim
that authentic remerabrance and deeper insight and higher
purity wMch belonged to the apostles of CMist. But for the
writings we can a priori claira no raore than Jesus promised to
the persons ; viz., a divine illumination and gmdance into the
fulness of such etMco-religious truths as constitute the truth of
Christ. It is not surprising, therefore, to find various passages, and
even sorae entire books, of the Old Testaraent, raanffesting a
relatively low moral tone, and containing relatively many moral 
iraperfections. Concerning the Book of Esther, for exaraple, we can scarcely
refrain frora assenting to the judgraent of Bleek : ^ "No other
writing of the Old Testaraent is so remote from the spirit of
the gospel." Nor can we easily avoid assigning for this judg-||}}>
raent the reason which this critic assigns ; viz., the prevalence
of a narrow Jewish spirit of revenge and persecution. We
need not, however, coincide with the wish of Luther that it
were not in existence.^ But to depreciate the difficulties wliich
stand in the way of regarding Esther as Sacred Scripture, as
has been done by Carpzov, Havernick, and others, is much more
unwarrantable than the hearty ethical opposition of Luther. \::
We may say in favor of the book, as does OrelU,^ " Without
1 Einleitung in das A. T., p. 298.
' For Luther's feeling toward Esther, see De servo arbitrio, Works, VI., p. 1»!
and Tisohreden, Works, XXIL, p. 2080, ed. Walch.
^ See article Ester in Herzog and Plitt.

ETHICS OF THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. 465
the consciousness that God alone could rescue her and her
people from their fearful danger, the fast by which Esther
prepared herself for her heroic deed would have no raeaning ;
without unlimited confidence in the fidelity of the Lord, the
utterance of Mordecai (iv. 13 f.) would be inexplicable." Yet
the facts, that the divine narae does not appear in it, that no
ascription of its rescue to Jehovah is anywhere made, and that
the intention of the author is plainly not so much to exalt a
delivering Providence as to coraraend the extra-biblical feast
of Purim, all evince the low raoral and reUgious tone of this
writmg. And when to these ethical difficulties we add the his
torical, and take into the account the history of its canonizing,
we can only regard the Book of Esther as standing upon the
outermost limits, if not wholly outside, of Sacred Scripture.
Quite different is the case with the Books of Ruth and
Jonah. For, although the forraer has not a high and positive
etMco-reUgious character, it is a beautiful and iraportant story ;
it is also quite without the positive ethical bleraishes which
affect the case of Esther. And the Book of Jonah, although
not designed as a purely historical coraposition, conveys, in
aUegorico-didactic forra, upon a basis of Mstory, a raost noble
revelation of the divine love and forgiveness toward all suffer
ing and sinful nations.
The very nature of the Book of Proverbs prevents our con
sidering it as a whole frora the ethical and religious point of
view. The inferiority, or rather the absence, of direct clairas
made for the Hebrew Hokhmah, as compared with the legal and
prophetic writmgs, has already been raade apparent. Only so
I'ar as these wise sayings show the irapress of the great raoral
and reUgious conceptions which God revealed to Israel, do they
make any indirect claim to be regarded as inspired writing.
The composite nature of the book occasions, then, a great
variety of separate cases. The proverbs are, of course, not
aU of the same age : only one collection, viz., xxv.-xxix., bears
a superscription fixing its date. Sorae of thera are pervaded
with intense moral sentiment. Sin is rebuked, and righteous
ness exalted, as in Prov. x. 12, xi. 3, xvii. ' 9, 27, 28, xviU.
8, 13, xxii. 4, xxvi. 22. Strong reUgious feeUng pervades such
examples as xxi. 3, 27, xxviU. 9, xxix. 18 ; strong feeling of
humanity motives the declaration of human sorrow (xiv. 10,
13). Exhortations to mercy (xxUi. 10, 11) extend even to the
beasts (xU. 10). Gluttony (xxiU. 1-3), drunkenness (xx. 1,
VOL. I. 2 G

466 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
xxiii. 29, 35), and lust (vU. 6 f., 24 f., vi. 32) are shown in thea
moral debasement ; respect for woman is inculcated (xi. 16, xii.
4, xiv. 1). Sound sense characterizes utterances like xi. 24,
xxv. 17, xxvii. 2, and xxviii. 19. Others of these proverbs are
comraonplace, and fall even below the average of an Oriental
wise saying : such, to our judgment, appear instances like xiv.
20, 23, xviii. 28, xix. 6, 7, xi. 26. Still others show so much of
mere shrewdness as scarcely to escape the charge of being im-
raoral, when considered frora the Christian point of view (see
xvii. 8, xviii. 16, xxi. 14).
The Song of Soloraon, when once sundered frora the adven
titious allegorical interpretation, and viewed in the strong ethi
cal light that is furnished by the considerations with which we
are now dealing, reveals a unique aspect. In not more than
one or two of its passages does there appear any sign of moral
impurity to one who understands the mode of speaking upon
such raatters which belonged to the age and people of its origm!
On the contrary, its general purpose, and, considering the times,
its forra, are adrairable. Its preservation is, then, a cause for
cengratulation ; but a claim to belong to those ethical and
religious contents of the Bible to which revelation and ui
spiration specifically apply cannot be established for it.
Different frora the foregoing and sirailar cases are those
books, or portions of books, in which we have a record of the
raoral and religious experiences — both Mgh and low, both ethi
cally unjustifiable and positively righteous — through which
sorae soul is depicted as having passed. In these cases we
surely can find no fault either with the contents of the writing
or with the moral consciousness of the author for furnishing
to us an accurate and sympathetic picture of facts. . Even the
saints, both of ancient and of raodern tiraes, do often doubt
the word of the Lord, waver in their judgraent of Ms justice
and mercy, and wander in the dark places of rebellion and
despair. The story and the picture of these experiences may
well form a part of the ethico-religious contents of Sacred
Scripture ; for the use of the story and the picture have, in all
subsequent tiraes, been both ethically and religiously purifying.
And when the narrator of the experience, or the painter of the
picture, comes at the last into the confidence of trust and into
clearness of moral vision, we raay well believe that the Spirit
of all truth and light has been with hira in all the way. We
may well assign the record of such raoral and religious expen-

ETHICAL CONDITION OF THE JEWS. 467
ences to a notable position araong the revealed ethico-religious
truths of the Bible. Such remarks as the foregoing are more
or less applicable to the Books of Job and Ecolesiastes, to many
of the Psalms, to numerous portions of the prophetic and his
torical writings, and to certain passages of the New Testaraent.
SimUar considerations might influence our judgraent in cases
where the writings bear raarks that the rainds of the writers
passed tMough a process of unjust anger or suspicion toward
their fellow-raen.
Still different are those cases in wMcIi iraraoral deeds are
narrated with the manifest approval of the narrator, or iramoral
wishes appear to proceed frora the writer's raind and heart to
take shape m his writings, and so to be incorporated into Sacred
Scripture. The attitude which the narrators of the iraraoral
deeds recorded in the Old Testament assurae toward those
deeds is in general such as belonged to the raore pious and
enlightened souls of the nation in the tirae when they wrote.
That the wickednesses and faults of a Jacob, or a David, are
recorded in Sacred Scripture, is certainly, in itself considered,
no evidence either for or against the inspiration of its writers.
But the teraper, spirit, and raanner in wMch the writer places
himself toward the deeds and events he records are a raanffest
token of his own etMcal and religious condition. We know
that the ancient Jews, like all the nations of their day, were
much disposed to deceit, cruelty, and lust. They were, indeed,
as their own writers assure us, coarse and unyielding raaterial
in the dirine hand. But God undertook their ethical and re
ligious discipline, not for their own sakes only, or chiefly, but
rather for the sake of the world. The divine pedagogy received
them under discipUne as they were ; it conducted their dis
cipUne by successive stages of the disclosure of divine truth
and of the irapartation of divine life. WhUe they were under
this discipline they became both the actors in a sacred history
and the authors of a sacred record of that Mstory. Inasrauch
as the record is, for the raost part at least, the product of those
who had profited raost by this discipline and received raost of
the truths revealed during its course, the ethical and religious
quality of the record is rauch above that of the average conduct
of the nation in the history. The Sacred Scriptures of the Old
Testament, that is, are the record of the Mstory of Israel, as
read by the most pious and enUghtened souls of the nation.
All the actors in this history did not understand it as did the

468 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
spiritually enlightened ones araongst their contemporaries or
successors. Yet even these writers of Old-Testaraent Scripture
do not appear to be in raoral and reUgious consciousness above
the best of the other raen of their time. A Hebrew Mstorian
does not, so far as appears, have the nature of his moral and
religious consciousness changed because he is to write the his
tory of the Hebrews. A Hebrew prophet is the same person
ality when recording his own prophecies, or those of another,
as when uttering these prophecies.
We may expect, then, that whatever imperfections belong in
any age to those who have the fuller share in such revelations
of divine truth as have already been raade to the nation will
also appear in the writings of the sarae class of raen. David's
anger against his eneraies in a psalra wUl not necessarUy differ
frora David's anger when otherwise expressed. The narrator
of Jael's deed of blood wiU narrate it with the riew and sym
pathies wMch belonged to the pious of his tirae.
The latter case, being soraewhat representative of a class,
raay fitly receive sorae further consideration. That the deed
recorded, Judg. iv. 17-22, was a deed of base treachery and
cruelty, we raay affirm even when we measure it by the low
standards of raorality belonging to dark places and times. Our
difficulty is not, however, with the deed of Jael so much as
with the raanifest approval and even high praises of tMs deed
which enter into the contents of Scripture (Judg. v. 24 f.).
But this attitude toward such raanner of deceit and riolence is
siraply such as belonged even to the pious of that age. The
age and its actors had their virtues, and for these they may fitly
be praised. The hard condition of Israel raay be judged from
the plaint of Deborah (v. 6 f.). Many considerations maybe
adduced to explain this crime in the light of its age and of the
circurastances of Israel in that age. But we raust carefully
distinguish between considerations which raitigate the crime,
or account for its approval, and the propriety of justifying
either the crirae or the approval of it. We raust also distin
guish between considerations which in part establish the purity
of the motive of an action (its subjective morality) and the
rightfulness (the objective morality) of the act. In this case,
however, we have Uttle beyond vain imaginings to prove that
Jael entered, as Mozley ^ and others suppose, into the divme
conception of the struggle which was going on between Israel
1 Euling Ideas in Early Ages, p. 131 f.

ETHICS OF THE DEED OF JAEL. 469
and the Canaanites under Jabin. It is perfectly true, as
Mozley shows at considerable length, that " the oraission of the
idea of human individuality " is closely connected with the dis
regard of life, and with the universal practice of lying without
compunction when dealing with enemies. But neither the
view which he rejects, and wMch connects the right to kill
with the right to lie in order to kill, nor the view which he
advocates, will satisfy the demands of the moral and Christian
consciousness. Granted that in this age man was not treated by
Ms fellow as a person, it does not follow, as Mozley would have
us beUeve, that the enemy who has forfeited his right to life
has also forfeited his right to truth-speaking, — in any sense of
the word "right " which does not involve a justification of what
ever is held right in tiie raorality, however low, of any age.
Indeed, this view of Mozley is ethically quite below the raodern
rabbinical doctrine : " If another has no right to discover the
truth by inquiry (erfragen), and the truth would be physically
or moraUy harmful to hira, then one raay and raust, if an ex
planation is unavoidable, give an untruth for a truth." ^ The
rabbis do not, indeed, foUow the view of the " raoral rigorists "
that a man must always speak the truth : their rule is rather
that he raust never speak a lie. It is pitiful when the rabbini
cal developraent of the Mosaic Torah is perraitted to appear
morally superior to the fulfilraent and abrogation of that Torah
in the religion of Christ. Surely CMistianity ought to do more
for our ethical point of view than it is possible to realize from
the Talmudic ethics.
Nor can we justify the act of Jael because it was done in
obedience to a divine coraraand.^ Of any such coraraand, the
narrative affords not the slightest Mnt ; and, as Hessey^ asserts,
" even if it did, this would only increase our difficulty." The
song of Deborah and Barak can be taken only for what it is
morally worth ; its sentiment as to Jael's deed cannot be de
fended as inspired. And whatever coraraendation of that act
can be fastened upon Sacred Scripture raust be considered as
an infirmity of the time. When the lie " corporate and syrapa-
thetic " is acted by Jael, it is no less a base lie because " corpor
ate and sympathetic.'" The commendation of the lie and the
1 See a very interesting work. Die Mosaisch-rabbinische Tugend- und Rechts-
lehre, by Hirsch B. Fassel, Oberrabbiner zu Gr.-Kanizsa, 1862, p. 87.
* This Mozley does (153 f.) in a vacillating way.
^ Moral Difficulties connected with the Bible, London, 1878, p. 47.

470 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
cruelty are in Sacred Scripture, but Sacred Scripture does not
irapart its sacredness to this coraraendation. The crimes are
not justified by being ignorantly enacted in the service of Israel;
the coraraendation of the criraes is not to be itself justified by
ascription to the Spirit of God.
In brief, such cases as the foregoing are coraparatively simple
when once we regard thera in the clear light of higtory and of
Christian truth. They are cases of sins and raistakes, in part
through ignorance, which belong to the old-time dispensation.
They do not overwhelm or drag down the process of divine
self-revelation in which they occur : they rather constitute
instances exemplifying the necessary stages and steps of that
process. The commendation of such acts in the Old Testa
ment does not destroy its claira to the title Sacred Scripture,
any raore than the title justifies either the acts or the praises
of thera.
SiraUar considerations raust control our view of the exter-
rainating wars of Israel, and of the spirit in which those wars
are conceived of and understood by the Old-Testament writers.
(Compare Deut. xx. 10-20 and Josh. x. 39; see Num. xxv. 16-
18, xxxi. 2; 1 Sam. xv. 3, and corapare Luke ix. 54 f.) The
Oriental principle of tribal and faraily responsibUity and pun
ishraent is recognized (Deut. xiii. 12-18). The discipline of
the Lord laid hold of the unreasoning and excessive appetite or
passion of justice, to eraploy and chasten it for the benefit of
all mankind. We behold also in the history of Israel, what
Mozley ^ has finely called " the undisciplined passion of justice
working without the perception of the limit which man's indi
viduality imposed upon it." We are freely to admit that stern
and exterminating war by dirine coraraand does not in itself
contravene the absolute principles of morality. But the con
ceptions, raodes, and liraits, which even the pious of the nation-
ascribed to these' coraraands, belong to the iraperfect condition
of the coraraunity; they contain elements of human cruelty
and hatred.
The Old-Testaraent moral estimate of its own heroes and of
their transactions is to be considered in the light of historical
and Christian truth. The rude men of the tiraes of the judges
and early Mngs are to be estiraated, together with their praises,
according to the age in which they lived or were praised, when
this age is seen frora the Christian point of view. The moral
1 Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, p. 98.

ETHICS OF THE BIPRECATORY PSALMS. 471
estimate of the hero Sarason and of his transactions, as expressed
Judg. xiii. 24, and the view taken of the rude and ethically
low warriors like Jephthah (see Judg. xi.), are to be understood
as springing frora the age in which they occur. Their fideUty
we can coraraend with the writer of Heb. xi. ; but their total
characters and all their deeds we are bound to regard frora
a higher point of view than that of the Old-Testaraent writers.
And we are not bound to hold those traditional conceptions of
such characters in which, in coraraon with all the nation, the
later writers of the Old Testament, and even some writers in
the New, apparently shared (see 2 Pet. ii. 4, 6-9). The Bible
is generous in its use of the word " righteous." According to
their day and opportunities, these men were righteous. We
should not be churUsh in denying to them the title, although
we do not return to the point of view from which the Hebrew
Scriptures regarded them. And such raust be our rule, even
when considering the greatest and best of Old-Testaraent char
acters, like Jacob, David, and Elijah.
The conceptions and wishes of such pious but imperfect men
regarding those whom they considered as the enemies both
of Jehovah and of themselves, even when the conceptions and
wishes take forra in sacred song, cannot escape being judged
by the sarae historical and Christian standards. We are raost
heartily to syrapathize with their most hearty sentiment of
justice. We can generally recognize the obvious truth of their
judgment, that their own enemies were also the eneraies of Je
hovah. That the Psalras in their ethical and religious contents
are pre-erainently sacred and inspired, their use in the New
Testament and by the pious these many centuries is fitted to
evince. But even in them we raust distinguish, mingled with
tiie theopneustic elements which carry absolute ethico-religious
truth, other eleraents due to the fitful and fragraentary concep
tions wMch the writers had of this truth. The confusion of .
ideas as to authorized adrainistration of justice and unauthorized
vengeance lasted araong the Jews even to our Lord's day.^ In
the imprecatory (or corarainatory) Psalras we have to notice
not only denunciations of the wicked generally as the eneraies
of Jehovah, but also certain specific curses directed against
private enemies with an appearance of personal malignity. Be-
^ Compare the excellent remarks of Hessey, Moral Difficulties connected with
the Old Testament, second series, pp. 48 fE. ; contrast Isa. xiii. 15 f . with Pa.
Oisxvii. 8 1, and see Jer. xv. 15, xxxviii.

472 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tween these two cases, when pure and simple, there appears a
considerable variety of examples which perhaps unite some
what of both. Of the raore difficult of these cases are Ps. rii.
xxxv., Ixix., and cix., and parts of IviU., cxxxvii., cxl., cxlix.
Especially difficult, as seeraing to involve personal malignity, is
Ps. cix. verse 9 f. : indeed, the vrish here expressed is in fiagrant
violation of the spirit of the law (Deut. xxiv. 16); so also is the
wish involved in Ps. cxxxvU. 9. We can, then, go only a cer
tain distance in company with the spirit of the imprecatory
Psalms : thence our path and theirs lie in different levels and
lines. We can pray with the author of Ps. vii. 9, " Oh, let the
wickedness of the wicked corae to an end ! " we may even say
with Ps. xxxv. 6, " Let their way be dark and slippery " that
seek after my soul. But when we read Ps. Ixix. 20 ff., we are
to regard its language frora the point of view where Messiah
stands, rather than frora that occupied by his type in this
ancient Scripture. It was not infideUty toward the Hebrew de
votional writings, but fidelity to the spirit of Christ, which led
Thoraas Fuller ^ to say, " When I corae to such Psalms wherein
David curseth his eneraies, oh ! then let rae bring my soul down
to a lower note, for these words were raade only to fit Darid's
raouth ; " or induced Chalraers ^ to declare, " Let the spirit
breathed forth by David in the Psalras actuate us, save when
he indulges in the vindictive strain." ^
Their own admissions show that these songs of the ancient
Church, mspired and morally noble and ennobling as they gen
erally are, soraetiraes bear the raarks of the ethical and religious
iraperfections of their authors. These adraissions have respect
not to the moral imperfection of vindictiveness alone. The
complaiuts against the divine dealing in Ps. Ixxui. 1 f., the
moral feebleness amounting almost to cowardice in Ps. ri., are
instances of other Muds of such imperfections.
Of a different kind still from all the foregoing are those cases
in which the raost strenuous and lofty ethico-religious senti
ment is seen struggling successfully with the limitations of
form which compose its hard shell. We raust regard in this
light the case of Abrahara, who was ready to slay Isaac under
an irapulse wMch he accepted in faithful love as coming from
1 Scriptural Observations, No. IX.
2 Sabbath Scripture Readings, on Sam. ii., Ixvi., as quoted by Hessey, second
series, p. 23.
' Compare Hessey, Ibid., pp. 35 ff.

THE JUS TALIONIS. 473
Jehovah. After we have considered all the explanatory cir
cumstances, — such as the relations in which an Oriental son
of those times stood to his father,^ — and have discussed the
nature and validity of the divine command, we raust stUl con
sent to lay the emphasis where the Bible itself places it ; viz.,
upon the ethico-reUgious character of the impulse (see Gen.
xxu. 16; Heb. xi. 17-19; Rom. iv. 16).
In matters of sexual and ceremonial purity, as well as in
matters connected with the principles of love and truth, the
view taken and directly or indirectly advocated in the Old
Testament was that wMch corresponded with the degree of
progress already attained by the revelation of God to the pious
ones of the nation.
The considerations which anust control our estimate of the
etMco-reUgious contents of the Mosaic Law, and therefore of
the legal writings of the Old Testament, are soraewhat different
from the foregoing ; and yet they are largely the sarae. With
regard to these contents we have the raore express teachings of
CMist. Besides its contents of revealed and absolute ethico-
religious truth, the Law contains perraissive and temporary
enactments, concrete institutions of low or imperfect raorality.
Its ideal and end is the absolute law ; but in raany of its ele
ments, and in its entire form, it is transitory.
We assert, then, most emphatically the general position that
the Jewish dispensation was a progressive revelation , but we
strongly dissent frora the subordinate position that God gave
such a revelation as commanding the moral imperfections, the
wrong ideas of rights and duties, which furnished the limiting
conditions of its course. Christ himself departed from the Old-
Testament and merely Jewish point of view which regarded all
the detaUs of legal enactment as having their sanction in ex
press divme coraraand. His attitude toward the jus talionis of
the. Mosaic Torah is doubtless to be taken as indicative of his
general position ; and, since this case is representative of a
class, we dwell briefly upon it.
> The jus talionis, which Gottling^ has called sanctissimum
populis antiquis, is announced by the Greek authors in a way
wHch leaves no doubt that they uttered the moral conceptions
of the people in a form acceptable to the popular moral con-
^ Compare the words, " Slay my two sons," etc. (Gen. xiii. 37); and compare
Muller, History of Sanscrit Literature, p. 408.
^ la his edition of Hesiod, Works and Days, verse 711.

474 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
sciousness. The provisions of the Mosaic law indicate in this
regard the sarae custoras and sentiments in the Israelitish com
munity as those to which the utterances of Homer, Hesiod, and
the Greek tragic poets bear witness.^ Yet the Greek prmciple
of moderation (p-rj^ev ayav) carae into activity to modify rage
and revenge ; the virtue of raagnaniraity, rauch praised among
the Greeks and Roraans, secured to sorae extent the forgive
ness of their eneraies, or at least forbearance from revenge.
We find, therefore, in the later heathen writers the manifesta
tions of a spirit toward enemies soraewhat like that inculcated -
by Christianity .2 In the case of the Mosaic law also, we find
all its precepts and aUeged divine coraraands appealing to a
raoral sense in the coraraunity which has at the time been edu
cated only in small degree. The form of a coramand tended,
indeed, to re-enforce the courage and sense of justice belonging
to an injured raan ; to sorae extent also this law served to bring
private vengeance under a partial control frora raeasured public
justice. On the other hand, the mjunction, " Thine eye shall
not pity," etc., even when taken in connection with a legal
adrainistration (see Deut. xix. 21), partakes of an ethical spirit
quite below the gospel. And even when the enemy becomes
not siraply the enemy of Jehovah — the Edomite, Moabite, or
other heathen — but also the personal foe — Doeg, or Ahitho-
phel — the spirit exMbited in his injury is not different from
that coraraended in one section, so to speak, of the Torah.^
With the jus talionis is to be classed and considered the law
of blood-revenge (Deut. xix. 11-13).
1 So also in Meno 71 is the spirit of the community expressed in the words;
avTTj eo'Ttv avSp'oi aper^ . . . tous fiev ^C\ovi eC iroietr, toik; 3' ij^Bpovs KaKws, etc. CaluCleS
considers it slavish to suffer wrong (Gorgias, 483, B.). Note also the prayer in
Sophocles (PhilOCt., 313): oU 'OAu^Trtot Oeoi SoUv jtot' avToU aVTiTTOtv' inov iraBilv.
2 "Nothing," says Cicero (De Off., I. 25), "is more praiseworthy, nothing
worthier of a great and illustrious man, than placability and kindness." Con
sider also the spirit of Socrates toward his judges, as depicted in the Apology
(xxxiii.) : eywye tois KaTa.f^ri^i(T(j.p.ivois y.ov Kai T0i9 KttTijyopots oi. Traw ^oAeiraiVft). Com
pare an article by Schaubach, Das Verhaltniss der Moral des classischen Alter
thums zum Christlichen, etc.: Stud, u, Krit., 1851.
8 The rabbinical writer to whom reference has already been made declares:
" It is inconceivable to me, what Jesus of Nazareth refers to (Matt. v. 43) . . . for
neither in the Sacred Scripture nor in the Talmud is there such an utterance.
But both in the Old-Testament law and in the Talmud there is inculcated that
spirit and way of looking at persons aud things which corresponds to the injunc
tion to "hate thy enemy." As Fassel himself points out, the Talmudic law of
slavery breathes a spirit of odium humani generis: "The Cutseaus are not to be
considered as men; " " The worshippers of idols are not men; " "The people out
of which male and female slaves cau be purchased is like the ass." It is Mt
strange that this rabbi adds, " I do not praise the inhumanity of the Talmud, which
arose necessarily from the conceptions of the time." See Ibid., pp. 92 ff., 128 1.

THE IDEAL SIDE OF THE TORAH. 475
In considering all such cases, however, we raust not forget
also and chiefly to consider the other side of the Mosaic Torah,
wMch is, indeed, the side of the progressive divine revelation
of mercy and love and public justice, preparing the way for
the law' of Christ. It is this same Torah which inculcates and
commands love after the pattern of divine love, — love that
repays evil with good (Lev. xix. 17 f.), and that does not cease
toward the transgressor of its own ordinances. Considered as
a whole, then, with their various degrees and steps of progress,
the etMco-reUgious contents of the Mosaic law provide both for
then* own fulfilraent and for their own abrogation. Thus the
declaration wMch enters into the very Decalogue (Exod. xx. 5),
and wMch, as coraing from Moses, has given the Talmudic
writers so much perplexity, is supplemented and elevated by
the declaration of Ezek. xriii. 20.
In the relations of the sexes, as in the relations of friendship
and enmity between raen, the Torah shows eleraents of ethical
and religious iraperfection, and even positive faults and blera
ishes. The provisions of the law of Nura. v. 11-31, for in
stance, although, on the whole, merciful toward the suspected
wife, nevertheless themselves appear alraost as low in the raoral
scale, and as superstitious, as the people for whom they were
adapted. So far beyond these more imperfect ethico-religious contents
of the Old Testaraent are its own best contents, and so far
beyond the latter are, as a whole, the moral and religious in-
I structions and spirit of the New Testament, that we should
attach undue importance to the foregoing considerations by
dwelling longer upon thera. We need not seek for such posi
tive faults and bleraishes in the Christian writings, although
these writrags differ araong theraselves in respect to the cora
pass, purity, and power with which they set forth the raoral and
religious eleraents of Christianity. The law has served its
office of pedagogue, and has led us unto Christ.
Indeed, aU the considerations which have been before us in
the second division of this chapter are, as it were, quite sunk
below sight, when they are laid under the weight of the positive
and indispensable raoral and religious truth contributed to man
kind through the Sacred Scriptures. To present, in detaU, the
claims wMch the ethico-religious contents of the Scriptures —
when considered in their progress, and in the ideal and goal
which they attain in Christ — make to the tities "sacred " and

476 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
"inspired," would require a complete survey of biblical ethics
and biblical theology. We necessarUy content ourselves with
a simple mention of some of those characteristics which best
set forth these claims.
Certain characteristics of the etMco-religious contents of the
Bible, regarded as the seat and expression of its revelation and
inspiration, are closely connected with those imperfections of
which we have already spoken. The ideas of a unity of moral
government and an historic process of divine self-revelation can
scarcely be realized together, without taMng such imperfections
into the account. This unity is not one which can be secured
all at once by offering and enforcing an ideal law : it is rather
one which takes into account and provides for all the lower
and more iraperfect stages of its own progressive development.
The unity is one of plan ; the plan is divine. The great ethical
and religious ideas which bind together and vivify the entire
course of the one Mstoric process are the ideas of a divine self- '
revelation raade through inspired rainds ; the ideas are given to
us as erabodied in concrete words, raessages, institutions, and
legal enactraents. But it by no raeans foUows that aU these
concrete words, messages, institutions, and legal enactments
are, in aU their eleraents, to be ascribed to revelation and
inspiration, in the stricter sense of the words. Imperfect
human ways of thinking and speaking, and ethically low and
imperfect customs, institutions, and laws, raay be taken up
into, and more or less changed and assimilated by, the forces
of revelation and inspiration. Such must the historical pro
cess, indeed, be, if God is to get his moral and religious ideas
realized in huraan life.
We recognize, therefore, the power pf these concrete divine
words and definite coraraands, as the forras into which the
divine ideas cause the crude raaterial to crystallize. That the
ideas take these forras is, indeed, a proof of their divine origin
and nature. It resembles all the methods of the divme govern
ment, to take raan in hand for legal discipUne in the condition
in which he is found, and to deal with Mm by starting him from
this condition. The raethods of the bibUcal revelation show
that God does not hesitate to raix his raost exalted moral and
religious truths vrith the crude conceptions and mistaken prac
tices of mankind. In the historic process of seU-purifying
which the Mosaic Torah underwent, and through which it
attempted to conduct the people, we find one of its chief

TWOFOLD EXCELLENCE OF THE TORAH. 477
claims to divine qualities. Its chief claim, however, consists
in this, that it prepared the way by tMs process for the coraing
of the etMcal and reUgious truth of Christ.
The foregoing stateraent leads us to notice a twofold excel
lence m the ethical and reUgious truths of the Bible: in all
the earUer stages of the process of revelation, they emphasize
the concrete divine word and the concrete law which may be
ascribed to God. The divine voice here speaks to men in a
definite coraraand : it says. Thou shalt not do tMs, but thou shalt
do that. In tMs manner of speaking, two great truths of huraan
nature are fully recognized : yiz., the divine law raust be taught
with absolute corapulsion ; and for men who are not yet fitted to
have that law revealed witMn thera in its Mgher spiritual truths,
the compulsion of obedience to some particular and concrete
'command raust be raade to be strongly felt. The particular
laws enacted for Israel in the name of the Lord were of less
importance, in themselves considered, than that Israel should
somehow be tramed to obey its Lord. It is not so much in the
nature of these concrete enactments, commendable or faulty in
themselves, that we are to rest the clairas of the Mosaic Torah
to a dirine origin. It is the intent and success of this Torah,
in placmg within huraan history the final law of virtue and the
ultimate truth of reUgion, wMch we raost adrairingly regard.
" TMough three tMngs," says the Talraud, " the world subsists :
through the Torah, the service of God, and well-doing." But
the Torah, "in its widest sense," says an expounder of the
Talmud, " comprises the entire doctrine of God, which involves
all tMee." It is tMs law witMn the laws to which Jesus at
tributes a comprehensive and absolute corapulsion in Matt. v.
18, — "an utterance," says Fassel,^ "which plays an important
part m the Talmud." While, then, the inner law is aware of
its own intent (see Lev. xix. 2 ; Deut. iv. 5 f. ; and corapare
Mic. vi. 18), it is to be praised for having expressed this intent
although in a forra mingled with transitory and imperfect con
crete enactments.
But the sarae inner law is aware that the virtue which it
seeks can never be attained by enforced obedience to concrete
enactments; it knows that the law should be accepted as a
prmciple of virtue by a -psychological necessity. It therefore
contains witMn itself, especially in the Deuterononiic version,
besides concrete laws, many words of rebuke, expostulation,
' Die Mosaisch-rabbinische Tugend- und Eechtslehre, pp. 30 ff.

478 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
entreaty, proraise, and encouragement. In prophecy the divine
word, rather than the concrete legal enactment, becomes the
prevalent form of rousing and fixing the spirit of obedience in
raan. TMs word of God, which abides in the concrete spoken
words of the prophets, still further prepares the way for Him
who is the Word. Under the gospel, also, the concrete words
of those who, by their preacMng, bore the word of God to theu
conteraporaries, and by their writmgs bear the same word to us,
,show the characteristics of a mingled divine and human origm,
By such a method of getting his ethico-religious truth before
raen, God displays Ms wisdom and grace. The Word of God
comes to raan in and through concrete human words, but is
not to be identified with them. The very iraperfection of the
raeans is necessary to that progressive and concrete manifesta
tion of his truth wMch it is the will of God to brrag to men in
the Bible.i
Not a few other characteristics of the ethico-reUgious con
tents of the Bible are suggested by those relations which have
already been pointed out between these and the other classes of
contents. That the raoral and religious truths of Sacred Scrip
ture are so largely given in history, and that they have been so
thoroughly tested and sifted by the processes of that very his
tory in which they are given, are facts of no smaU import.
The ideas are given in facts ; the greatest idea of all revela
tion is given in the central fact of all history, — the fact of the
incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The ,
rairacles of the Bible are designed and recognized as concrete
raanifestations of divine power and grace. The prediction of
the Bible is not raere soothsaying : it is a progressive revelation!
of ethical and religious truths. Thus does every aspect in
which we can view the contents of the Bible show what is
its raain intent, what are its pervading characteristics. The
law, the prophecy, the Mstory, and the rakacles are all different
forras of bearing to raen that raarvellous congeries of ethical
and reUgious truths which has its centre and goal in Him who
is the truth. It is difficult to believe that a collection of writ
ings, no raatter by what authors or in what times they may
be written, and no raatter with what scientific, historical, and
even (within certain limits) ethical imperfections of detail they
raay be oppressed, which brings such truths in such manner to
men, should be other than sacred and inspired.
1 Compare Harless, System of Christian Ethics, Edinburgh, 1880, p. 139 f.

ETHICO-RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE BIBLE. 479
Especially difficult does it appear to deny such titles to
the etMco-religious contents of the Bible, when we consider
more particularly what are some of those truths of ethics and
religion upon which the writings of the Old and New Testa
ments insist.
The systematizing of all their separate ethical and reUgious
truths is accoraplished through one truth, whidh is both as
sumed and openly taught ; viz., that the foundation of raoral
ity is in a raoral personality, and that the core of human virtue
is allegiance to that personality. The contents of which vre
speak are not ethical and reUgious : they are all ethico-religious.
With the doctrme of the personality of God as love are insepar
ably connected both of those commandraents in which inhere all
the Law and the Prophets. The keeping of the first coraraand-
ment — itself the suraraing-up of all raoral obligations — be
comes possible only when the personality of God, who loves raan
and holds coraraunion with hira in love, is apprehended by faith
and love.'' It is the experience of love which constitutes for the
human soul its Mghest and most irresistible proof of the being of
God.2 Thus is the truth of a divine self-comraunication, with
all wMch is necessarUy involved in this truth, connected with
the doctrine of the personality of God as love. All the biblical
ethics has therefore the twofold basis which is laid in the cora
plete doctrine of the divine personality and of divine self-reve
lation. The personal self-communication of God is made in
such form that he can coraraand and teach rae, and evoke ray
personal affection ; I can pass the line between his personality
and mine, and address him in terms of personal trust and love.
The God of the Old Testament is the personal source of a
supernatural revelation, who announces hiraself as present in
the daUy life of raan's duty, but as distinct frora the irapersonal
law, whether written without or within.^ But in the New Tes
tament the personaUty of Christ becomes the source of ethical
life and etMcal law. God comes near to raan in a concrete
personality; he awakens the highest and raost devoted affec
tion, and stirs to their depths the springs of raoral endeavor
and action. He, raoreover, presents one who is not a raere
example to copy, but is hiraself possessed of divine power and
^ Compare Pfleiderer, Die Religion, I. p. 18G f.
^ Compare J. H. Fichte, Psychologie, I. p. 730.
' Compare an article by Hermann Schmidt, Die ethischen Gegensatze in dem
gegenwartigeu Kampfe der biblischen- und der modern-theologischen Weltaus-
cliauung, Stud, und Krit., 1876.

480 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
divine wealth in self-communication. Faith attacMng itself
to Jesus Christ thus becomes the source of Christian morals.
The central element and essential characteristic of all etMcal
impulse becomes fidelity to Hira. Fidelity to CMist is not so
rauch, then, an isolated virtue, as the savrag quality, the con
servative principle, of all the virtues (see Rev. ii. 10).
It is thus that the element of personal aUegiance is made so
prorainent in the ethics of Christianity. Christ as a person
fulfilling the divine law, and bringing to men the divine love,
does not stand to the forces of moral and religious Ufe -simply
in the relation of a supplement. The raoral and reUgious con
sciousness of the believer turns vrith fuU conviction to Ms word
as to that wMch is infallibly true. Modern culture, to a large
degree, atterapts to separate the systera of morals which Christ
inculcated, from the doctrines and modes of contemplating
ethical and reUgious truths which he beUeved and transmitted
to his Church ; but the raorals are cold and lifeless when sep- •
arated from the personality wMch is their life.
The foregoing thoughts lead to the remark, that the biblical
view of conscience and of the ethical nature of man erinces the
clairas of the bibUcal writings to contain an inspired revelation
of ethico-religious truth. As revelation cannot be held to he
simply the activity of the conscience when filled and enlight
ened with the contents of revelation, so conscience caimot be
considered siraply as one of the norraal activities of man actmg
independently of revelation. Conscience is not raerely an inner
law-book. The fundaraental fact of aU ethical phUosophy, viz.,
that raan finds an unconditional law in his own rational nature
wMch clairas control over the appetites, thoughts, impulses, and
choices, is by no raeans unknown to the biblical writers. This
fact is repeatedly recognized by Paul.^ The heathen have a
law written in the heart (Rom. ii. 15) ; this is a law of the
inner inan, and manifests itself in the facts of consciousness.
The activities of conscience are not laid aside in the Christian
life ; a believer raay have a weak (1 Cor. viii. 10) or a pure
(Acts xxiU. 1, xxiv. 14-16) and spiritually illumined (Rom. ix.
1) conscience. These activities, indeed, accompany and guide
1 See an article by Bruch, Die Dignitat und Stellung des Pflichtbegrifies,
Krit. u. Stud., 1848, pp. 553 ff. For a discussion of the name and conception o£
conscience among the Greeks, Eomans, Hellenists, and in the Old and New
Testaments, see Das Gewissen, by Martin Kahler, Halle, 1878; and for Paul's doc
trine of conscience, see Ernesti, Ethik des Apostles Paulus, and the writers cited
by him (p. 23 f .).

BIBLICAL ETHICS INTENSELY RELIGIOUS. 481
and limit the entire moral and religious life (2 Cor. i. 12 ; Tit. i.
15; ITim. iv. 2).
But the admission of the fundamental interior fact of huraan
consciousness does not obscure the great objective truth, that in
moral action man places himself in an attitude of obedience or
disobedience toward the will of a person which is revealed to
Mm as a law from without. The wider meaning m which the
writers of the New Testament use the word frwelBrjo-i's — the
consciousness of any thing whatsoever, and so the conscious
ness or knowledge of God ; and, further, the consciousness of
the attitude of the self toward his law revealed within, or the
knowledge of the essence of that law, — tMs wider meaning of
the word suggests the truth, that, in the doctrine of the biblical
writers, the true conception of conscience cannot be separated
from the idea and fact of divine self-revelation. Such is the
etMco-reUgious doctrine of conscience. It is only this doctrine
wMch satisfies both the etMcal and the phUosopMcal and reli
gious nature of man, and which unites the conception of history,
regarded as an etMcal development, with the true conception
of man's moral reason.
It follows frora those quaUties to wMch attention has just
been caUed, that the practical etMcs of tbe Bible is intensely
reUgious. From the very first its ethical stimulus consists in
the effort to please God, and to be holy as he is holy. The
inner law, as existing within raan, is only the effect : the cause
and significance of this law are to be understood only in the
light of a divine self-coramunication. What raodern ethics
might caU the threatenings of a guUty conscience is the wrath
of God revealed witMn ; for what raodern etMcs calls an opera
tion of the huraan intellect is really the word of God made
known to the soul.
The teacMng of Christ upon ethical truths is in full accord
¦with the permanent principles of the bibUcal writers. It has
been thought strange indeed that the great Teacher of morals
should be so silent respecting conscience, its nature, obligations,
and offices, and should enforce so little the coraraands and
pleadmgs of this monitor of man. But from his own point of
view, which is the distinctively and intensely religious one, he
surveys and depicts the entire domain of theoretical and practi
cal morals. That light of the body, the eye, which when sound
fiUs the whole body with light, but when evil leaves all in dark
ness, is indeed the practical reason (5 vovs) ; but it is this reason
VOL. I. 2 H

482 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
considered as the organ and channel of divine self-revelation.
That righteousness which is the fulfilling of the law (Matt. v.
17, corapare xxii. 37-40), and which is contrasted with the
righteousness of raen (v. 20, ix. 10-17, xii. 1-9, xv. 1-8), he
teaches as SiKaioa-vvi^ Oeov ; although it is an ethical goal rather
than a legal condition, an inner fact rather than a judicial act*
and is so far unlike the conception of Paul. The essence.of
this righteousness is in doing the divine will (vu. 21, xu. 60),
and so attaining likeness to the divine ethical perfection (v. 48,
xix. 21). Of the first iraportance is it, therefore, that the heart
should stand in right relations toward God (v. 8, vi. 21, vii. 17,
xU. 33-35, xiU. 15, 19, xv. 8, 19). The heart, although it is the
source in raan of every raoral eril, does not lose a certain inborn
susceptibility for the divine (xvUi. 3, 10, xix. 14). As virtues
belonging to this righteousness which is pleasing to God, and
which consists in a heart right toward Mra, self-surrender (vi.
19-24, vii. 13, x. 37 f., xix. 21), purity (v. 8, vi. 1-18), fidelity
(xxv. 14-30), forgiveness (v. 21-26, vi. 12, 14, xviU. 21-35),
huraility in the sufferance of wrong (v. 5, 9, 39), compassion
and pity (v. 7, xii. 7, xviii. 4, xxUi. 3 f., xxv. 34), and self-deny
ing service (xx. 25-28, xxui. 11) are inculcated.
In all the New-Testaraent writers the point of view, from
which the practical raorals of their own tirae are regarded,
is where the etMcal and the religious eleraents are united
by the self-coraraunication of God to man. The virtues with
which these writers deal, when discussing the practical Chris
tian Ufe, all have their root in the new heart as it is itself
vivified and illumined by the Spirit of Christ. The works of
Jaraes and the faith of Paul are alike in that both are ethico-
religious. And what an ethical power is CMistian faith in the Pauline
sense of the word ! That change in the fundamental idea of
his moral life which Paul had experienced was not due to a
simple determination on his part to devote himself to keeping
with increased care the obligations of conscience. In his earli
est moral life he had conceived of the Mosaic law as the expres
sion of the divine will (see Rom. vii. 25, vo'/ios Oeov, vii. 7) ; as to
the zeal and fideUty with which he had kept this law, his con
science pronounced hira without fault (Phil. Ui. 5 ff.). It was
not a better conscience, or raore fidelity to the conscience he
had, which he had either needed or gained on coraing to Christ.
He had needed and gained " the knowledge and experience of a

ETHICS OF THE BIBLE NOT SPECULATIVE. 483
new objective reUgious relation to God; " ^ and the gaining this
had totally changed the basis of his etMco-religious life. In
his changed condition the principal factor was his new faith
in Jesus Christ. This faith brought with itself a participation
in the divine life in Christ ; the inner law of the Spirit of life in
Christ becarae the forraative principle of all his thoughts, feel
ings, and purposes (Rora. viii. 2). And here we return once
more to the fundamental truth, that a morally pure and ener
getic life can be enjoyed by man only as the result of a divine
self-communication. But when this comraunication of himself
by God is made complete in CMist (o KoXXwp,evos rw Kvpiw iv wvevp-d
etrriv, 1 Cor. vi. 17), then all the raoral factors and forces of
humanity are united and made strong (Phil. iv. 13).
What Paul thus conceives of in one way, John conceives of
in another ; but their conceptions do not differ in respect to
the relation which exists between the practical life of morality
and the self-comraunication of God in Christ.
It is quite true, then, that we miss in the ethico-religious
-contents of the Bible any speculative teaching as to the nature
of conscience when regarded siraply as one of man's rational
faculties, or any systera of duties in wMch a raan raay walk
blameless as respects his conscience although his heart is not
right toward God. For these ethico-religious contents are the
truths of the biblical revelation in the full iraport of the word
"revelation." They coraprise the various factors and increments
of that Mstoric process of communicating Mmself to man which
God undertook in a special way with ancient Israel, and which
he brought to its culminating energy in the Spirit of Christ.
These contents, then, prove the sacredness of the Scriptures
only for a raind that already accepts the reaUty of revelation,
and accepts also the fundaraental assuraption of biblical revela
tion ; viz., that God is redeeraing the world by the coraraunica-
tion through Christ of his own life. For such a raind, however,
the very raode in wMcli the Bible presents these contents is a
most conrincing proof of its sacredness.
For ethics aiid religion are, both in fact and in a true philos
ophy, so joined together as the Bible presents thera to our view.
No speculative riew of raorals, and no systera of ethical raax-
ims for the conduct of the practical life, could accoraplish rauch
for the moral purifying of mankind. The wisdom and power,
as well as the gracious condescension, of God, belong to the
1 See Ernesti, Ethik des Apostles Paulus, p. 3.

484 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
method of revelation. It is because the etMcal truths of the
Bible are ethico-religious, in their entire circuit and to their very
core, that they have had such power of raoral purifymg over
mankind. All the ethical and religious truths which have raoved and
raoulded raen have, indeed, had their origin in divine self-reve
lation. We are not araong those who grudge the remoter
nations their diraraer light from the heavenly source. There
has been the true Light which lighteth every man coming into
the world. Nor has inspiration — even in that sense of the
word which confines it to a quickening and elevating by the
Divine Spirit of the ethico-religious nature of man for the pur
pose of comraunicating to the world new moral and religious
truth — been confined to Jewish and Christian writers alone.
But since the claims of the Bible to revelation and inspiration
lie especially in its ethico-religious contents, it is to the superi
ority of such contents that we must look for establisMng its
special claims. In the manner and degree in which the etMco-
religious contents of the biblical writings differ from those of
all other writings, can the writings themselves claim to differ
frora all others. The question as to the nature and origin of
the Sacred Scriptures is, then, with respect to these ethico-
reUgious contents, substantially the sarae in kind as with respect
to all the other classes of contents : it is largely a question of
siraple fact.
We can, then, raake an appeal with perfect confidence to the
pre-eminent excellence of biblical ethics upon practical subjects
of the utmost iraportance to the daily conduct and weU-being
of raen. Yet, in each case of appeal, the value of the compari
son for apologetics will depend largely upon the way of think
ing upon such subjects which different inquirers hold. Indeed,
aU the modern way of thinking upon moral questions is so
much an outgrowth of Christianity, and so closely interwoven
with Christian etMcal truth, that it is -very difficult even by
analysis to separate the two. "Philosophical ethics m the
Christian world," said Liicke, "bears, even though it be uncon
sciously, the Christian principle in itself." It is by comparing
any Christian etMcal principle with its nearest likeness in the
most highly cultivated classic antiquity, that we can best appre
ciate its peculiar excellence. Should we, for instance, select
the principle of love for enemies, we should find — as has al
ready been said — certain precepts of classic heathen antiquity

CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE OF LOVE. 485
wMch include this principle. But all such precepts would need
to be considered organically, and as to the soil and atmosphere
iu which, and out of which, they sprung. The Christian prin
ciple of love for enemies undoubtedly springs out of the very
Ufe of Christianity, — out of that brotherly love which itself
springs out of the divine love (compare John Ui. 16 ; 1 John iv.
9 f., 19-21; Rora. viii. 82 ; Matt. v. 45 f. ; and John xv. 12 f.).
That which was in Mosaisra rather of the nature of an external
command became in Christianity so rauch a spontaneous ex
pression of its new life, that Jesus can call it a new coraraand-
ment (John xiii. 34 f.). Forgiveness is, therefore, so erainently
a matter of the life, and of the law of the life, which is love, that
to be lackrag in it is to show a lack of that life (Mark xi. 25 ;
Luke vi. 28; Eph. iv. 1-3, 32; Col. iU. 13). Not as a raatter
of forra, nor of raere conscience, nor of the culture and expres
sion of raagnaniraitj^, but as a raatter of allegiance to the inmost
force and law of the spiritual Ufe, are Christians bidden to for
give (Matt. V. 44, 4G f. ; Luke vi. 32-35, 38). In the forgive
ness of enemies, then, his followers only follow Christ (see
Luke xxiU. 34; Acts vU. 60; 1 Cor. iv. 12; 1 Pet. U. 23).
And, much as we may admire the wonderful resemblances to
CMistian maxims enjoimng the love of enemies which the works
of Plato and Antoninus disclose, we cannot for a moment admit
that Christiamty did not bring something new and distinctive
into the world regarding this principle.
Lest we raight suppose that the ethics of the Bible is quite
too thin and evanescent for raan to grasp and hold amid the
hard conditions of human life, we must not forget to raention
another phase of its etMcal truth. Asceticism is very far from
being inciUcated by the ethics of Mosaism. The system of
ethics mculcated in the Torah admits a generous use of the
pleasurable tMngs of life, a large araount even of sensuousness,
as not incorapatible with the true principles of ethico-religious
life. After the soleran feasts of a people loyal to Jehovah had
ceased to be deraanded by the law, and the call to rejoice and
be grateful in length of years, raany children, and bountiful
fruits of frugal industry, had died away, the establishment of
Christian ethics laid anew the basis for a healthy and rational
enjoyment of corporeal goods. Christianity does not refuse to
see in God the giver of all the good things of the earthly life
(ayaQcrvpywv, ovpavoOev vplv verms StSous Kai Kaipovs Kap-rro(f)Opovs, epiri-
irXwv rpocjirjs /cat ev<j>poavvrj'S Tas KapSlas iip-wv, ActS xiv. 17, compare

486 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
1 Tim. vi. 17) ; it sees in the Koa-pos (Jjvo-iko? both an object of
pleasure and a means of spiritual knowledge (Rom. i. 20).i
How careful Paul is in comraending asceticism as distinguished
from a reasonable self-denial for Christ's sake, a study of his
own raost ascetic passages will plainly show (for example, ¦
1 Cor. vii.).
We do not need to consider in detail any special claims which
the Bible may be supposed to raake tMough some of its dis
tinctively doctrinal contents. Purely speculative truth, even
of ethical and religious kind, is not raade in Sacred Scripture
the material of divine revelation and comraunication through .
inspired minds. There are present, indeed, in the Bible, both
higher and lower truths, — both truths which are matters of
plain comraon-sense, and others which present themselves to
faith as mysteries; truths more distinctively practical, and
others in which the eleraent of theory is relatively prominent.
But a clear distinction between the theoretic and the practical
is in no case raade and observed; the raerely speculative, as
such, is in no case introduced. Except in coraparatively a few
instances, — as, for example, in those proverbs which seem
least intiraately related to the principles of the Law, — even
the most comraonplace raaxiras of ethics are given as though
connected in the raind of the writers with iraportant religious
truths. And, on the other hand, no truth of religion is so
rauch a profound raystery, or is presented in a form so re
raote frora experience, that it is not intended to do service in
the culture of the ethico-religious life. When, then, we have
spoken of the etMco-religious contents of the Bible, we have
included m them the profoundest mysteries of doctrine with
which the Bible deals. The prologue of John's Gospel, and
the opening chapters ,of Ephesians and Colossians, are practical
truth ; the ecstatic visions of the Apocaljrpse are for the encour
agement, comfort, and warning of the saints in their practical
life upon the earth. Moreover, whatever has been said in vin
dication and explanation of the essential contents — historical,
miraculous, or predictive — of Sacred Scripture applies mdi-
rectly to its raost distinctively doctrinal portions as connected
with all these classes of contents.
We need not undertake to prove that the doctrines of the
Bible, if true, sanctify the vehicle which brings them to our
minds, the vessel which contains thera for the continual use of
1 See Harless, System of Christiau Ethics, p. 35.

ETHICO-RELIGIOUS CONTENTS NOT SEPARABLE. 487
mankind. Such a claim as this follows at once upon the ad
mission of those postulates* under which our entire discussion
and examination have proceeded. The conclusions reached by
apologetics, and justified by history and experience, touching
the cardinal truths of aU reUgion, and of Christianity in par
ticular, are assumed in a study of the origin and nature of
Sacred Scripture. We need, then, only call attention by a
word to the relation between the postulated truth of those
other doctrines and the truth which we are seeking as a more
precise statement for the particular doctrine of Sacred Scrip
ture. Those doctrines — the central ethico-religious truths of
the Bible — the writers and teachers of the Old and New Tes
taments, from Clirist to the most obscure or unknown of them,
claim to have received by revelation and inspiration of the
Divine SpUit. This claim, being admitted, at once constitutes
a further claim that such portions of the Bible as contain the
central ethico-religious truths, scripturaUy fixed, raust thera
selves be ascribed to revelation and inspiration. Such portions
of the biblical writings, and whatever else such portions carry
along with thera, have, then, a direct and pre-eminent claim to
be considered sacred and inspired : they are sacred and inspired
because they are, in written forra, the contents of etMco-religious
truth which have been revealed to inspired minds. It does not
foUow, however, that even with regard to the central doctrines
there wUl be no call raade upon the Christian Church, or the
individual seeker for truth, to discern the teraporary and forraal
elements with which these doctrines have been raoulded into
their biblical shape.
From this survey of the ethico-religious contents of the Bible,
as related to the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, we derive the
foUowing conclusions : These contents cannot be separated in
extenso from the history, rairacles, and predictions of Scripture,
and thus considered as a class separate and apart. The history,
miracles, and predictions contain, as erabodied in them, the spirit
and the life of the etMcal and religious truth ; they also con
tribute to this truth its various factors and elements. It is,
however, to the ethico-religious truth, considered both as era
bodied in the history, miracles, and predictions, and also as
revealed in more didactic forms, that the qualities and predi
cates of inspiration and revelation primarily belong.
But not all of the ethico-reUgious contents are equally im
portant, nor do all evince an equal share in the qualities and

488 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
predicates which belong to them as a class. Moreover, they
are not all equally perfect, as judged by the absolute etMcal
standard ; they are not all even free from positive blemishes
and faults. There are certain ethical and religious truths re
vealed in the Bible wMch constitute the very heart and brain
of all its raoral and religious life. These contents are the very
substance and core of its truth : in thera is the seat of its reve
lation and inspiration ; frora them proceed its chief claims to the
titles " sacred " and " inspired." But there are different degrees
in which the different portions of these contents approach their
own centre, and partake of its sanctity and life. Indeed, some
whole books of rainor iraportance, and certain passages in a
nuraber of books, exhibit little or no proof of any claim to
such titles through the nature of their ethico-religious contents.
We find also that the ethico-religious contents have themselves
passed through a process of historic revelation ; or rather the
divine self-revelation, which has its record in the Bible, has
observed the laws of historic developraent in the communica
tion of its etMcal and religious truths to men. Nor can we fad,
in perfect candor, to admit that certain iraraoral views and feel
ings, as well as certain raaxiras of at best doubtful morality,
have in places pressed their way within the corapass of Sacred
Scripture. To raake such discoveries and adraissions we are
not only perraitted, but even irapelled, by that revelation of
ethical and reUgious verity which is given to us in CMist.
But the fact that the ethico-reUgious truths of Sacred Scrip
ture were coraraunicated by those degrees and stages of ap
proach to perfection which characterize all the dirine self-com
raunication, does not railitate against the clairas of the Bible :
it rather confirms a reasonable estiraate of these claims. Nor
need we be appalled over the discovery of such sympathy with
deeds of lying and cruelty, when the deeds are beUeved to be
in a good cause, as is expressed in the Mstory of Jael. For
these, and all other similar cases, even including the imprecar
tions which depress the raoral tone of sorae of the sacred songs,
are relatively insignificant in contrast with the complete revela
tion of ethico-reUgious truth. In the Bible we have conveyed
to us such contents of a moral and reUgious kind as have the
most conclusive claim to an origin in revelation through in
spired servants of God. These contents, in so far as they con
stitute the moral and religious doctrines of Sacred Scripture,
transfer their claim directly to so much of the Bible as they

INSPIRATION OF THE ETHICO-RELIGIOUS CONTENTS. 489
constitute. They, moreover, by their indirect influence, by
their reflected radiance, so to speak, Ulumine and sanctify the
whole of that vessel in which they are found. The most im
portant facts and truths of ethics and reUgion are given to
us scripturaUy fixed in the Bible as they were received from
dirine revelation by inspired rainds.
The further explanations and proofs of the last statements
belong, however, to otner divisions of our theme.

CHAPTER VII.
THE DOCTRINE OF SACEED SCRIPTURE AS RELATED TO THB
AUTHORSHIP AND COMPOSITION OP THE BIBLICAL BOOKS.
The intimate and iraportant relations which exist between
the inquiry into the origin of the biblical books, and the gen
eral inquiry into the nature of Sacred Scripture, have been
raade apparent in alraost every previous chapter of our work.
The former inquiry is, indeed, when considered in itself, of a
purely critical character ; the latter is necessarily a mixed ques
tion of a partly critical and partly dogmatic kind. Who was
the author of a certain ancient writing ? To what date shall
its composition be ascribed ? Is it a composition which came
as a total product frora the raind and pen of a single author? oi
is it a corapilation frora various works left by other authors,
still more ancient and perhaps unknown ? May it not even be
of so coraplex construction, and of parentage so manifold, that
it raust be called a growth rather than a work ? These are, in
theraselves considered, siraple questions of fact. They are such
questions of fact, however, as are corapetent to determine, with
more or less of clearness and strength of convictions, how
much of the bibUcal contents is true history, genuine proph
ecy, ethico-reUgious truth of revelation ; and how much is the
reverse of all these. Indeed, the supernatural character and
origin of Christianity can be neither scientifically established
nor maintained in entire independence of such critical ques
tions. And yet criticism has itself suggested one of the opinions to
which experience constantly forces us anew, when it has divided
the sources and grounds for its conclusions into the internal and
the external. The division suggests the opinion, that, although
subjective and objective may sometimes blend in one common
beam of Ught upon the obscure inquiries of criticism, they wdl
also not infrequentiy so disturb each other as to deepen the,
twUight into utter darkness. That the former dogmatic man-
490

GENETIC IDEA OF REVELATION. 491
ner of regarding these critical questions, wMle it claimed to
weigh carefuUy the purely external and historical sources for
its affirmations, was in reality largely subjective, in the worst
sense of the word, there can be no dispute. But there ought
to be just as Uttle dispute, that much of the more raodern criti
cism, whether it please to call itself external or internal or
neither, is just as largely subjective, in quite as bad a sense of
that word. The difference between the older so-called critics
and many of the more modern ones consists largely in this :
the former had a cMldish trust in untrustworthy traditions,
. while the latter have a conceited confidence in the vagaries of
their own minds.
It is the distinguisMng characteristic of the best modern
' critical inquiry into the origin of the biblical books, — the really
"Mgher criticism" of the present century, — that it strives to
marshal and handle aU its forces of criticism according to a
genetic idea of huraan Mstory. The history of revelation is
human history ; the record of the kingdora of heaven upon the
earth is, therefore, a record to be studied in the historico-
genetic method. But tMs sarae source of all its excellences is
also the snare and delusion of the higher criticism. For a cer
tain fundamental mquiry of a dogmatic kind largely controls all
the critical inquiries. TMs fundamental inquiry raay be stated
llomewhat as follows : What are the eleraents which enter into
tMs genetic idea of criticisra ? and what is the inmost nature of
the process of unfolding wMch criticism endeavors to under
stand and describe? It can readUy occur, then, that what
seems to the critic most objective and scientific is rather in
teality most thorougMy and viciously subjective. For the un
verified ideas of the investigator are quite as Ukely to shape his
aUeged results of criticism, as these results, when independently
established by others, to raodify his ideas. It is only by long-
continued investigation that the investigator can attain the true
guidmg ideas of criticisra ; and yet, meanwhile, his whole course
of investigation may itself be largely shaped by false ideas
assumed as guides. It is only by the reciprocal influence of
ideas, assumed as guides, and of ascertained facts of history, that
any critic can finally work Ms way toward, if not corapletely
into, the position where truth of fact and true idea coincide.
To convince himself how much the highest and most confident
'Criticism may base itself upon conjecture and prejudice, any
ihoughtful reader need only go faithfully through with what

492 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
has been written upon any of the biblical books, — notably, for
instance, upon the Pentateuch, the Synoptists, and the Gospff
of John. The way of critical inquiry into the origin of most
of the sacred writings is rough and, in places, very unsafe, even
after it has been prepared by all the workmen, and guarded by
all the hosts, of the very highest modern criticism.
But shall we, therefore, content ourselves with an uncriticill
tenure of the old traditions ? Shall we contmue to beUeve that
the Pentateuch was coraposed throughout by Moses, because 1
such was the synagogical tradition in the time of the apostles?
Shall we hold by the apostolic authorship of the Fourth Gospel
on the sole ground that thus the Church has believed since at
least the middle of the second century? Shall we even aver
that the Apostle Matthew with Ms own hand composed the
Gospel to which Ms narae is attached, siraply because of the
tradition which is erabodied in so loose an attachment? And,
if we find that what appear to be two or three different compo
sitions have iraraemorially been bound together in the same
synagogue rolls, shall we think ourselves competent to pro
nounce without examination upon the integrity of Daniel,
Isaiah, or Zechariah? Why, raoreover, shall we not go yet
farther in deference to certain traditions, and so assert that
Canticles and Proverbs were written by Solomon, and aU the so-
called Psalms of David were the products of tMs ancient royal
poet ? The nature of the answers wMch different persons re
turn to these several questions would be a sufficient justification,
in each one's opinion, of at least some criticism. We certainly
cannot receive information on aU these points from unques
tioned tradition. There are cases in which even the conjecture
of unanimous criticism will rightly outweigh a thousand years
of tradition. And, if the path is in places a rough and unsafe
one, it is nevertheless the only path along which the friends of
Sacred Scripture can raeet . the attacks of its enemies. It is
also the path along which, walking with just agreement as to
certain ascertained truths and with charitable zeal of research
into disputed raatters, both friends and eneraies might hope to
enlarge the doraain of huraan knowledge.
We are far, indeed, frora wishing by the remarks just made
to depreciate the raethod and results of modern criticism. As
has just been asserted, its raethod fundaraentally considered i« ,„
the true one ; how large and encouraging are some of its resu«
the present chapter will enable us to bring additional evident

BEARING OF CRITICAL QUESTIONS. 493
to show. Certainly, no tenable doctrine of Sacred Scripture
can be mductively estabUshed without adopting this raethod
in the scrutiny of its own results. And yet it is only after
much painstaking, within certain rather narrow liraits, and with
[much reserve and caution upon many points, that satisfactory
results can be obtained from the method of criticism. The
importance of these results, within the limits which must be
assigned, has been repeatedly asserted and enforced in previous
pages. A brief suraraary of the results is, however, necessary
, as an intioduction to the detaUed discussion which wUl follow.
^ The relation which exists between critical inquiries into the
;f uthorship of the sacred writings and the alleged supernatural
: and miraculous origin of Christianity is pre-erainently irapor
tant. TMs relation does not, mdeed, cover all the alleged
miraculous contents of either the Old Testament or the New.
It becomes most apparent when we raise the question of the
|uthorsMp of the Gospels, and among them especially of the
Gospel of John. For upon this question of date and authorship
_it largely depends, whether we have an authentic record of the
miraculous personality, works, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Upon the critical question of the genuineness of the Fourth
Gospel depends the question, whether we are to lose, or not,
our only direct and apostolic eye-and-ear witness of the entire
eourse of the miraculous ministiy of our Lord; and also,
whether we are to lose the impression made upon a deeply re
ligious personality by the personal teaching and coraraunion of
that Lord.
With questions of criticism those considerations which con-
]cern the historical or unMstorical character of much of the
biblical narrative are also raost closely intertwined. The con
clusions to which the critic coraes as to the date and authorship
of the different portions of the Pentateuch, of the historical
Books of Sarauel, Kings, and Chronicles, and also of the different
prophetic writings, will largely deterraine his views upon the
.entire history of Israel. The position taken by Kuenen in this
regard has already been briefly passed in review. The clearness
and cogency of the reasons by which he connects our judgraent
J.ipon questions of criticism with that upon questions of histori
cal verity will now be raade yet more manifest. One's views
of the Mstory will of necessity change according as prior anti-
<iuity is assigned to either one of the two great portions of the
Mosaic Torah, — the so-called prophetic or popular, and the

[

494 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
so-called priestly and ritualistic ; or according to the arrange
ment made of so-called Elohistic and so-called Jehoristic docu
ments. Indeed, the most decisive question of the history of
Israel raay now be said to be the critical question as to the
relative antiquity and credibility of the Elohistic (and priestly)
or Jehovistic (and prophetic) version of the Law. Thus Well
hausen considers it the one raisleading fault of the criticism of
Riehra,! that the latter tries to vindicate the historic authority
of the so-called Grundschrift? The sarae author in the open
ing sentences of Ms own Mstory declares that his work will be
distinguished frora the preceding sirailar ones in that criticism
will have as rauch place in it as history : with Mm, the whole
view of the history turns upon the question, whether the
Mosaic Law is the point of departure for the history of andent
Israel or of Judaism, — " the sects which survived when the
nation was annihilated by the Assyrians and Chaldeans." ^ The
question of the so-called "history of Israel" really hinges,
therefore, upon the critical question as to the relative antiquily
of the coraponent parts of the Pentateuch. Thus also does
Kuenen, while coraraending Colenso for Ms searching examma-
tion of the unhistorical character of the so-called ancient writ
ings, lay it to the charge of the latter that he did not make his
arguraent coraplete by showing the late date of these writmgs.
In the New-Testaraent writings, how closely then- authorship
and tirae of origin is connected with the historical foundations
of Christianity, we do not need to show. And here again the
genuineness of John is of pre-erainent iraportance.
Our doctrine of prophecy, and so of the nature of prophetic
inspiration, is also directly connected with the critical inqui-,
ries into dates and authorship. The eleraent of prediction in
prophecy always raises a question of dates. He does not pre
dict an event who does not speak before the time of its occur
rence. Indeed, the critical theories of Graf, Kuenen, and
Wellhausen begin with the assuraption that alleged instances
of prediction are invariably, when they cannot be accounted for
in a natural way, to be assigned to a later date than the alleged
fulfilment. But not all the force of modern criticism can break
the bond which connects Christ with ancient Hebrew prophecy;
1 Articles in the Studien und Kritiken for the years 1868 and 1872.
2 Wellhausen in Bleek's Einl. in das A. T., ed. 18T8, p. 177.
3 See Geschichte Israels, I. p. 1 ; and compare Die Composition des HexatcncM.
Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1876 and 1877.

RELIGIOUS CONTENTS RELATED TO CRITICISM. 495
even though it should succeed in dragging both the prophecy
and the personaUty down to the level of ordinary experience.
Nor can the ethical and religious contents of the biblical
books be so sorted out as to save thera frora all contact, and
danger through contact, with such critical inquiries. Not only
the contact, but also the close connection, of these supreme
contents with such inquiries, is already estabUshed by the course
of Mstory and its organizing ideas. The ethical and religious
contents of the Bible are embedded in the history ; they are in
part contents of alleged revelations and rairacles and predictions
of events which shall corae to the kingdora of God upon earth.
It is a gaUant atterapt which Professor Robertson Smith makes
to rescue the verity of all the necessary contents and truths
of revelation, and yet surrender the field formerly contested
upon critical questions. But the atterapt raust be pronounced
of at best very doubtful success. We cannot avoid thmking,
that, however fully he may Mmself have considered the relations
of certara critical questions to the general doctrine of Old-Tes
tament Scripture, he has faded in his writings to acknowledge
their fuU significance.^ We would not quote, in opposition to
such an attempt and as a satisfactory arguraent, the coarse
JJ remark of Klosterraaim,^ that the view which Kuenen pro
poses of the origin of the Old-Testament books is related to the
traditional view very much as " a picture of Munchausen draw
ing himself by Ms own pigtail out of the swamp, to another in
which Peter by the word and presence of his Lord is kept above
the waters." The reaUty of a supernatural revelation to Israel
and to the world through Israel, and the possibility of tracing
the history of Israel according to the general plan presented
in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, are not dependent wholly
upon the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, nor upon the
Mstorical equality of Chronicles and the earlier historical books.
But certainly the predetermination rigidly to exclude every
thing which has the least appearance of the supernatural ; the
rejection, as substantially and alraost utterly untrustworthy, of
aU the aUeged history of the Old Testaraent lying back of 800
^ See Old Testament in the Jewish Church, New York 1881 , especiaUy Lectures
I. and III.; pp. 316 fe. Smith desires to show that the place which Christian
theology gives to the Mosaic Law is " altogether independent of the critical ques
tion as to the authorship and composition of the Pentateuch." The Law may he
regarded as "inserted in the historical context" and as "in a certain sense inde
pendent of the historical narrative."
* See Zeitschrift fur luth.- Theologie, 1877, p. 402.

496 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
B.C.; the easy ascription of literary forgery, "tendency-writ
ing," rayth-raaking, and fiction, to the authors of tMs history;
and the resolve at all hazards to bring every writing down to
the very latest possible date, — are very significant features of
the general attitude of certain critics to the entire question of
revelation and Sacred Scripture. These elements are them
selves integrant parts of a doctrine concerning the ethical and
religious contents of Sacred Scripture. In the words of Kue-
nen,i " The case speaks for itself : as soon as it began to be
clear that the testimony of Israel's sacred books could not stand
the test of a searcMng inquiry, as soon as it appeared that they
were least trustworthy just in those places where their accounte
seemed to afford the most unequivocal proof of the truth of
supernaturalism, — from that raoment, especially in connection
with all the other motives which lead to the rejection of super
naturalism, its fall was an assured fact."
That which the school of critics who follow Kuenen have
done for the Old Testaraent, the Tiibingen school of critics
have done for the New. They have raade necessary a revision;
of all our views of Sacred Scripture and of its contents, in order
to adjust thera to the estabUshed facts of raodern criticism. For
to critical questions raust be given a raost iraportant influence
in estiraating all the contents — miraculous, historical, predictive,
ethico-religious — of both the Old and the New Testaments.
But besides these more mdirect though raost important con
nections of criticism with the doctrine of Sacred Scripture,
there are certain very obvious raore direct connections. When
ever the separate books or portions of books may have come
into existence, their present existence is a certainty. They can
just as certainly be traced back in a general way to the time
of the origins of our historical religion ; the writings of the New
Testament to the origins of Christianity, those of the Old to
the origins of the Hebrew religion. These writings were, then,
written by believers in either the Hebrew or the Christian reli
gion. They contain the record in some form of the beginnings
and growths of their religions ; they contain the expression of
the great ethical and religious ideas out of which our religion
sprung, and from the revelation and divinely guided growth of
which it has reached its present forra. All this gives us a very
direct interest in the personality of the writers, and in the
nature of the coraposition of their books. For it is evident
1 Religion of Israel, I., p. 11 1.

UNCERTAIN AUTHORSHIP OF SOME BOOKS. 497
that we can affirm. that the contents of the books are truths
of revelation given through inspired persons, only as we know
something either of the authors as persons, or of their works
as seen from the ethical point of view, or of both.
In most cases of the Old-Testament writings, however, and
in some cases of the New, the authorship can never be known.
We cannot, therefore, attribute to the works a certain divine
quaUty mferred frora our belief that the authors were them
selves inspired. The argument by which we connect the in
spiration of an Old-Testament prophet or a Christian believer
with his writings, when he writes upon subjects to which his
mspiration extends, is direct and conclusive. What is written
by a Moses, a Sarauel, an Elijah, an Isaiah, or by sorae apostle
or CMistian corapanion of an apostle, upon theraes which con
cern the Mngdora of God, wiU be likely to bear at least as
much of the irapress of the Divine Spirit as belonged to the
speech aud conduct of these raen. Especially direct and cogent
is the arguraent by which we infer the inspiration of a writmg
from an apostle of Christ concerning the life of the Master, or
concerning the nature and applications of his doctrine. It raaj'-
readUy be seen, then, how iraportant it is that we should be
able to regard the Fourth Gospel and the greater PauUne Epis
tles as having apostolic authorship ; and, also, that we should
be able to trace the Synoptists back to presumptive apostolic
authority. Nor can any one deny that we should regard the
Pentateuch differently if we could consider it as coraing in its
present form from the speech or pen of the great inspired law
giver, Moses. Now, it is one fact which criticism establishes,
that the tradition as to the authorship of biblical books, in
certam cases where it had long been regarded as based upon
sound reasons, is undoubtedly invalid.
We are invited, then, to erUarge our conceptions of inspira
tion and inspired Scripture. When we have once gained a clear
notion of the way in which an inspired personaUty, however
limited by ignorance of fact or misconception of doctrine,
gets itself wrought into a sacred writing, we may then with
some confidence reverse the previous argument. We raay rea
son, then, from the apparently inspired writing to a presuraably
inspired personality. AU this, however, will not help us to
determme just who this particular personality was, and what
were his narae and date, and means of inforraation. The answer
to such questions, criticism must attempt. But the inference
VOL. L 2 I

498 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
from the quality of a known work to the divine gifts of its un
known author is one which must be made by the religious and
CMistian consciousness. It is just here, then, that the history
of the Canon becoraes of importance to the settlement of cer
tain disputed questions. For the unconscious argument of the
Church in forming its Canon has lain in both directions : some
writings have corae to be accepted as inspired and sacred be
cause they were traditionally referred to well-known mspired
authorship ; others have corae into a sirailar acceptance because,
being found on hand — so to speak — as helpful and edifying
vn-itings, they gained for themselves a supposititious attachment
to sorae such authorship.
But none of the above-raentioned cases are among the most
difficult. For, what shall we say of those books wMch have
obriously had a raost coraplex authorship, and have been grow
ing into their present condition through scores or hundreds of
years ? Of such writings we might for convenience make two
classes, the more distinctively composite and the more largely
compiled. Yet the distinction itself is one which admits of
degrees. There are various degrees of authorship, according as
the so-called author is more purely the composer of what he
records, or raore nearly a siraple redactor. Thus, in the New
Testaraent, we recognize the Fourth Gospel as the work of one
author in the fullest sense of the words ; but the writers of the
Synoptic Gospels, although authors indeed, are nevertheless
authors who are even verbally dependent to a considerable ex
tent upon the sources frora which they draw their raaterial. In
the Old Testaraent, the Book of Isaiah leads us to the ques
tion of a double authorship. The so-caUed Book of Psalms is to
be judged in detail according to the authorship and etMcal and
reUgious quality of each one of its raembers. The earlier his
torical books present upon the surface only a claira to faithful
corapilation frora oral and written sources, which is helped out
in parts by eye-and-ear witness. The later historical books ex
hibit the sarae phenoraena as the earUer, with the addition of
sorae raaterial whose trustworthiness cannot be so well estab
lished, because it shows the marks of the misconceptions of a
later age as thrown back over the past. And, finally, the Pen
tateuch seeras to exhibit the work of various authors using an
indefinite number of sources, and of various redactors or editors
handling its material somewhat freely an indetermmate number
of times.

i !. '

CASES OF COMPOSITE AUTHORSHIP. 499
In the most difficult cases of compilation or composite struc
ture and growth, how shall we make tenable, or even conceivable,
any doctrine of inspiration which belongs to the personality
and then passes over into the work ? Only by recalling that
truth upon the acceptance of which any reasonable doctrine
of Sacred Scripture largely depends, and to which our atten
tion wUl be directed again and again. Revelation and inspira
tion belong to the comraunity of beUevers; their result in
Sacred Scripture is reached only as the product of a process
of unfolding which is directed and energized from above. Of
this comraunity some individuals may be pre-eminently produc
tive, others conservative ; they may understand their place and
their work with varying degrees of self-consciousness, and may
accomplish it with different degrees of excellence. To claim
inspiration, in the post-Reformation raeaning of the word, for
such compilations and literary growths, would be in a plain
manner absurd. To raake tMs claira, and yet accept the best
ascertained results of criticisra, would compel us to take such
positions as the following. The original authors of each one of
the writings which enter into the composite structure , were
infaUibly inspired; every one who raade any changes in any
one of these fundaraental writings was infallibly inspired ; every
compUer who put together two or raore of these writings was
infallibly inspired, both as to his selections and transraission
and also as to any connecting or explanatory words which he
might Mmself write ; every redactor was infallibly inspired to
correct and supplement and omit that which was the product of
prerious mfalUble inspirations. Or perhaps it might seera raore
convement to attach the claim of a plenary inspiration to the
last redactor of aU; but then we should probably have selected
of all others the one least able to bear the weight of such a
claim. Think of making the claira for a plenary inspiration of
the Pentateuch in its present forra on the ground of the infaUi
bihty of that one of the scribes who gave to it its last touches
some time subsequent to the date of Ezra ! What value could
such a claim for the books of Moses possess, after we had once
been driven by criticism frora the ascription of their inspiration
to the inspired personaUty of Moses ? But the claira that even
these most coraposite and slowly growing of the literary prod
ucts which enter into Sacred Scripture have been shaped by
many hands, all of which labored with raore or less distinct self-
consciousness under the impulse of great ideas of revelation

500 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTDRE.
and of an irapelling Divine Spirit, — this is a conceivable, and
as we believe, a tenable claira. It raay not serve to place such
works upon the sarae level with those which can be proved to
have corae directly frora the greater inspired personalities of
prophets and apostles : it raay, however, serve to justify the
place which such works have in fact attained within the Bible.
Differing degrees of certainty, with wMch we infer different
kinds and degrees of inspiration, are necessary both as postu
lates and results of the critical discussions. Both negatively
and positively a critical inquiry into the authorship of the
biblical books raust affect our general doctrine of Sacred :
Scripture. The complete proof and detaUed Ulustration of the foregoing
positions would involve a survey of the entire ground of Old
and New Testaraent Introduction : such a survey is neither
necessary nor possible. In addition to the raaterials discussed ¦
in other connections, we raust content ourselves at present with
a few selected exaraples. The presentation of these examples' j},:;
naturaUy falls into the two divisions of the subject suggested
above. The relation of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture to
the authorship and coraposition of the bibUcal books wUl be
raade clear as tMs relation is concerned ra, (1) the more com
posite books, and (2) the books which have an undoubted unity
of authorship. Of each class one exaraple will be made con
spicuous : of the former class, the Pentateuch (or rather Hexar
tench) frora the Old Testaraent ; of the latter, the Gospel of
John frora the New. Of all possible exaraples, these two are
the raost difficult, and none can be called raore important.
What, then, does modern criticisra justly conclude and firmly
evince concerning the authorsMp of the Pentateuch ? To an
swer this question involves a special education and a lifelong
period of toil. Even to understand the answer involves no
sraall araount of cultivated attention and special research.
And yet a raoderate critical culture, if combined with caution
and sound judgment, may lead us to a tolerably safe, if not a
completely satisfying, answer. This answer we shall attain by
a free and yet respectful use of the best authorities at com-
.mand ; and upon this subject there is no lack of learned au
thorities. Very ancient traditions are erabodied in the titles wMch we
use whenever we speak of a certain portion of the Old Testa- m'
ment as the Pentateuch, or the Books of Moses. The former

, EARLY DENIALS OF MOSAIC AUTHORSHIP. 601
titie seems to have arisen in Alexandria (17 Trevrdrevxo's se. /St/JXos
—the five-voluraed book) ; but there is no sufficigjit reason for
believing, with Havernick and Lengerke, that the division into
five parts originated with the LXX.^ The oldest translations
adopted the same division. The Hebraistic Jews designated the
work as the five Fifth-parts ('K'D'n) of the Law. The Church
Fathers speak of the Pentateuch or the five Books of Moses : ^
they thus join with Philo, Josephus, and the Talniud,^ in ascrib
ing these books to this author; or, rather, they only accept
unquestionmgly the tradition handed down through Jewish
sources. Some apparent exceptions to this riew of the authorship of
the Pentateuch are raet with very early in the history of the
Christian Church : they occurred especially among the Gnostics,
and grew out of opposition to the legal part of Judaisra rather
than out of intelligent critical considerations. Thus the view
of Ptoleraaeus * — which ascribed only a part of the Mosaic law
to dirine revelation, and attributed other things to Moses of
his own motion (diro t^s iSias iwoias 6pp.wp.evos'), still others to the
elders — seeras incorapatible with the traditional notion. Ac
cording to the Cleraentine Horailies (III. 47), Moses wished to
propagate Ms reUgion only by word of raouth; but after Ms
death the law was written down contrary to his design, and
out of tMs writrag the Pentateuch originated. In earlier tiraes
an ascetic sect called by Epiphanius the Nazaraeans rejected the
Pentateuch ; and so, according to Euthyraius Zigabenus, did a
sect of the twelfth century. Araong the Jews of the middle
ages, sporadic cases of doubt upon the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch occur, — as, for example, the case of a certain Aben
Esra, or of one or two other learned Jews. The expressed
doubt of Carlstadt is too well known to need mention here.
Andrew Masius (f 1573) in his Preface to the Book of Joshua,
and in others of his writings, denied, on critical grounds, the
Mosaic authorsMp : he ascribed the Pentateuch to Ezra, or
some other inspUed man. In the second half of the seven
teenth century the traditional view was attacked by Hobbes,
Peyrerius, and Spinoza, by Siraon and Le Clerc.^ In the earUer
half of the eighteenth century the traditional views were scarcely
1 See Bleek-Wellhausen, Einl. in das A. T., p. 9 f.
" Eufinus, Exposit. in Symb. Apost.; Jerome, Prol. Galeat.; Origen, In Joanu.
* Especially Tr. Baba bathra, fol. 14 b.: Moses scripsit libnim suum, etc.
^ Ep. ad pioram.
' Le Clerc, however, in 1693, retracted his earlier views.

502 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
disturbed ; John Gottfried Hasse (1785), however, for a tune
maintained the view that the Pentateuch was compUed at the
time of the ExUe, out of ancient records which were only in part
Mosaic. The question was kept stirred by the works of Fulda
and Otmar, until in 1805 and 1806 the non-Mosaic and later
origin of the Pentateuch was positively raaintained and defended
in detail by Vater ^ and De Wette.^
The raore modern era for the criticism of the Pentateuch was
introduced, however, when the relation which had been Mtherto
supposed to exist between the Deuteronomic law and the laws
of the middle books of the Pentateuch was reversed by Von
Bohlen, George, and Vatke. This reversal of order has been
fortified and rendered mtelligible by the critical researches espe
cially of Graf (whose raonograph, " Die gescMchtlichen Biicher
des Alten Testaraents," Wellhausen says raade, in the special
sense of the word, an epoch), Kuenen, Noldeke, and Well-
hausen.2 It has thus corae about, that the one critical ques
tion regarding the coraposition of the Pentateuch — a question
which affects all our conceptions of the history of Israel and of
the origin and nature of Old-Testaraent religion — is the fol
lowing: Did the rituaUstic and priestly laws of the middle
books of the Pentateuch, and the history belonging to those
laws, originate in substance as genmne Mosaic legislation, and
becorae substantially fixed in custora and in writing previous to
the discovery of the Deuteronoraic law in the time of Josiah?
or did they originate after the Exile, under the stress of priestly
influence, and were they largely fabrications of imaginary laws,
set in a fictitious history, and foisted into the law-book which
then existed, but had not Mtherto contained them ? Essentially
the sarae question is proposed by a recent critic * in the follow
ing form : Does the Elohist constitute the oldest, or the latest,
one of those sources of raaterials which entered into the Hebrew
books frora Genesis to Joshua ? or — since the Jehovist is gen-

1 Kommentar uber den Pentateuch, III. pp. 391-728.
- The researches of De Wette were begun independently of Vater, and while he
was a Privat-docent at Jena; but the result was published, in view of the appear
ance of Vater's work, as Beitrage zur Einleitung ins A. T., 1806. His Dissertam
de Deuteronomic (Opuscula Theol., pp. 151-168) shows the glow of youth over his
discovery in its opening words: " Pentateuchum non esse aMose conscriptum . . .
neminem adhuc esse puto qui neget, praeter eos qui auctoritatis suae magis tuen-
dae causa, quam veritatis- studio ducti," etc.
3 For the history of the movement, see Wellhausen, in Bleek's Einleitung, pp.
153-178. ^ Giesebreoht, in the Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Theologie, 1881, p. U*

THE TRADITION OPPOSED BY CRITICISM. 503
eraUy agreed to have written in the time from 700 B.C. to 900
B.C., and the Deuteronoraist not long previous to 621 — did the
Elohist write before 900, or after 600 ?
But the very form of this question, which is thus declared to
be the cMef critical inquiry regarding the coraposition of the
Pentateuch, makes obvious the fact of a great separation be
tween the ancient synagogical tradition and the accepted results
of modern criticism. Whether Genesis, and, indeed, all the
Hexateuch, be composite or not ; whether criticisra can prove
the eristence in these books of various writings which belonged
origraaUy to different authors and eras, and of various redac-
tionary processes, or not ; whether, in brief, all the laws, with
their Mstorical setting, came from the authorship of Moses, or
even from his era, or whether they be not of many eras, and
fused mto their present unity only as the result of work done
in and about the time of Ezra, — these are questions which lie
already some distance behmd the alleged conclusions of criti
cism. The uniform tradition of two thousand years upon these
questions stands directly opposed to the unaniraous verdict of
criticism, For, that the Pentateuch in its present form was
not the work of Moses, but was rather a growth frora the work
of a number of authors and redactors extending over several
hundred years, is the quite unanimous verdict of criticism. To
say that the advocates of the traditional view of the synagogue
are, among scholars of every shade of opinion, too few to be
worthy of counting, would scarcely overstate the fact. Is criti
cism, then, corapetent to reverse the uniforra ancient tradition ?
and on what grounds has it corae to regard the tradition as
already left far behind by its own established conclusions ?
We may assert, without fear of successful contradiction, that
the tradition itself, although so ancient, has absolutely no clairas
to precedence. Its clairas are not those of the biblical writings
themselves ; nor can they be connected with real testiraony to
the fact by carrying the tradition back to a time when it be
comes trustworthy as testiraony. The Bible itself raakes no
direct claim of Mosaic authorsMp for the writings frora Gen.
i. to Josh, xxiv., with the exception of the so-called Book of
the Covenant, the body of Deuteronoray, and a few sraall
fragments. Moreover, we have found no indirect claira which
has been asserted by theraselves, or vindicated by others, so as
to make the biblical writers authorities concerning the author-
sliip aud date of an ancient writing. The facts in the Bible

504 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and in the history of the Canon are such as, in part, to account
for the tradition, but not to verify it : they teach us how the
Jews came to suppose that the Moses who received from Jeho
vah the original Torah was the author of all the writings which
recorded both this Torah and all the subsequent laws, together
with their real or supposed setting in history.
The traditional riew of the Jews is, then, no longer debated
by raodern criticism. By way of approach, however, to that
critical question which is now in debate, we pass in very brief
review sorae of the facts and reasons upon which criticism relies
for rejecting the ancient tradition. This may be done by raising
these two inquiries : What are the proofs that the Pentateuch
is a coraposite literary product of different authors and ages?
and. How far can criticisra go toward discriminating the different
portions of this composite product, and depicting the relations
in which they have stood one to another ?
In answer to the first inquiry, we may call attention to the
fact, that, even on the traditional view of its Mosaic authorship,
certain parts of the Pentateuch are plainly of composite struc
ture. In this regard Genesis differs from the following books,
for its close brings the Mstory down only to within several
hundred years of the Mosaic era. The other books of the
Pentateuch, however, deal with alleged events presented as con
teraporary with the traditional author of the writing wMch
records thera. The coraposite structure of Genesis is, therefore,
not necessarily incorapatible with its Mosaic authorsMp; for
even Moses, if he were its author, raust have received its con
tents either by direct revelation, or frora oral tradition and pre
existing docuraents. But the composite structure of writings
which record events contemporary with Moses, if it be plainly
such as to show that different parts of the record are separated
by considerable spaces of time, also plainly shows the non-
Mosaic authorship of the writings in their present form. That
all the books of the Pentateuch are in fact of composite struc
ture, the following summary of some of the proofs will sufSce
to evince : —
1. The laws of the Pentateuch, considered as an entire body
of enactraents, bear the marks of having originated at different
and vridely separated periods of time. It seems to us undeniar
ble, that many of the Mosaic laws are such in form and expres
sion as would be fit only for a people in the circumstances and
stage of development which belonged to the Mosaic era. Traces

STRATA OF LAWS IN THE PENTATEUCH. 505
of such great antiquity are found in the disraissal of the he-
goat into the -wilderness (Lev. xvi. 10, 21 f.) ; in the references
to the camp, without which the victims of certain sacrifices
were to be brought and burned (Lev. iv. 11 f. and vi.) ; and in
the laws for the purifying from leprosy (Lev. xiii. 46 and xiv.
3). The silence of many of these laws, upon points concerning
which we should expect an utterance in case they were of rauch
later origin, tends to prove a sirailar antiquity. Thus Bleek
claims that the failure to mention the king in the law of the
sm-offering (Lev. iv.) proves this law to antedate David.^ The
same author would reverse the argument of Kuenen, and main
tain that the frequent designation of the priests as the " sons of
Aaron," in the early chapters of Leviticus (i. 5, 7, 11, ii. 2, 10,
iii. 2, 5, 13, vi. 9, 14, 18, 20, 25, vU. 10, 81, 38, 84), favors the
view that these laws were enacted when Aaron and Ms sons
actuaUy enjoyed the priesthood. Thus also are we to suppose
that the law which forbids the slaying of animals elsewhere than
before the door of the tabernacle (Lev. xvii. 1 f.), and which
was certainly contravened by the custom subsequent to Moses,
was adapted to the time when the tabernacle was easy of access,
but became impossible to keep under changed circurastances.
The prior antiquity of this law would then further be shown by
the distinction (verse 3) between " in the carap " and " out of
the camp ; " as weU as by the prorision against sacrificing to he-
goats (verse 7, d"!';;^'), which, as in the sirailar case of the Greek
satyrs, were early regarded as inhabited by deraons. The cir
cumstantiality of the description of the construction and cultus
of the tabernacle (Exod. xxv.-xxxi.), of the accounts of the
numbermg of the children of Israel (Num. i., ii., iv.), and of the
arrangements for service in changing the place of worship as
the place of camping changed, imply the existing circumstances
ofthe Mosaic era. But whether the clairas of Bleek and others
against those of Kuenen and Ms followers be adraitted as valid
in the cases mentioned above, or not, it remains true that both
parties agree in distmguishing different strata of laws as era-
bedded in the one Mstory.
On the contrary, among the instances of laws which cannot
weU be assigned on any tenable theory to the Mosaic era, are
the foUowing : the law for the kings (Deut. xvU. 14-20), un
less we suppose a most unlikely prophetic and anticipatory form
of enactment; the ordinances concerning wars with the Ca-
1 Einl. in das A. T., p. 31.

506 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
naanites, especially sentences in Deut. xx. 15 f. ; the law against
the reraoval of landraarks (xix. 14) ; the laws for the selection
of forces to go out to battle (xx. 5 f.) ; the law for the prompt
offering of the first-fruits of the field and vineyard (Exod. xxii.
29 f. and xxiU. 16) ; the laws for raanagement of fields, vine
yards, and olive-orchards (xxiU. 10 f.) ; the laws for purifying
houses (Lev. xiv. 33 f.). '
The repetitious and apparently contradictory versions of cer:
tain laws and ordinances also evince this composite structure
of the Pentateuch. In this respect, the case of Deuteronomy
is very peculiar. Deuteronomy cannot, indeed, be considered
as a corapilation of laws in the sarae sense in which these words
raay be used of th^ legal contents of the raiddle books of the
Pentateuch. It is not a law-book, but a hortatory re-enforce
raent and re-exposition of the ancient popular law.^ So far as
the raain parts of its contents are concerned, — viz., i.-iv. 40,
iv. 44-xxvi., xxvii.-xxx., — its unity is unique and remarkable.
And this very fact serves by contrast to raake raore apparent
the coraposite nature of the Pentateuch as a whole. Without
introducing at this point the question of priority of origin, the
following araong the raany particulars in which the Deutero
noraic law differs frora the laws of the raiddle books wiU suf&ce.
Certain legal enactraents recited by the forraer ra substantial
agreeraent with the latter are changed to suit the purpose of
the author. Such are the coramand forbidding to marry the
wife of one's father (corapare Deut. xxii. 30 and Lev. xriii. 8) ;
the coraraand punishing adultery with death (compare Deut.
xxii. 22 and Lev. xx. 10) ; the provision for the pay of the day-
laborer (Deut. xxiv. 14 f. and Lev. xix. 13).^ The exact verbal
repetition of the ancient coraraand forbidding to cook the kid in
the mUk of its raother (compare Deut. xiv. 21 and Exod. xxiii.
19) seems unnatural from the point of view of a common
authorship for both passages.
In certain other cases the version of Deuteronomy seems to
contain additions to and supplements of laws which are given
in their older forra in the middle books of the Pentateuch.
Thus raay we regard the law of Exod. xxU. 16, concerning
seduction, as suppleraented, Deut. xxii. 28 f., by the declaration
that this act raakes an indissoluble raarriage-bond. The law
of Exod. xxii. 25, against interest, is supplemented, Deut. xxm.
1 See Dillmann, Exodus und Leviticus, p. viii.
" See Kleinert, Das Deuteronomium und der Deuteronomiker, p. 48 1.

SUPPLEMENTARY LAWS IN THE PENTATEUCH. 507
20, by permitting it to be received from strangers. The brief
law of Exod. xxii. 20, banning idolatrous cities, and the law
banning the Canaanitish cities (Exod. xxiii. 32 f.), are ex
panded, Deut. xUi. 12-18 and xx. 16 f. The enactments against
witchcraft (Exod. xxii. 18; Lev. xix. 26, 31, xx. 6, 27) are
given detailed exposition, Deut. xvUi. 9-22.^ In other cases
the simple and cursory notice of some ritualistic observance, as
given m Deuteronomy, must be contrasted with an explicit and
detaUed treatment elsewhere : as, for instance, when the notice
to make meraorial borders for the garraents (Deut. xxii. 12)
is expatiated upon, Nura. xv. 37 f. ; and the siraple proscription
of blemished offermgs (Deut. xvii. 1) becomes. Lev. xxU. 17-24,
a detailed classification and specification of blemishes. Differ
ent if not contradictory views of certain points of law eraerge
on contmmng tMs comparison. Examples of such difference
are found in laws for the provisions for the Levites (compare
Deut. xiv. 22-29 with Num. xvUi. 20-32), for their residence
in separate cities (Num. xxxv. 1-8 as contrasted with what is
impUed in Deuteronoray) ; and, indeed, the undoubted fact that
in the middle books the Levites are only temple-servants, and
the priests are the " sons of Aaron," while in Deuteronomy the
priests appear to be the " sons of Levi " in general.
But even witMn the first three legal books, instances of repe
tition or apparent contradiction of the legal enactments prove
their composite structure. Some of these may be seen upon
comparmg Exod. xxi.-xxiU. with xxxiv. 18-26 (especially xxiii.
17-19 with xxxiv. 23-26), and Lev. xviU. with xx. Minute
apparent contradictions, such as can be best explained by refer
ence to two versions of one law, or of two laws enacted at
different times upon one subject-matter, also occur : for exam
ple, in Num. iv. 3, 22, 30, 47, the service of the Levites extends
from thirty to fifty ; but, viii. 23-26, from twenty-five to fifty.
2. The Mstorical notices and accounts of the Pentateuch
exhibit marks of an origin at different and widely separated
periods of tirae. The existence of repeated, various, and
apparently discrepant accounts of the sarae event, within the
same extended history, is a proof of its composite structure.
For the Book of Genesis, the two narratives of the Creation
(Gen. i. 1-U. 3 and ii. 4-iii.) ; the two accounts ¦ of the Flood,
which are pieced together into one narrative (vi. 5-ix. 29), yet
^ Kleinert, Ibid., p. 49; and compare an article in review of Graf, by Riehaj,
Stud. u. Krit., 1868, pp. 350-379.

508 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
not in such manner as to avoid the appearance of discrepancy
(especially as to the number of clean beasts taken into the ark) ;
the two accounts of the origin of the names of Bethel (xxviii.
19 and xxxv. 9-15) and of -Beersheba (xxi. 22-34 and xxvi.
17-33) ; the divergent traditions as to the names of Esau's wives
(xxvi. 34 and xxxvi. 2) and of Israel (xxxU. 27 f. and xxxv.
10), — will suffice as instances. But the sarae proofs of com
posite structure extend through the reraaining books of the Pen
tateuch. The giving of the quails in connection with that of
the raanna is recorded. Num. xi. and Exod. xvi. In Exod. vi
2-12, the sumraons to Moses to appear before Pharaoh seems
to be the first suraraons, although previous appearances in court
are narrated (chaps, iii., iv., and v.) ; and even subsequently the
narrative of vi. 28-vii. 7 gives a general stateraent of events
as though no previous stateraents had been made. So does
the visit of Jethro to Moses, which is narrated, Exod. xviii.,
seem to imply the previous establishraent of the tabernacle and
its service (especially the phrase "before God," 12 and 19);
whereas only in the following chapter does the account of its
establishment occur.
Cases of unnatural order, as where the genealogy of Moses
and Aaron is interpolated (Exod. vi. 14-27) between two
portions of narrative, and yet gives points of Mstory men
tioned before, further show a composite structure.^ Discrepan
cies in chronology may not infrequently be ascribed to differ
ences in the original sources which have been admitted into
one narrative without being worked over and blended. The
chronological notices-do not always fuse well with the traditions
which they bind together. Thus raay we best account for the
fact that Abrahara, after he had found it difficult to believe the
proraise of a son when he was a hundred years old (Gen. xvii.
17) should be represented forty years later as taking another
wife, and having by her six sons.^ In respect to numbers, as
well as dates, the sarae inference obtains. When, for exam
ple, the nuraber of the raales araong the Levites is given (Num.
1 The original contents of the interpolated genealogy are given (verse 25) as
containing the heads of the Levites according to their families: the notice ot verse
20 — "This is the Moses and Aaron," etc. — is scarcely compatible with the Mo
saic authorship of the interpolation. ¦
2 Compare also Gen. xvi. 16 with xvii. 1, 17, xxi. 5 with xxi. 14 t. Wnen
Isaac was a hundred years old (Gen. xxv. 26, xxvi. 34, xxvii. 46), and ready to die,
Jacob departs for a wife, but returns eighty years later to bury his fatMt

ATMOSPHERE AND TONE OF SPEECH. 609
iii. 89) at 22,000, — although 7,500 (verse 22) and 8,600 (28)
and 6,200 (34) make 22,300, — and the number of the Israelites
fit for war is given (i. 46 and U. 32) as 603,550, or about
twenty-seven times as many as the number of the Levites who
took the place of the first-born, we are inclined to explain such
an obvious discrepancy between the nuraber of the nation's
first-born and the nuraber of its men of war by the theory of
different sources and different workmen. Instances of his
torical repetitions, divergences, and obvious contradictions, in
the Hexateuch outside of Genesis, might be indefinitely mul
tiplied ;i but our present purpose does not require further
detaU. The relation of such phenoraena as those given above to the
historical trustwortMness of the writings in which they occur
has already been considered, and is not now the special subject
of mquiry. Their relation to the question of authorsMp, which
is the special subject of our present inquiry, is alraost as obvi
ous. These are certainly not the characteristics of contem
poraneous records, all made at first hand by the chief actor in
the Mstory wMch they record.^
3. The atmosphere and tone of the speech, as well as certain
more direct allusions incorporated in the narratives, show the
composite structure of the Pentateuch. It is difficult to believe
that the tone in which the Mosaic Torah is spoken of through
out Deuteronomy belongs to the same author and the same
age with that of the raiddle books. The forraer presupposes
the actual occupation of the sacred land : the latter raake
" references to the journey through the wilderness as still in
progress. " The land wMch I will give to you " is the forraiUa
of Exod. XX. 12 ; Lev. xiv. 34, xxiU. 10, xxv. 2 ; Num. xUi.
2, XV. 2.3 Scattered throughout the entire Pentateuch are
found occasional allusions which seem plainly to iraply a cora
munity of authorship, or at least a repeated revision of raore
i ancient writing, and the incorporating of comraent into a text
J aheady existing. We read (Gen. xii. 6), " And the Canaanites
were at that tirae in the land." Here the word in (at that
' Compare Reuss, Geschichte der heil. Schriften A. T., I. pp. 85 if., 156 ff.
' The Jewish Rabbi Popper argued from alleged unhistorical and impossible
elements in the account of the tabernacle (Exod. xxxv.-xl.), and of the inaugu
ration of the priests (Lev. viii.-x.), that these accounts must be in origin more
_ recent than those concerning the same circumstances in Exod. xxv.-xxxi. See
Bleek's Einl. in das A. T., p. 155 f.
' Compare Bleek, Ibid., p. 110 f.; Kleinert, Ibid., p. 38.

510 TIIE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tirae) plainly points to the fact recorded as having existed much
previous to the tirae of the writer ; for even if we admit that
the reraark is designed to eraphasize the divine promise (verse
7), and to assert that the heroes who then occupied the ground
which the divine plan assigned to Abraham must yield it, stdl
it is most unnatural except as raade by one who looks back
frora the time when the Canaanites were actually no longer in
possession.^ (Corapare Gen. xiii. 7, which has less the appear
ance of an interpolation.) The words of Gen. xxxvi. 31—
" And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom
before there reigned any king over the chUdren of Israel " —
could scarcely have been written in the Mosaic age ; and the
list of Edoraite kings raust itself be reckoned from immedi
ately before the beginning of the Mngdom in Israel back
toward Moses.^ In the same direction point also such expres
sions as the following : " And when the IsraeUtes were in the
wilderness they found a man," etc. (Nura. xv. 32) ; " These are
the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel beyond Jordan"
(Deut. i. 1, p.T_n 12;?3, implying the residence of the writer west
of the river) ; the phrase " unto this day " (Deut. iU. 14 ; espe
cially when considered in connection with the other tradition as
to the origin of the narae Jair, Judg. x. 3, 4) ; "Thou shalt not
reraove the landraark . . . which thy ancestors have estab
lished" (Deut. xix. 14) ; the narae Dan (Gen. xiv. 14) for
the city of which we are told (Judg. xviii. 29, compare Josh.
xix. 47) that it did not bear this name untU the time of the
Judges ; the phrase, " the land of the Hebrews " (Gen. xl. 15) ;
and the raention of Agag the conteraporary of Saul (Num.
xxiv. 7). What further shall we conclude when we find the
treatraent given to the Horira by the sons of Esau compared
with that given by the Israelites to the people of Canaan ; or
find Og designated as the last of the giants, and his sarcopha
gus or bedstead elaborately described (Deut. iii. 11), who him
self died at the latest only a few raonths before Moses? (Num.
xxi. 33 f.)
4. And, further, the very raanner in which certain isolated
portions of the Pentateuch are ascribed to their antecedent
written sources, or are especially referred to Moses as theu:
1 See Dillmann, Die Genesis, in loco.
2 The attempt to explain the statement solely by reference to the promises of
xvii. 6, 16, and xxxv. 11, is unsuccessful. The statement rather shows that aU
three passages belong to the period when Israel, as well as the other nations
sprung from Abraham, had had experience of kings. See Dillmann, in loco.

UNITY OF DEUTERONOMY. 511
author, shows its composite structure as a whole, and suggests
the fact that not all of its contents belong to this author. The
Book of the Wars of Jehovah, to which reference is made.
Num. xxi. 14, could scarcely have had any raaterial adequate
to its title prerious to the death of Moses. If, for exaraple,
the claim that Moses Mmself wrote the list of caraping-places
(Num. xxxiU. 1-49) be admitted, the composition of this pas
sage, and its relations to the rest of the book, are an arguraent
against the Mosaic authorship of Nurabers. The author of the
list could not be the author of the detaUed history in which it
is incorporated (especially if we consider the discrepancy be
tween verse 45 and xxi. 12 f.).
And even that writing which, of all the component parts of
the Pentateuch, shows most of unity cannot, in its present form,
be referred to one author alone. That Moses wrote the account
of Ms own death, not even the traditional view has ventured
uniformly to affirm : the Talmud hesitates before this step.
Nor does the author of Deuteronomy in its present form raean
to claim Mosaic authorship for the whole book in like forra.
He asserts, indeed (xxxi. 9), that Moses wrote tMs Torah
(nKin rriwri-riK), referring to a definite record of the law from
the beginnmg of chap, xxvii. onward.^ But in the earlier
chapters also (i. 5 and iv. 8) he clearly distinguishes hiraself
from Moses, the speaker and coraraander of the Torah. His
attitude toward that which he records is further indicated in
the antiquarian notices of ii. 10-12, 20-23, Ui. 11, and iv. 41, 47,
49: he even puts into the mouth of Moses an observation, which
is clearly Ms own, on the geograpMcal situation (see iii. 25).
The Torah wMch he ascribes, for substance at least, to the
written record of Moses, is at most (besides the law of xxvii. f.)
that legislation which lies between iv. 44-xxvi. 15. But there
are many mdications, besides those already given, that he is
handlmg this law freely, rather than copying it precisely from
some one document.^ And the further question may be raised,
how far the author meant to go in asserting that even this raain
legal section of the book was lying before hira as written by
Moses. For the coramand of Moses is recorded (xxvU. 3), that
all the words of this Torah shall be written on plastered stones ;
^ See Kleinert, Das Deuteronomium, p. 29 f. ; and compare Deut. xxvii. 3, 8, 26,
J^iii. 58, xxix. 27, xxx. 10, xxxi. 11, 12, 26, xxxii. 46.
^ Certain differences of coloring and of statements of fact, between the main
legal section and the introduction and conclusion within which it is fitted, can ba
pointed out. Compare iv. 41 and xix. 1 1., ii. 29 and xxiu. 3 f.

512 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and this it is difficult to understand of a verbatim record of
twenty-one chapters. The writer of the entire Book of Deut
eronoray, then, on his own testiraony raakes the impression of
one puttUig together, from sources which he supposed to be
Mosaic, a new and hortatory version of the ancient national
law. To claira that the entire writing in its present form came
from the pen or Ups of Moses, is quite as far from the true case
as to claira that the pen wMch did finish the writing in its
present form was itself fabricating the law ascribed to Moses.
5. But, finaUy, the entire structure of the Pentateuch is
plainly such as to reveal a nuraber of coraponent parts, and the
work of various original authors and redactors. The Penta
teuch is a coraposite structure : tMs one fact is, as , Strack
argues, decisive against its Mosaic authorship.^ Indeed, to one
who has gone over the evidence, it seeras alraost Uke superfluous
trifling to enuraerate the proofs of such a statement. The legal
and the historical contents, when considered both in themselves
and in their mutual relations, have the appearance only of such
a unity as results from an historic and Uterary growth, and in
volves the work of different authors who worked under differ
ing circumstances. There is, indeed, a raanifest unity to the
so-called Mosaic Torah ; and we have no warrant for speaking
of a prophetic Torah and a priestly Torah as two antagonistic
forms of law which struggled together throughout the entire
history. " Every thing," says Herraann Schultz,^ " from the most
insignificant ordinances for external purification to the funda
raental principles of the raoral law, is a unity." But this unity
is one which belongs to the one spirit of revelation, rather than
to a oneness of authorship. The law of the middle books is the
ocratic and syrabolical ; that of Deuteronomy, ethico-rehgious
and democratic.^ The reflective tone which justifies the dirine
wisdom and mercy before men, even by frequent use of the
argumentum ad hominem (see Deut. vii. 7 f., ix. 4 f., x. 12, 14 f,
xi. 10) ; the foundmg of the legal relations in the prmciple of
divine love (vi. 4, vU. 6, xi. 1, xUi. 3 f., xix. 9) ; the advocacy
of beneficence and kindness to animals, — are pre-emment in
the fifth book of the Pentateuch. Yet the theocratic concep
tion of the divine holiness appears also in Deuteronomy (xxm.
1 See article Pentateuch in Herzog and Plitt, p. 441.
2 Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 135. Compare the conclusions of Bertheau,
Die sieben Gruppen Mosaischer Gesetze.
8 See Kleinert, Ibid., p. 41 f.

THE CONCEPTION OF PENTATEUCH-CRITICISJI. 513
1-14, xrii. 1, xix. 3) ; whUe the middle books have passages
setting forth the principle of the divine love (Exod. xx. 6), and
of love for one's neighbor (Lev. xix. 34), as well as injunctions
to varied forms of beneficence and kindness.^ Moreover, that
mmute analysis of the entire legal contents, to wMch we shall
soon refer, succeeds in detecting various groups and strata of
laws m tMs body of ancient writings. We conclude, then, that
a certain unity wMch constitutes the legal contents of all these
books one Torah, is as Uttle to be denied as is the conclusion
wMch analyzes the same contents into different 'eleraents of the
one growth. The law given by Moses becarae the medium, or
menstruum, witMn which aU the legal enactraents received by
the nation in the divine process of self-revelation were caught,
dissolved, and held. The Torah developed as essentially one,
and from a strong and broad Mosaic root ; but it developed in
a course of providential deaUng along two main lines of raove-
ment, — viz., the cereraonial and priestly, and the ethical and
ciril, including the rights of citizens.
By the same riew of the various authorsMp and coraposite
structure of the Pentateuch, we are able to account for the
fragmentary and spasraodic nature of its Mstory. It is wholly
unUkely that any one writer, and especiaUy Moses, would have
left such an Mstorical composition as the Pentateuch.
The further consideration of the whole subject may fitly at
this pomt introduce us to the second inqmry raised above.
How far can criticism detect these various elements of the com
posite structure, and go over again in description the process
of literary growth once accomplished in fact? The conception
of the work of Pentateuch-criticism which WeUhausen ^ has set
forth is admirable indeed. We raust regard it as our task not
only to discrirainate the various eleraents, but also ideally to
reconstruct thera m the relations in which they originally stood ;
we must strive to present the whole literary and religious
product caUed the Hexateuch, in the aspect of a living process.
'And yet the possibUity of accomplisMng this reconstruction
with confidence in our details is beyond our reach.
The proof that criticism can within certain limits be trusted
in its analysis is, however, as coraplete as can fairly be required
in such a case. Hie who, on account of its varying conclusions
^ See Exod. xxii. 21, xxiii. 9; Lev. xix. 13; Exod. xxii. 25 f., xxiii. 6, 11; Lsv
xix. 9.
^ See Geschichte Israels, I. Einleitung, and pp. 312 ff.
VOL. I, 2 k;

514 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
with respect to individual relations and details of growtli, re
fuses to trust criticisra at all, wUl be as far out of the way as he
who reposes in it, for all these relations and details, a complete
trust. The conjecture of a French physician of the Roman-Catholic
confession,! -^jjo assuraed an EloMm-writing and a Jehovah-
writing as the fundamental sources, and who supposed that out
of these and fragraents frora ten other docuraents Moses com
pUed the Book of Genesis, marked an epoch in Old-Testament
criticism. Between this original conjecture, and the later con
clusions wMch raay be regarded as weU estabUshed m the minds
of raodern critics, there lies a laborious and much-traversed way.
But the result of its laborious traversing may be affirmed to be
as certainly accomplished as any sirailar result of criticism can
be. There exist in the Pentateuch two different original docu
ments, which may be distinguished by various characteristics,
but which, especially throughout Genesis and the first six chap
ters of Exodus, are most readUy distinguished by the use ofthe
divine names Jehovah and Elohim. This distinction of these
two fundamental sources is, however, no longer to be regarded
as dependent upon a different use of the divine names ; and the
terms Jehovistic and Elohistic are not to be understood as
though it were thus dependent. Indeed, it is questionable
whether these terms raight not profitably be abandoned.^ A
further distinction of two groups of writings in the EloMstic
portions, the one of wMch is raainly Mstorical and the other of
which is mainly legal and rituaUstic, may also be claimed by
the almost uniform consent of critics.^ According to Reuss,
1 J. Astruc (tl766). Conjectures sur les memoires originaux, dont il parait, que
Moyse s'est servi pour composer le li\Te de la Genfese.
2 Eeuss (Geschichte der heil. Schriften A. T., I. p. 249) objects to the name
Jehovist, on account of its connection with critical theories; and proposes the
title, Book of the Sacred History.
3 Por the characteristics which enable the critic to distinguish these three
groups, — so to speak, — into which the contents of the Hexateuch outside of
Deuteronomy are broken up, see a brief description in De Wette-Schrader, Einl.
in das A. T., p. 270 f. The work of Hupfeld — Die Quellen der Genesis— secured
credence to the affirmation that the different parts of the so-called Jehovistic
writings are not simply the supplementary notices of a redactor, but portions of
an independent work. According to the earUer view of Graf, the foundation of
the Pentateuch is an Elohistic historical work, which in the middle of the eighth
century B.C. was revised by the so-called Jehovist who added materials in part
from oral and in part from written sources. This historical work contained cer
tain legal portions: e.g.. Gen. xvii.; Exod. xiii., xx.-xxiii., xxxiv. But the so-
called Levitical laws arose later, and are to be ascribed in part to Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, though more largely to Ezra and other post-exilian authors. When,
however, Graf acknowledged (Merx, Archiv fiir wissenschaftliche Erforschung

THE DIFFERENT GROUPS OF WRITINGS. 515
Wellhausen, and others, the lesser one of these Elohistic docu
ments had become incorporated with the Jehovistic long before
the existence of the greater Elohistic document. The analysis
of Deuteronomy is thought to enable criticism to distinguish
clearly the work of at least two authors in it : to one of these
is due the substance of legal contents, which for the raost part
constitute the book ; to the other, the revision and re-editing of
these contents, together with the introduction of considerable
new material. The hand of tMs latter workman is thought to
be apparent also throughout Joshua, and perhaps, as that of a
redactor, throughout aU the books. In Joshua, as well as in
the first four books of the Pentateuch, the three groups of
writings may still be distinguished. Several other (an indefi
nite number of them) smaller documents, and also oral traditions,
have been mcorporated at different places ; and the whole has
been worked over by various redactors, but without seriously
changing either its structure or its essentials of form and aspect.
Ancient songs, separate legal enactments, groups of laws, scraps
of tradition and history, — aU regarded as items in the divine
self-revelation, — have been woven in with the longer and raore
serious products of composition in written documents.
Such in its mam outUnes, and without seeking to justify the
details of either process or result, may the verdict of modern
criticism upon the authorsMp of the Hexateuch be described as
claimmg to be. The evidence upon which the claim is made
may fairly be said to be no less than the whole so-called science
of Old-Testament criticism. WhUe referring for the more cora
plete presentation of this evidence to the different special works
whose duty it is to accomplish such a task, we offer the follow
ing tables as showing to the eye about the amount of agreement
which has been reached as to the separate conclusions of criti-
cism.1des A. T., I.) that the ritualistic laws of Leviticus, Exodus, and Numbers, show a
nnity of authorship with the fundamental historical writing of the Pentateuch,
and that the Jehovist was not merely a supplementer of ancient documents, he
was hy force of theory obliged to hold further, that the whole of the so-called
. Grmdschrift of the Pentateuch must be ascribed to a post-exilian author. The
liistory of these books becomes theu a kind of subjective framework, fabricated
to hold the laws. It is, as Noldeke expressed it, the result of an effort to frame
the history and the giving of the law according to theoretic points of view.
^ The works of the authors whose views are thus tabulated, which have been
drawn from in forming the tables, are the following: Knobel, Die Bucher Numeri,
i etc., 1861, pp. 491-604; De Wette-Schrader, Einl. in das A.T. , pp. 270-325; Dillmann,
, Die Genesis, 1875, and Exodus und Leviticus, 1880; Wellhausen, Die Composition
<les Hexateuchs, Jahrbucher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1876 and 1877, and Geschichte

516 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
The first table exhibits the araount of agreement arrived at
by four independent critics with regard to those passages in the
Book of Genesis which should be ascribed to its fundamental
docuraent (called the Grundsehrift, the Annalist, the Writing of
the older Elohist, or the Source (Q) of Wellhausen).
The second table shows the same thing with regard to the
Book of Exodus.
The tMrd table shows those passages in the Book of Exodus
whick these same critics woiUd assign to the other chief source,
— viz., the work of the so-called Jehovist or prophetic narrator,
the Judaico-prophetic writing. It should be observed, however,
that Knobel and Wellhausen both profess to distinguish the ele
ments of this source : the forraer alleging a so-called Kriegsbuch,
or Book of Wars (the passages in brackets m the table), as used
by the Jehovist ; the latter ascribing the work to the Yahrist
making use of the compound source called J E.
The fourth table shows the agreement of these critics as to
the apportionraent of the Book of Leviticus between the fun
daraental docuraent referred to above as the Grundsehrift, or
work of the older Elohist, and its other sources, one or more.
The fifth table shows the agreeraent of three of these critics
as to the presence of tMs sarae fundaraental document m the
Book of Nurabers.
The sixth table shows the agreeraent of the same critics as
to the passages in the same book which raust be ascribed to the
other cMef source.
The seventh table shows their agreeraent as to aU the sources
which enter into Deuteronoray. It should be observed, how
ever, that the apparent discrepancy araongst these critics is
here raade greater than the real discrepancy by the fact that
Knobel has broken up one of the sources into a so-caUed Beehts-
luch (Book of Rights) and a Kriegsbuch, — documents for the
separate existence of which he is quite without proof.
The eighth and last table shows the agreement of the same
three critics as to the different sources wMch enter rato the
Book of Joshua.

Israels, vol. I. In the case of the former two authors, their own tabulated state
ment leaves little chance for, mistake: in the case of the latter two, the statement
of the tables has been gathered with great painstaking from a reading of several
hundred pages, but must be received without perfect confidence as to every detail.
It is believed, however, to be exact. The chapters and verses are numbered
according to the Hebrew.

I. — GENESIS.

Khobei., 1861.
Grundsehrift.

i. 1-ii. 4a 
V. 1-28, 30-32 . . . .
vi. 9-22 
vii. 4, 6, 7, 86-16a, 17-24

viii. 1-19 
ix. 1-17, 28-29 
X. 1-7, 13-24, 25,* 2ft-32. . .
xi. 10-32 
xii. 46-6, 8,* 9-10 
xiii. 1, 3, 5-8, 10,« 11-12, 18a .
xvi. 1, 3, 16, 16 
xvii 
xix. 29 
xxi. 1&-5 
xxii. 20-24 
xxiii 
xxv. 1-20, 24, 266-28 ....

In this column the asterisk eigniiies
that tbe passage over which it stands is
only partially from the source.

SCBKASEB, 1869.
Annalistio Narrator.

i. 1-ii. 4a 
v. 1-28, 30-32 
vi 9—22 • • •
vii. 6, 7-9^* il, 13-16, 18-21, 22.*
viii. 1, 2a, 36-5, 13a, 14^19 . .
ix. 1-17, 28f 

xi. 10-32 . . .
xii. 46-5 . . .
xiii. 6, 116-126
xvi. la, 8, 15, 16
xvii. 1,* 2-27 .
xix. 29 . . .
xxl. 16-5 . . .

XXIU 
xxv. 7-18, 19f., 266

In this column tho asterisk signifies
that the passage over which it stands
lias been worked over by a later hand.

Ditj.iULtis, 1876.
A, or Writing of the Older (tUterer)
Elohist.

i. 1-ii. 4a 
V. except verse 29 
vi. 9-22 
vii. 6, 11, 13-160, 18-22, 23,* 24.
viii. 1, 2a, 35-5, 13o, 14-19 . .
ix. 1-17, 28f 
X. revised by K 
xi. 10-27, (28-31?), 32 ... .
xii. 1-9, by R after C, B, and A.
xiii. by E after C and A (B?) .
xvi. after C and A . . , . .
xvii 

xix. 29 
xxi. 1-21 after A and B . . .
xxii. 20-24 by R, after A and C.
xxiii 
xxv. 1-11, 12-17 after A, 19-34
by R after A, B, C.
In this column the asterisk signifies
that the passage over which it stands
contains certain elements from other
sources.

WZLLHAnSBN, 1876.
Book of Four Covenants. Source,
Q (Quatuor).

i. 1-ii. 4a.
V. except verse 29.
vl. 9-22,
vii. 11-viii. 5, except 12, 16c, 17,
22f., viii. 26.
viii. 13-19.
ix. 1-17, 28 f.
X. with considerable exceptions.
xi. 10-26, 27-32 except 29.
xii. 46, 6.
xiii. 6, 116, 12.
xvi. 3, 15, 16.
xvii. 1-27.
xix. 29.
xxi. 26, 3-5.
xxiii. 1-20.
xxv. 7-lla, 12-17, 19, 20, 26c.

WooOQ I-tH
oO HW
wW>
HW
ars

cn

I. — GENESIS, — Continued.

00

tqOoo H
I o COo WHaCDOH
a

Knobei., 1861.
Grundsehrift.

BcHBASSB, 1869.
Annalistic Narrator.

DlLLMANK, 1875.
A, or Writing of the Older (dUerer)
Elohist.

Wehhausen, 1876.

Book of Four Covenants.
Q (Quatuor).

Source,

xxvi. 34-35 
xxvii. 46 1
xxviii. 1-9 ) 
xxix. 16, 17, 24, 29, 356 .
xxx. 9, 17, 19, 22.
xxxi. 18 
xxxiii. 18 
xxxiv. 1-4, 6, 15-18, 20-26

xxxv. la, 5-6, 9-16, 19, 21-29 .
xxxvi 

xxxvii. 1-4, 23-27, 28,* 31-32a .
xxxix. 1, 26, 6-20.
xl. 1-6, 7-8,* 9-18, 16-23.
xli. 1-18, 14,* 15-39, 41, 42, 436,
45a, 46-48, 50,* 51a, 52o, 54a,
55-57.*
xlvi. 56-27 ....
xMi. 7-10, 11,* 12, 28
xlviii. 1-7 
xlix. la, 286-33 . . ,
1. 12-13 

xxvi. 6, 34 f. .
xxvii. 46-xxviii.

xxvi. 34-xxviii. 9, out of A and
C.

xxxi. 176-18 .
xxxiii. 18, 19*.

xxxv. 6a, 9,* 10-15, 23-29. . .
xxxvi. 1-19, 20-30, 31-39, 40-
43(?).
xxxvii. 1, 2a 

xxxi. 18 
xxxiii. 18.
xxxiv. 1, 2a, 4, 6, 8-10, 14-17,*
20-24, 25, 260.
xxxv. from A, B, and C , . .
xxxvi  .

xxxvii. 1, 2a

xlvi. 56-27 
xlvii. 7-10, 11,* 27,* 28 .
xlviii. 3--6 
xlix. la, 286-33 . . .
1. 12f., 22* 

xlii.-xlv. belong to B and C, but
xlv. includes elements from A
also, especially 19-21o.
xlvi. 56-27 
xlvii. 7, 8, 9, 11,* B7, 28 . . .
xlviii. 3-6, 7 (?) 
xlix. la, 286, 29-S2 
1. 12f., 22, 26 ...... .

xxvi. 34, 35.
xxvii. 46.
xxviii. 1-9.
xxix. 24, 286, 29 (?).
xxxi. 18.

xxxv. 9-15, 22C-29.
xxxvi. fi-8, 40-43.
xxxvii. 1, 2.

xlvi. 6f., 8-27(?).
xlvii. 5-11 except 66.
xlviii. 3-7.
xlix. 28 (?), 29-33
1. 12 f.

II. — EXODUS.

Knobez..
Grundsehrift.

BOHBASISR.
Annalistio Narrator.

X>ZIiZ.MANN.
A, Older Elohist.

Wellhausen. Source Q.

(-3Ko
o hi
O CO

O 12!
O

te

o

cn

i. 1-7, 13-14  ,
ii. 23,* 24, 25 
vi. 2-7, 9-30 
vii. 1-13, 19-22 
viii. 1-3, 11,* 12-15 
ix. 8-12, 35 
xi. 9-10 
xii. 1-23, 28, 37a, 40-51 . . . .
xiii. 1, 2, 20 . . 
xiv. 1^, 8-9, 15-16,* 17-18, 21-23,
26, 27,* 28-29.
XV. 19, 22, 23, 27 .
xvi. 1-2, 9-26, 31-36
xvii. 1 

xix. 2a . . .
xxv.-xxxi. 11
xxxi. 12-17*

-xl.

i. 1-6, 7, 13, 14 . . . .
ii. 236-25 
vi. 2-7, 8(?), 9-30 )
vii. 1-18, 19-22 J " ' '
viii. 1-3, 116, 12-15 . . .
ix. 8-12, 35 
xi. 9, 10 
xii. 1-23, 28, 87a,* 40-51*

xiii. 1, 2, 20 
xlv. 1^, 8, 9, 15f.,*17f., 21-23,
26-27a, 28, 29.
XV. 27.
xvi. 1-3, 6-26, 32-35 
xvii. la 6 
xix. 1, 2a 6 
xxv.-xxxi. 17 

i. 1-5, 7, 13f 
ii. 235-25 
vi. 2-vii. 7, 8-13, 19-22*
viii. 1-8, 11,* 12-15 . .
ix. 8-12 
xi. 9, 10 
xii. 1-18, 14-20, 28, 40 f., 43-50,
51.
xiii. If 

xxxv.-xl.

xiii. 17-xv. 21, by R out of A,
B, and C ; the song, xv. 1-21,
belonging to B.
xvi., witU interpolations from C.
xvii. 1.
xix. 1, 2a, XX. 11, xxiv. 15-18.
xxv.-xxxi. 17, with some changes
by the redactor (R), 18.*
xxxiv. 29-35.
xxxv.-xl., with proofs of revis
ion in the passage xxxvi. 8-
xxxviii. 20.

i. 1-5, 7, 13, 14.
ii. 28-25.
jvi. 2-vii. 7, 8-13, 19, 20o, 21c, 22,
i 23.
viii. 1-3, 116, 12-15.
ix. 8-12.
xi. 9, 10, some traces of Q.
xii. 1-21, 28, 37a, 40 f., 43-51.

xiii. 1, 2, 20.
xiv. 1, 2, 86, 9, 15, and some words
in 4 and 10.
xvi. 1-3, 9-18a, 166-18, 22-26, 31-
34, 35a, and xvii. 1.
xxv. 1-xxxi. 17, and xxxv.-xl.,
in the mass, to Q.

IIL — EXODUS.

C"
too

WMO
O OHSI
i O *^m >
o toaCOo W
H

Znobei..
Kriegsbuch, or Book of Wars,
used by Jehovist.

SCHKADEB.
Prophetic Narrator

Dillmann.
Judaico-Prophetlo Writing (C) .

Wellhausen.
Yahvist, using the Sources J E.

U. 23,* (11-22)

iv. 1-17, 286, 306 . .
(iv. 19-26, V.) )
vi. 1, (8) f • • ¦
vii. 14-18, 23-29 . .
(viii. 4-10, 11,* 16-28)
(ix. 1-7) 
X. 1-6, 12,* 15,* (7-29)
xi. 1-3, (4-8) . . .
xii. 29-34, 39, (876-38)

(xiv. 5-7, 10-14)

(xvi. 3-8, 27-30)
xviii. 26 . , .

xix. 23, (20-22, 24f.) ,

xxiii. 4-5 
{xxiv. 1, 2, 9-11, 16, 17) .

ii. 15-230 
iii. 7, 8, 15-22.
iv. 1-18, 20(2-23, 28-31.
v.-vi. 1, 8(?).
vii. 14-18 
viii. 4-lla, 16-28.
ix. 1-7, 13-34 . . . .
X. 21-29.

xi. 4-8.
xii. 24, 27, 29-36, 376-B9 .

xiii. 3-19, (21, 22) ...
xiv. 5-7, 10-14, 276 c, 30, 31

XV. 19, 20-26 . .
xvi. 4r-5, 27-31, 36
xvii. 14r-16 . . .

xix. 3c-19

XX. 1-17, 18-26.
xxi.-xxill. 19, 20-33.
xxiv. 3-8, 12-15, 18.

1. 10, 12, 20a, 21 
ii. 6f. (?), 15-23a 
iii. 1-vi. 1, ingeniously put to
gether by the redactor (R),
from materials taken out of
the Jehovist (0) and B.
vii. 14, 16-viii. 11 for the most
part.
ix. 1-7, 13-xi. 8, for the most
part, except parts of ix. 18-34,
X. 12, 18o, 14a, 156 c, 20, 21-
27.
xii. 29f., 84, 39 

xiii. 8-10, 11-16 
(See the table above) . . . .
(See the table above) ....
xvi. 4^5, 25-80.
xvii. 2-7;* xviii. 1-11, traces of
C.
In chaps, xix. and xxiv. 1-11,
some passages are from C.

i. 6, 8-12, 15-22.
ii. 11-230.
iii. 1-9, 10-15 from E, 10-22.
iv.V. 1-vl. 1.
vii. 14-18, 206, 21a 6, 24, 25-29.
viii. 4^10, 11a, 16-28.
ix. 1-7, 13-35.
X. 1-20 (with only traces of E),
21-29.
xi. 1-10 (1-3 being from E).
xii. 29-89 (with only traces of J),
42.
xiii. 3-16 (?), 17-22 from E.
xiv. except those portions given
above as Q.
XV. 1-xvi. 36, except what is given
above as Q.
xvii. and xviii. except xvii. 1.
xix.-xxiv. and xxxi. 17-xxxiv. 35
are composed by the author of
J E, using his sources freely,
and in xxxiv. introducing a
third source. J is prominent

(xxxi. 12-17) •- )
xxxii. 7-14, (21-29, 35) f
(xxxiii. 12a, 14-16) . .
(xxxiv. 1^, 9-35) . . .

xxxi. 18-xxxii. 14, 21-35.
xxxiii. 1-11, 126, 13, 17-23.
xxxiv. 5-13.

xxxii. 1-14, 15,* 19-24, 30-84.
xxxiU. 1-5, by R from C, 12-23.

in xix. 20-25, XX. 23-26, xsl.-
xxlii., xxiv. 3-8.

HK
oo >v
OOl

Ooa
a>H
a ow

to

IV. — LEVITICUS.

Knobel.
Orundschrift.

SCHBADEB.
Urschrift Elohim.

Dillmann.
A, Older Elohist.

Wbllhausbn.
Friester-Codex, the kernel of irMch
IsQ.

i.-x.l5 
xi.-xvi. xxi.-xxii.xxiii. 1, 2,* 4-17, 18, 19,* 20 f., 23-
38.
xxiv. 1-9.
xxv. 1-17, 23-55.
xxvii.

The entire Book, with certain
exceptions given below, be
longed to this Elohistic writ
ing, which was especially con
secrated to giving the Law.

i.-v. and viii.-xv., a complex of
laws contained substantially
iu A.
xvi.
xvii.-xxvii., compiled by R (re
dactor), in part, from an edi
tion of an ancient code (S) as
given in A; see below.

i.-xxvii. The entire legal part of
the Book of Leviticus belongs
to the source Q, considered in
its widest extent as the basis
of the so-called Priester-Codex.
This Priester-Codex is a con
glomerate in which different
strata have crystallized about
the source Q.

Kriegsbuch.

other sourcea than the Urschrifl
Elohim.

Other chief sources than A, as used
byE.

X. 16-20.

vi. and vii., special document of
priestly use.
xvii.-xxvii., compiled by R from
two editions of an ancient
document containing the so-
called Sinai-laws (SJ; see
above.

xvii .-xxvi. comprises an ancient

xxiii. 2,* 8, 18-19,* 22, 89-44.
xxiv. 10-23.
xxv. 18-22 

XXV. 18-22.
xxvi. 3-45.

collection of Laws, originally
independent of Q in the nar
rower sense, but incorporated
into the Priester-Codex.

622

THE DOCTKINE OF SACKED SCKIPTUKR

v. — NUMBERS.

Knobel.

SCHKADEB.

Wellhadsen.

Grundsehrift.

Annalistic N'arrator.

Priester-Codex, the kernel ot
which isQ.

i.-viii. 22, except iv. 17-

i.-viii. 22 j

20 and vi. 21-27.

( 

i.-x. 28.

ix.-x. 28 

ix.-x. 28 )

xiii. l-17a, 21, 25, 26, 32.

xiii. l-17a, 21, 25, 266 c e,
32-33a c d.

xiii. 1-170, 21,25 f., 31

xiv. 2a, 5-7, 106, 34, 36-38.

xiv. la, 2-8a, 18, 26-38 .

xiv. 26-29, 34-36.

XV. 1-16, 22-30. . . .

XV 

XV.

xvi. 1-2, 4, 16-24, 27a,

xvi. lo, 26 c, 3-11, 16-24,

xvi. 1,» 2, 8-11, 15o, 16-

32-35.

27o, 82, 35.

22, 36-50.

xvii. 1-26, xviii., xix. .

xvii.-xix 

xvii., xviii., xix.

XX. 1,* 2, 6, 22-29. . .

XX. lo, 2, 36-13, 22-29 .

XX. lo, 2, 36, 6, 12, 22-29.

xxi. 10, 11 

xxi. 4o, 10,* 11 ... .

xxi. 4a, 10, 11.

xxii. 1 . 

xxii. 1.*

xxv. 6-18. ' 

xxv. 6-9, 10-19 . . . .

xxv. 6-18.

rxxvi. l-%, 12-65 . . .
xxvi.
xxvii. 1-11, 12^28 . . .
xxvii. 12-23 (?).
XXVl.-XXXl 
xxviii.-xxx. 1 . . . .
xxviii.-xxx., for the most
xxx. 2-17.
part from Q.
XXXI 
YTfTJ.
xxxn. 1-2, 16-19, 24,28-
xxxii. 1,* 2-4, 16-19, 20a,
xxxii. 16-19, 24, 28-33.
30, 33-38.
241, 28, 29,* 30-32,
The other verses contain
33,* 34r^8.
stray elements from Q.
xxxiii. 1-51, 54. . . .
xxxiii. 1.^9, 50 f., 54. .
xxxiii. 50-xxxvi. 13, with
xxxiv. -xxxvi 
xxxiv. -xxxvi.
a foreign element in
xxxiii. 50-56.
VL — NUMBERS.
Knobel.
SCHEADBE.
Wellhausen.
Kriegsbuch as used by
Jehovist.
Prophetic Narrator.
The Jehovist using J B and
other sources.
(iv. 17-20.)
(viii. 23-26.)
(x. 29-32) 1
(xi. 4-35) J 
X. 29-xi. 35 
(X. 29 fl.
Ixi.
xii. 16. 
xii. 16 
xn.
xiii. 33, (176-20) . . .
xiii. 276, 296, 336 .. .
xiii. 176-24, 27-33, exeept
21 and 32.
xiv. 1,* (25-4, 8-10O, 26-
xiv. 86, 11-25, 39 . . .
xiv. 3, 4, 8f., 11-25, 30-33,
33, 35).
39-45.
(XV. 17-21, 31-41.)
(xvi. 8-15, 25 f., 275). .
xvi. 24, 27o 
xvi. 3-5, (6, 7), 12-156,
23-34.
(xvii. 27-28.)
XX. 16, 3a 
XX. 4^11 (except 6), 14-21.
xxi. 4,* 14o, 17o, 27,*
xxi. 46 
xxi. 1-8, 45-35, except 10
(1-3, 146-15, 176, 180,
and 11.
27,* 28-35).
THE COMPOSITION OF THE HEXATEUCH.

523

VI. - NUMBERS,— Continued.

Knobel.
Kriegsbuch as used by
Jehovist.

xxii. 2 
(xxv. 1-5) 
xxxii. 1,* 29,* (3-15, 20-
23,25-27,311,39-42).
(xxxiii. 521, 551) . .

SCHBABEB.
Prophetic Narrator.

xxii. 22-35 ; xxiv. 20-24 .
xxv. 1,* xxvi. 9-11 . .
xxxii. 1,* 5-15, 206-28,
26, 27, 29,* 83.
xxxiii. 52 1, 55 1 . . .

Wellhavsen.
The Jehovist using J E and
other sources.

XXll.-XXlV.xxv. 1-5.
x.x.xii. 1-15, 20-27, 34r42.
These verses are, how-
ever, "tinged with Q."
xxxiii. 1-49 J E and Q.

VII. — DEUTERONOMY.

Knobel.

BCHBADEB.

Wellhausen.

GmndBchrift . . . fG).
Eechtsbuch. . . .(B)-

Annalistic Narrator

(A).

The view of thia critic makes

Theocratic Narrator

(T).

Deuteronomy a growth

Kriegsbuch. . . . (K).

Prophetic Narrator

(P).

which may be described, in

Jehovist  (J).

Deuteronomiker .

(D).

brief, as below.

Deuteronomiker . . (D).

i.-iv. 401 (D) . . . .
i.-iv. 40, 44L49 (D)
Three stadia are to be dis
iv. 41-44, 46-49 (R) . .
iv. 41^3 (T).
tinguished in the literary
v.-x.5(D) 
v.-ix. (D).
process which resulted in
X. 6-9o (R) 
X. 6-9 (T).
the present form of this
X. 96-xiv. 29 (D) . . .
X. 1-5, 10-xxxi. 13,
24^30
book: (1) The original
XV. l-4o, 6o (R).
(D).
Deuteronomy xdi.-xxvi.
xv.46,5,66-xvii.20(D).
was intended as an ex
xviii. 1-4 (R).
panded edition of the
xviu. 5-xxi. 23 (D).
Book of the Covenant;
xxii. l-5a, 9-12, 13-29*
some parts of this kernel
(E).
of the whole, especially
xxii. 56-8, 29,* 30(D).
the curses in their ori
xxiii. 1-50, 8-9, 16-19
ginal form, are lost. (2)
(E).
Two independent en
xxiii. 55-7, 10-15, 20-25
larged editions of this
(D).
original Deuteronomy
xxiv. (D) except 5-6 (R).
arose: viz., i.-iv., xii.-
xxv. -xxx. (D) except
xxvi., xxvii. ; and v.-xi.,
xxvii. 5-7o (R).
xii.-xxvi., xxviii.-xxx.
xxxi. 1-13, 26,» 27-29
(3) These editions were
(D).
combined, and united
xxxi. 14-160, 23-25, 26*
xxxi. 14-23 (P).
with the Hexateuch,—
(R).
which then consisted of
xxxi. 165-22, 30 (K).
J E, and noi J E -f- Q, —
xxxii. 1^3 (K), 48, 49,*
xxxii. 1-44 (P), 45-47, 52
by the same hand which
50-52 (G).
(D).
had worked over J E.
xxxii.441 (J), 461,49*
xxxii. 48,. 49,* 501
(A).
This hand is the Deu-
(D).
teronomist, as distin
xxxiii. (R) 
xxxiii. (P).
guished from the Deu
xxxiv. 1-3, 7-9 (G) . .
xxxiv. 1-3, 5,* 7,
*8, 9
teronomiker, or author
(A).
of xii.-xxvi. J E -f
xxxiv. 4-6, 10 (R), 111
xxxiv. 4, 6 (P), 5,
10-12
Deut. -f Q by the Re.
(D).
(D).
dactor.
524 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTCEE.
VIIL — JOSHUA.

Knobel.
Grundsehrift . . .(G).
Bechtsbuch. . . . (R).
Kriegsbuch. . . . (E).
Jehovist  (J).
Deuteronomiker . . (D).

i. 1, 2, 10-16 (K) . . .
i. 8-9, 17-18 (D) . . .
ii-(E) 
iii. 1, 7-17 (R), 2-6 (K) .
iv. lo, 4=7, 14, 18, 20-24
(R).
iv. 15-3, 8-13 (K) . . .
iv. 15-17, 19 (G) . . .
V. 1-9, 13-15 (K) . . .
V. 10-12 (G) 
vi. 176, 221, 25 (J), rest
(K).
vii. 1-24, 25* (K), 25*
(D).
viii. 1-11, 14-29 (K) . .
viii. 121, 80, 81,* 33,*
34,* 35 (R), 31,* 32,
331* (D).
ix. 1-26,27*(K) . . .
/
ix. 27*(D) 
X. 1-11, 16-43 (K), 18*
(J).
X. 12-15, except 13* (R).
xi.-xii. (K) 
xiii. 1, 71 (J), 2-5, 6,*
9-14 (K).
xiii. 6* (D), 15-33 (G) .
xiv. 1-5 (G), 6-15 (R) .
XV. 1-18, 2044, 48-62
(G).
XV. 14-19 (R), 45^7, 63
(K).
xvi. 1-9 (G), 10 (K) . .
xvii. 1-10 (G), 11-13 (K),
14-18 (R).
xviii. 11, 11-28 (G) . .
xviii. 3-10 (K) . . . .
xix. 1-46, 47 (K), 48-51
(G).

SCEBASEB.
Annalistic Narrator . (A).
Theocratic Narrator . (T).
Prophetic Narrator . (P).
Deuteronomiker . . (D).

i. 1, 2, 10-16 (P) . . .
i. 3-9, 17, 18 (D).
ii. (T) 
iii. 1, 7-17 (T), 2-6 (P) .
iv. la, 4-7, 14, 18,* 20-24
(T).
iv. 16-3,* 8-13 (P).
iv. 15-17, 19 (A).
V. 1-8, 13-15 (T) . . .
T. 9 (P), 10-12 (A) . .
vi. (P) 
vii. 1-26 (P) ....
viu. 1-11, 14-29 (P) . .
viii. 12-13 (T), 30-35 (D).

ix. 1-150, 16, 22-27a6
(P).
ix. 156, 17-22 (A), 27c
(D).
X. 1-11, 16-43 (P) . . .

X. 12-15 (T) 
(xi. 1-20, 23 (P), 211(D).
(xii. (P) 
xiii. l-6a, 7-14 (P).
xiii. 66 (D), 15-33 (A) )
xiv. 1-5 (A), 6-15 (T) ) "
xv.1-18, 20-44, 48-62 (A).
XV. 14-19 (T), 45-47, 63
(P).
xvi. 1-9 (A), 10 (T) . .
xvii. 1-10 (A), 11-18 (T).
xviii. 1, 2, 11-27, 28*
(A).
xviii. 3-10 (P) . , . .
xix. 1-46, 48-51 (A), 47
(P).

Wellhauseh.
Source  (a
Elohistic -^

Jehovistic ..... (J).
Deuteronomlst . . . (D).

i. (D).
ii. (J).
iii. 1, 5, 9-17* (J), 2-1,.
6-8 (D).
iv., difficult to separate
sources; but 12-14, 20-
24, and 6, 7 (D), l-3,»
8 (J), 19 (Q).
V. 2-9, 13-15 (JE).
V. 10-12 (Q).
vi., composite.
vii. (J), except 24f.*
viii., mostly (JE), 12-13
variant.
viu. 30-35 (D).

ix. 2-14 (J).
ix. 15c, 17-21 (Q), 24f.
(D).
X. 1-15 (J), 1,* 8(D).

X. 16-27* (D), 28-43 (D).
xi., prepared over by (D).
xii. (D).

xiii. 15-xiv. 5 (Q).
XV. (Q), except 13-19.

xvi. 4-8 (Q), 1-3, 9f.
(JE).
xvii. 1-10* (Q), 5, 8, 9,
105, 11-18 (JE).
xviii. 1, 11-25 (Q).
xviii. 2-10 (J).
xix. (Q), except 491

THE COMPOSITION OF THE HEXATEUCH.

625

VIII. — JOSHUA, — Continued.

Knobel.

SCHBADEE.

Wellhausen.

Grundsehrift . . .(G).

Annalistic Narrator . (A).

Source  (0).

Eschtsbuoh . • • (R)-

Theocratic Narrator . (T).

Elohistic  (E).

Kriegsbuch . . . (K).

Prophetic Narrator . (P).

Jehovistic  (J),

Jehovist  (J)-

Deuteronomiker . . (D).

Deuteronomist . . . (D).

Deuteronomiker . .(D).

xx.l,2,3,*4-5a,6,*7-9

XX. 1,2, 3,*4, 5a, 6,*7-

XX. (Q).

(G).

9(A).

xx.3,*55,6*(D). . .

XX. 3,* 56, 6* (D).

xxi. 1-40 (G) . . . .
xxi. 1-40 (A) . . . .
xxi. (Q), except 43-45,
xxi. 41-48 (K) ....
xxi. 411 (P), 43(D).
which is later.
xxii. 1-4, 6, 12, 16-20,
xxii. 1-4, 6, 165, 18a, 22-
xxii. 1-6 (D), 7a, gloss.
22-29, 336, 34 (K).
29,* 34 (P).
76, transition, 8 (J).
xxii. 5 (D), 71 (R) . .
xxii. 5 (D), 71, 12, 16c,
186, 196, 22-29,* 335
(T).
xxii. 9-11, 13-15, 21, 30-
xxii. 9-11, 13-15, 16a,
xxii. 9-34 (Q).
33a (6).
190, 21, 30-83O (A).
xxiii. (K), except 2,* 4-
xxui. (D) 
xxiii. (D).
8, 11, 16 (D).
xxiii. 15, 25 (J) ...
xxiv. loc-290)82(P) .
xxiv., by (D) from the
xxiv. 1*(D) . . . .
xxiv. 16, 31 (D).
Jehovistic book of his
xxiv. except 1 * (R) . .
xxiv. 296,* 30, 33 (A).
tory.
A careful review of all the eight tables shows that the
amount and kind of agreement arrived at by the representative
critics is indeed remarkable. As to the necessity for some such
distinction of sources, the agreement of the critics of every school
is practicaUy unanimous.^ In some cases, as conspicuously in
those of Genesis and Joshua, the agreement covers nearly the
entire book ; in others it extends to the separation of consider
able portions of a single book from their setting, and the point
ing-out of their kinship with similar portions of other books ;
frequently it reaches the minutest particulars, so that even
single verses or subdivisions of verses are by common consent
i Compare Strack, Ibid., p. 443. Fault will doubtless be found with the author
for going even thus far in affirming the results of critical research. Some stu
dents would much prefer the statement that criticism has failed hitherto to reach
anil oonolusions as to the composition of the Hexateuch ; others would force the
le-afflrmation of the tradition of the synagogue ; still others would desire the full
and unquestioning assertion of all the details of the theories of Graf, Kuenen, and
Wellhausen. But we stand upon the facts. Certain general conclusions wholly
adverse to the traditional view are as well established as any critical results can
te. It is simple statement of fact to say, that in Germany — so far as we are
aware —Keil remains the only advocate of a view at all resembling the traditional
one. Even Delitzsch— so far as can be judged from his statements, which are
always oommendably cautious but often obscure and wavering — could be claimed
la support of most of our very moderate conclusions. .-
526 THE DOCTRINE OF SACEED SCEIPTURE.
assigned either to some one of the assumed original authors, or
to the interpolation of a redactor. We notice further, that the
causes of apparent disagreement lie largely in the attempt of
some one critic to introduce his special theory in order to just
ify a more minute analysis than is attempted by the others;
as, for instance, when Knobel tries to make out that the Jehovist
put together a supposititious War-Book and Rights-Book, or
when Wellhausen tries to work the theory of a so-caUed Book
of Four Covenants, or to adjust too subtly the relations of his
so-called Source (Q) with his so-called Priester-codex. And,
moreover, it is of the utmost importance that we should distin
guish between the primary question, as to the existence of these
separate sources in the present Hexateuch, and the secondary
questions, as to the chronological and logical and literary rela
tions which exist amongst them. This primary question may be
regarded as already settled, but many of the secondary ques
tions will probably always remain unsettled. Accepting the
conclusions of criticism concerning the former question, as they
have already been stated in somewhat loose and general form,
and with so much of confidence as belongs to a subject of this
nature, we proceed briefly to consider the chief one of the sec
ondary questions.
The chief critical question of the present time concerning the
origin of the Hexateuch — the question which, indeed, both
affects and depends upon all our conceptions of the religion and
history of Israel — is one of adjustment in time and interior-
relations amongst these various component parts. But this
question may be considered as two: the first concerns the
origin and date of Deuteronomy ; the second concerns the rela
tions of the Elohistic document, which contains the main part
of the ritual of Israel, to Deuteronomy and to the other chief
source (the Jehovistic) of the Hexateuch. (1) When and by
whom was Deuteronomy written ? (2) Did the ritualistic laws
as a body, with the history pertaining to them, originate either
previously to, or contemporaneously with, Deuteronomy? or
did they originate about the time of the Exile, in the attempt
to enact ritualistic laws for the post-Chaldean Judaism, and to
give to these laws the force of historic precedent and of the
great name of Moses? To present briefly certain important
points of the varied discussion over these two questions, will
quite exhaust the possibilities open to us.
What date and authorship, then, shall we assign to the Book

THE LEGISLATION OF DEUTEEONOMY. 527
of Deuteronomy as at present constructed ? That its author
ship as a written composition is not to be ascribed in its entire-
ness to Moses, we have the implicit testimony of its author.
That its contents do not all belong to one era, especially to the
Mosaic era, an examination of them seems to show. We might,
then, conclude at once that the work, in its final written form,
was produced long after the time of Moses, by some author,
who, on the basis of Mosaic tradition and Mosaic writings, pro
mulgated a hortatory and prophetic revision of the law of the
nation popularly ascribed to the ancient lawgiver. Obviously
he has brought forth out of his treasure-house things both new
and old. That he has acted in good faith, even where he has
most modified and supplemented the ancient version, is beyond
doubt. That he has adopted the literary form of making Moses
utter his own law, is to the discredit neither of his honesty nor
of his general accuracy. That the substance of the law which
he ascribes to the enactment and composition of Moses really
goes back to that era, and may well enough have even been
left in writuig by Moses, we can find no sufficient reason to
deny. We need add little here to the proofs already furnished for
the existence of both ancient and more recent elements in the
legislation of Deuteronomy. The laws which the author repro
duces belong largely to the same section of the Torah as Exod.
sx.-xxiii., xxxiv., and Lev. xvii.-xxvi. ; but these are the very
laws which constitute the most ancient parts of the entire
Torah.^ There are traces of great antiquity in the facts that
the command of Deut. xxi. 23 corresponds to the treatment
given to the corpse of the king of Ai (Josh. viii. 29) ; and the
law of Deut. xvii. 19 is apparently referred to by the " testi
mony " laid upon the king at the crowning of Joash (2 Kings
xi. 12). The relation of Israel to the surrounding nations, as
depicted Deut. xxiii. 4, 7 f., seems to point to the Mosaic era.
And, as Kleinert argues,^ the critic who can believe that Ezekiel
(xl.-xlviii.), when in exile, had the faith and courage to make
laws for his people on their promised future return to Canaan,
should find no insuperable difficulty in believing that Moses
had the same faith and courage with reference to their first
entrance. Nor can we admit that expressions like the "house
' See Kleinert, Das Deuteronomium, p. 52 ; and compare Graf, Die geschicht-
liclien Btioher des A. T., pp. 19 fl.
^ Ibid., p. 125.

528 THE DOCTRINE OF. SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of Jehovah " (xxiii. 18), and the apparently definite and polem
ical allusion to the worship of the stars, and the term " aU the
host of heaven " (xvii. 3), prove a late origin for these portions
of the book.^ Nor are the frequent references to one place as
the expected sanctuary of the nation definite enough to consti
tute a cogent argument.^
But, on the other hand, instances of what we must regard as
anachronisms, upon the supposition of its origin in its present
form within the Mosaic era, might also be greatly multiplied.
As we have already seen, it is presupposed that the people
have been for some time enjoying the promised land, and owing
gratitude and service for it to Jehovah. Moreover, the consti
tution of the nation seems already to have changed from its
most ancient form. The chiefs of tribes (d'K'.ot) who were sup
porters of Moses and Aaron, the prefects (D'.'^?') who acted as
judges and leaders in war, have disappeared ; and the senators
(D'jpT) appear no longer as " elders of Israel," but as " elders
of the city ; " while the priests have added the function of judg
ing to that of teaching.
This same complexity of most ancient and more modern ele
ments is seen even in the so-called Song of Moses, xxxii. 1-13.
(Compare the Introduction, xxxi. 16-22.) On the one hand,
we find writers like Klostermann^ asserting that this song
could never have originated, or have been propagated, unless
it had been in its present form the prophetic utterance of Moses:
on the other, we find those who like Kamphausen * are clear
that Moses could never have been its author. It is only the
middle position, however, as taken by Knobel^ and others,
which leads us to see how an ancient song, originally Mosaic
and genuinely prophetic, might in the hands of redactors come
to contain many elements of a later time.^
1 The very ancient law of Exod. xxiii. 19 has the expression " house of Jeho
vah" (compare Josh. vi. 24 ; 1 Sam. i. 7, 24, iii. 15) ; and "house of Elohim" is
applied to the tabernacle (Judg. xviii. 31), and to the private sanctuary of the
Ephraimite Micah (Judg. xvii. 5). And, although the worship of the stars is first
noticed as actuaUy existing in Manasseh's time, the very presence of the title
" Jehovah Zebaoth " indicates a much earlier idolatry of this form. See Ewald,
Zeitschrift fiir Kunde des Morgenlandes, 1840, p. 418 ; Oehler, Theology of the Old
Testament, II. p. 270 ; Herzog, Beal-Encyklopadie, XVIII. p. 400.
2 The place which Jehovah will choose (see xii. 14, 26, xiv. 25, xv. 20, xvi. 7,
15, xvii. 8, 10) to place (or let dwell) there his name (xii. 5, 11, 21, xiv. 23, 24, xvi.
2, 6, 11, xxvi. 2).
s Das Lied Moses und das Deuteronomium: Stud. u. Krit., 1871 and 1872.
* Das Lied Moses, Leipzig, 1862. 6 See Die Biicher Numeri, etc., pp. 324 S.
6 (Jompare Bleek, Einl. in das A. T., pp. 43 f. and 118 f.

THE DATE OF DEUTEEONOMY. 629
Wo conclude, then, that the Book of Deuteronomy in its
present form was composed by an unknown author ou the basis
of documents and traditions which he supposed to go back to
Moses, and that criticism has discovered as yet no sufficient
reason for denying the general validity of the author's supposi
tion ; but also that there is no doubt as to the free way in which
this author handled his traditional material in the accomplish
ment of his purpose to promulgate the ancient law as a living
force for the people of his own day.
Precisely when, however, did the author thus compose this
writing? This is a question which we cannot answer. The
common opinion of criticism is, that the composition of Deuter
onomy is connected with the discovery of the written book of
the Torah as recorded 2 Kings xxii. 8 f. (compare 2 Chron.
xxxiv. 30 f.). It seems to us highly probable, if not certain,
that this written Torah was the one incorporated into the present
Deuteronomy, and nearly identical with it as forming the sub
stance of the legal contents of the book : ^ it is possible, but by
no means certain, that it contained also considerable other por
tions of the Pentateucli. But, however much it contained, it
is certain that this written Torah, when discovered, was not a
recent composition.^ As we have already seen, we are forced
back to a remote antiquity for the origin of many of the con
tents of this alleged Mosaic writing.^
If we suppose, then, that upon the basis of the ancient written
law discovered in the reign of Josiah, and with great fidelity to
its contents (although with considerable authorial freedom such
as belonged to his purpose and method), some pious and zealous
Jew of the same reign constructed the present Book of Deuter
onomy, we seem to do justice to all the demands of criticism.
But, on the other hand, we do not by this supposition in the
^ Such is the prevalent critical view ; although some names, even among those
who have not held to the tradition of the synagogue, — e.g., De'Wette, Bertheau,
and Knobel, — can be cited on the other side. Compare Wellhausen in Bleek's
Einl. in das A. T., p. 158; Graf, Die geschichtlichen Biicher, p. 5 f .•; Eiehm, Die Ge-
setzgebung im Lande Moab, p. 78 f . That the reforms of Josiah are such as imply
his new acquaintance with the special provisions of Deuteronomy, see Eeuss,
Geschichte der heil. Schriften A. T., I. p. 334 f.
^ The attempt of Graf (p. 5, note) to overthrow the assertion that tbe phrase of
2 Kings xxii. 8 (nilOn 130) indicates that the law-book was recognized, is unsuc
cessful. ^ The difficulties which stand in the way of assigning the composition of the
Deuteronomic law to the reign of Josiah (Eeuss, Knobel, Lengerke), or that of
Hezekiah (Vaihinger), or Manasseh (Bleek and Eiehm), or any time later than
early in the kingdom of Israel, are presented by ^Kleinert at length.
VOL. L 2 L

530 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCEIPTURE.
least impeach either the honesty of its author, or his general
historical trustworthiness, or the general correctness of his
impression that he was republishing the ancient law as given
by Moses, or his claims to credence and inspiration; unless,
indeed, in the last case, we are willing to make the claims for
the inspiration of the authors of Sacred Scripture depend upon
their critical ability to tell with perfect certainty and accuracy
the original authors of the sources from which they draw.^
We now consider briefly that critical question which is the
key to all the important positions regarding the origin of the
Hexateuch. Did the ritualistic laws, and the alleged history
in which they are set, as far as these are recorded in the so-
called Grundsehrift or fundamental document (the Source Q,
expanded into the Priester-codex, according to WeUhausen:
see Tables), originate about the time of the Exile, in the
attempt of the Jewish priesthood to establish the later Judaism
upon the basis of Mosaic authority ? It is plain that the answer
to this question is one which admits of distinctions and degrees.
Precisely how far the work of change may have been conducted,
and the doctrines and impressions of the post-Exilian period
carried into the ancient Hebrew usages and writings, we have
only scanty means for affirming in all cases. We are compelled
to believe that the process which gave to us the Hexateuch in
its present form was not complete until the close of this period.
But the question as stated above, or in any one of the many
forms which it has received at the hands of Graf, Kuenen,
Duhm, Noldeke, Wellhausen, and others, we answer in the
negative. For this negative we present, in addition to the
material given in other chapters, the following statement of
reasons. These reasons do not all of them, however, hold with
equal force against the modified form of the theory which
Reuss 2 announces in these words : " It is self-evident that the
existence of a Levitical tradition in relation to ritual as early
as the time of the kings cannot be denied : we cannot speak,
however, of a written, official, and sacred, codex of this kind."
1. The theory of so late an origin for the Elohistic writings
is opposed by a true historic conception of the age of Ezra and
his successors. We may not, indeed, theoretically limit the pos-
1 We cannot share the opinion of Professor Curtiss (Levitical Priests, p. 151 f).
that such admissions (?) are fatal to our belief that Deuteronomy is a 'divinely
revealed book. This opinion seems to us more dangerous to Sacred Scripture
than are the so-called admissions.
a Geschichte der heil. Schriften A. T., I. p. 76

THE NATURALISTIC THEOEIES. 631
sibilities of revelation, or of the composition of Sacred Scrip
ture, so as to exclude this age from them. The age of Ezra not
only left its impress upon the entire Old Testament, but also
gave us certain books of the Hebrew Scriptures. It canonized
the Pentateuch and other sacred writings then existing. But
the theory which ascribes to it the main original work of the
Hexateuch is directly contrary to what little is known of this
age. The Talmud does not represent Ezra as an author, but as
a scribe, of Sacred Scripture. The Talmudic precepts, which
are ascribed to Ezra, differ utterly in spirit and expression from
the laws of the Elohistic part of the Pentateuch.^ On the
other hand, the theory of Wellhausen leaves the earlier forma
tive and fundamental periods of the history of Israel almost
completely without a literature, in order that it may concen
trate all the productive energies of the nation in the age of
Ezra.2 2. The theory of Graf, Wellhausen, and Kuenen is opposed
to all right conceptions of the nature and history of Old-Testa
ment revealed religion. If this theory can be independently
established upon critical grounds, we must, indeed, either aban
don our conceptions of Old-Testament religion, or else modify
them to suit the fact. But it is apparent to every thoughtful
student of the criticism, that these same so-called critical con
clusions are themselves largely shaped by the previous concep
tions of the critics as to the nature of the religion. The critical
theory of Kuenen is not without reason connected by many of
its advocates with the naturalistic conception of the develop
ment of the Hebrew religion. This naturalistic conception the
theory professes to derive from a study of the earliest trust
worthy pictures of the condition of the people and of the
character of prophecy in the eighth century before Christ.
That the multitude of Jews in the time of Hosea, Amos, and
Micah did not distinguish between Jehovah with his pure
worship and the idolatrous and licentious worship of heathen
divinities, may, indeed, be a fact (see Hos. ii. 8, 16 f., iv. 13 f.,
viii. 5 f. ; Amos ii. 7 f., v. 26 f., viii. 14 ; Mic. i. 5 f.). The exist
ence of rhabdomancy and other forms of divination, of Penates,
of the custom of swearing by the dead, and even of occasion-
1 See Delitzsch, Talmudische Studien, Zeitschrift fur luth. Theologie, 1877:
compare Dillmann, Exod. und Lev., p. viii. ; and Eiehm, Stud. u. Krit., 1863,
p. 355. " Compare Strack, Ibid., p. 451.

532 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCEIPTURE.
ally devoting the living to Jehovah, may be admitted. Heathen
ish conceptions of the possibility of buying off Deity with sacri
fices were no doubt popular enough (see Mic. iii. 9-11, vi. 6-8) ;
and even a prophet might seem to identify the presence of Je
hovah with the presence of offerings and priests. But all this,
and much more, is very far from justifying a conclusion like
that of Duhm,i who would abolish at one stroke the entire
heroic and legal age of the people, confine their earlier notions
of their Deity to the elements of his dreadfulness and pre
eminence among the gods, and introduce Amos and the other
prophets as the founders of an ethical and spiritual religion in
Israel. But the work of the earliest prophets, as we have
repeatedly been made aware, rests down upon, and refers back
to, the existence of a divine covenant and a spiritual govern
ment. According to the conceptions and experience which
they refer back to Mosaism (Hos. xii. 13 ; Mic. vi. 4), to the
dealings of God with the nation under his promise and law,
they threaten and comfort, command and accuse. Their work
implies a long course of previous religious development (see
Amos iii. 9-15, iv. 1 f., ix. 1 f.), and a certain definitely fixed
and recorded code of laws : ^ the relation between Jehovah and
the morality of the people is already long established (Hos. iv.
1, V. 1, vi. 5 f., X. 4, 7, xii. 7).^ The Prophetism of the eighth
century is not the beginning of spiritual and ethical religious
conceptions in Israel : on the contrary, this century shows, by
the character of its prophecy, a great degeneracy and corrup
tion of the previous national religious life, of monotheism as
taught by Moses. This is the view of Ewald, Oehler, Schultz,
Smend, and of the great majority of critical students of Old-
Testament religion.
3. This theory is opposed to an adequate conception of the
personality of Moses, and of the condition of the people Israel
under his prophetic leadership. With a different meaning from
that of their author we quote and emphasize the words of
Reuss : * " His spirit, proving itself in this regard like one
1 Die Theologie der Propheten dargestellt als Grundlage fiir die innere Entwick-
lungsgesohichte der israelitischeu Eeligion, pp. 52 f. and 103 f.
2 The sentence (Hos. viii. 12), " I may prescribe my laws to him by myriads,''
cannot be considered as a wholly hypothetical declaration without reference to an
existing reality, as Duhm would consider it.
3 In refutation of Duhm, see the article of Smend, Ueber die von den Propheten
des acliten Jahrhunderts vorausgesetzte Entwicklungsstufe der israelitiscUen
Eeligion, Stud. u. Krit., 1876.
4 Die Geschichte der heil, Schriften A. T., I. p. 70.

THE TOEaH ascribed TO MOSES. 53a
divine, gave stamp and direction to the national development."
A large and influential development of religion under the im
pulse and guidance of divine self-revelations lies back of the
earliest form of Prophetism. Such a development is legal Mosa
ism, and Mosaism is due to the influence of the inspired per
sonality of Moses. To the same influence must we also attrib
ute the fundamental characteristics of the civil polity of Israel.^
The greatness of this personality and of its influence is due not.
simply to Egyptian learning and natural gifts, but chiefly to
personal revelation conditioned upon previous revelation made
to his ancestors. All the history and literature of Israel pre
supposes a great prophet who is the founder of its development,
long, long before the eighth century B.C.^ No tradition o'f the
nation is older or more firmly fixed than this : Moses communed
with God (Exod. xxxiv. 29-35, compare xxxiii. 18) ; he knew
God face to face (Num. xii. 6 ; Deut. xxxiv. 10).
We are not forced to suppose, however, either that all the
sacred forms in which the divine truths were revealed through
Moses were invented by him as wholly new, or that he delivered
them in their minutiae of written form. But the ascription of
its divuie fundamental law to Mosaic authorship is wrought into
the very life of the nation ; and in such fashion that all its law
came to be considered as Mosaic Torah, and the Book of the
Torah became the word of the Lord to Israel. That the peo
ple forgot this law after reaching Canaan, and even came to be
largely ignorant of its existence in any written form, is scarcely
stranger than the fate wliich Christian truth and Christian writ
ings suffered in certain dark ages of the Christian Church.
How traditional lines of evidence may agree upon a most
important fact in the history of so remote a personality, is seen
in the case of the two narratives of the appearance of God to
Moses with a revelation of Himself under a new name, Exod.
iii. 1-6 and vi. 2-8. The conviction that the name Jehovah,
as the solemn and acknowledged title of God, — the Redeemer
of Israel, — is distinctively of Mosaic origin, belongs to the
national self-consciousness (compare Hos. xii. 9 and xiii. 4).
This truth is not damaged, even if we admit with Wellhausen,^
" Moses could have done nothing more senseless than to intro
duce a new name for the God of their fathers, to whom he waa
1 Compare Eeuss, Ibid., I. p. 83 f.
2 See Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 130 1-
3 Geschichte Israels, I. p. 359.

534 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTURE.
pointing the people." In this revelation of the divine name
made by Moses, there is surely enough both to institute and to
condition all the minor legal enactments and the ritual which
belong to the Mosaic era.^ Instead of finding mere theory in
these narratives, as does the author just quoted, we find in them
the traditional and trustworthy account of those very founda
tions in which all the subsequent law, history, ritual, prophecy,
and literature of Israel were laid.
4. The so-called Grundsehrift, or fundamental Elohistic and
legal document of the Pentateuch, contains large and numer
ous sections of material which are demonstrably very ancient,
if not of Mosaic origin. Its very composition and its relations
to the other parts of the Hexateuch are such that its origin
must have been for the most part long previous to the age of
the Exile. The kernel of this Book of Law may probably be
best designated by comparing Lev. xvii.-xxvi. with Exod. xx.-
xxiii. and xxxiv., and with the legal body of Deuteronomy.^
These laws, as we have already seen, are the most ancient of
the entire legislation of Israel. We by no means deny, how
ever, that many of the details of arrangement and language, as
well as perhaps the incorporation of some of its ordinances and
historical notices, may have been the work of this later age.
The fundamental part of the Grundsehrift is, according to
Wellhausen,^ Exod. xxv.-xl. except xxxii.-xxxiv. ; Num. i.-
X., xv.-xix., xxv.-xxxvi. ; and Lev. i.-xxvii. Surely this is
productive activity come suddenly to its bloom, when in one
age, centuries after the alleged facts, so many laws and so much
history could be fabricated, and foisted upon the community as
genuinely Mosaic ! When all the ancient and genuine legal
contents of the Pentateuch preceding Deuteronomy are reduced
to a few verses and parts of chapters, such as Gen. xvii. and
Exod. xiii. and xxxiv.,* we are forced to conclude that there is
good reason why these critics should attempt to lay in the
prophecy of 800 B.C. a substitute for the foundations which
they have so completely removed. But they have removed the
goodly stones of history, and can only put in their stead a few
1 Even should we press the meaning of the title Yahveh so as to make it an
assertion of the metaphysical doctrine of divine self-existence, we might appeal
to the antiquities of Egypt for a similar thought, or to the Persian name for God
as the "self-posited."
2 For references in these chapters of Leviticus to Deuteronomy and to the Book
of tlie Covenant, see Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 453.
a Geschichte Israels, I. p. 6 * Compare Graf, Ibid., p. M.

THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW-BOOK. 535
perishable timbers of wood. Their foundation itself needs
founding. We cannot reduce the most ancient legal ordinances,
and records of legal ordinances, to such inferior proportions.
For, in spite of the silence which is so much complained of as
pervading all the early history of Prophetism, there are proofs
of a. much richer inheritance of ritualistic and other ordinances,
and of written records of these ordinances.
Thefact of the composite nature of some of the sections of
this fundamental Law-book must be admitted ; but this fact is
adverse rather than favorable to the claim of a late origin for
the larger contents of these sections. The whole truth may be
illustrated by the case of Lev. Xxiii. We have here a double
superscription, the first part of which (verses 2 and 8) seems
superfluous ; then a subscription (verse 37) ; and then, further,
a division of the whole into smaller sections, between some of
which (e.g., 9-22, 23-25, 26-32, 33-43) other superscriptions
occur. This coUection of laws differs, moreover, from the
other notices of the Jewish feasts (Exod. xxiii. 14 ff., xxxiv. 18
ff., and Deut. xvi.), in that the latter give regulations only for
those feasts which comprised the entire people, and required pil
grimages (D:jn) ; whereas the former, beginning with the sabbath,
includes all the days on which solemn assemblies or set sacri
fices were appointed. We cannot argue, then, that Lev. xxiii.
belongs to a late age, and shows signs of a priestly extension of
festival seasons and a centralizing of the cultus ; ^ for its au
thor does not design to represent all these " conyocations " as
involvmg a pilgrimage of the whole people to Jerusalem (as
D'Jn). On the contrary, he leaves the offerers free to bring their
gifts, and thus gives a token that the laws he records are earlier
than the law of Deuteronomy ; for, while the regulation of a
pilgrimage was much insisted upon in post-Exilian times, a ces
sation from labor for a holy convocation accords with the most
ancient customs of the Jews and of all antiquity.^ Also the
passage Lev. xvi. 23 ff. proves its superior antiquity by being
the only one to mention the feast of the new moon, which we
know from the early prophets (Hos. ii. 11 ; Amos viii. 5) and
from 1 Sam. xx. 5, 18, 24, to have been one of the most ancient
and important of the feasts.
Again, the apparent repetitions and late glosses which char-
' So Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels, I. p. 107 f.; compare Dillmann, in Coco.
^ See Cicero, D j Leg. ,2,12. For other references, see Dillmann, Exod. und Lev.,
P.577.

536 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
acterize Exod. xxxv.-xl. when compared with xxv.-xxxi., and
the departures of xxxvi. 8-38 and xxxix. 2-31 from xxix. 1-35,
do not prove that either one or both of these composite sec
tions can be relegated at once to the products of rabbinical
studies in the age of Ezra, or even later.^ These chapters are
not instances of mere repetitions throughout ; for we have addi
tional accounts of the zeal of the people in executing the work
(xxxv. 22-28 and xxxvi. 2-6), and of the descent of the glory
of Jehovah (xl. 34 f.). Nor are the repetitions merely mechani
cal, as is shown by the case of xxxix. 2-31 when reproducing
xxviii. Indeed, the same author might easily have produced
both narratives from interest in his theme and from the feeling
that he must preserve all the information from both tradition
and written documents. The text of the LXX. for this passage
presents a translation very unlike the present Hebrew : changes
in order occur, and entire verses have been omitted. But we
cannot argue that xxxvi. 8''-xxxviii. 20 (the passage which
contains the most important deviations) was not in existence
when the Septuagint was made, or that the LXX. represent tlie
original condition of the Hebrew ; since the Samaritan Penta
teuch, with the exception of certain minor points, here agrees
vrith the Hebrew.
The existence of a somewhat elaborate cultus, and of a some
what extended written law of the cultus, goes back to the
Mosaic era (compare Exod. xxiv. 6 ff. ; Deut. xxx. 10 ; Ps.
xeix. 6, 9), and is required in order to understand at all the
religious development of the nation. The existence of ordi
nances concerning things clean and unclean, of sacred places,
and set and acceptable forms of worship,^ is implied in the com
position of Deuteronomy. The history of the temple of Solo
mon implies the same cultus ; and so do the declarations and
utterances of the earliest prophets.^ Much of this ritualism,
instead of being later than Ezra, is probably older than Moses.
We are also at liberty in part to explain the silence of the
earlier history concerning many of the earliest ritualistic ob
servances by certain general assumptions which' are derived
1 Compare Graf, Ibid., p. 86 f.; Kuenen, Eeligion of Israel, II. p. 166 f.; Well
hausen, Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1877, p. 415 f.
¦^ See Deut. xii. 13 f., xv. 19, 22, xxvi. 13 f., xxii. 9; and compare Smend, Stud.
u. Krit., 1876, p. 643. ;
8 The existence of a pre-Exilian priestly cultus is implied in such prophetic |j„
passages as Mic. iii. 11; Jer. xviii. 18; Ezek. vii. 26; Zeph. iii. 4; Hos. viii. 13 1-
Compare Strack, Ibid., p. 451.

THE CODIFICATION OF THE LAW. 537
from what we know of the history of religion in other nations.
(a) The people as a body had little to do with keeping to the
letter of the written law. It was often wholly unknown to
them ; and even to the priests it was only partially and very
imperfectly known, (b) Laws were enacted which never, or
never for any considerable time and to any large extent, went
into execution. Graf ^ admits this with respect to the release
of claims upon the Hebrew servant in the seventh year. No
large collection of old laws is familiar to even the lawyers of a
people unless the laws be kept in force, (c) Many laws in
themselves imply the establishment of time-honored custom
antecedent to the written enactment which but expresses the
law as already in vogue, (d) The laws regarding many sub
jects were constantly changing, and the codification of them
was enlarged from time to time. The theory of Graf, Well
hausen, and Kuenen constantly makes an unwarrantable use of
the argument from the non-observance to the non-existence
of such laws as it wishes to eliminate from the early history of
Israel. Thus — to illustrate the last two statements by the very
plausible view of Dillmann — the latest portion of Lev. i.-vii.
is chap. iv. But this fact does not justify the late date which
Wellhausen would assign to the passage on the principle, that,
so long as the service of offerings existed as a praxis, there was
no inducement to codify it.^ The record was no doubt made
as the praxis grew ; and codification does not so much altogether
follow as accompany and reciprocally influence the praxis.
Nor have we any right to assert that the more carefully legal
ized forms which belonged to the central sanctuary always
followed the looser and more multiform habits of scattered high-
places and sanctuaries. Two or more forms of cultus may have
developed at the same time along different lines, and then have
been codified simultaneously. How dependent upon custom
the written law is, may be illustrated from the ordinances sepa
rating clean and unclean animals. What is an unclean animal?
The reply of Ewald, Sommer, and Schultz is most intelligible.
Those animals are clean which from time immemorial have
really been used as food by the people.^
' Die geschichtlichen Biicher, p. 23. 2 Geschichte Israels, I. p. 62.
' See Schultz, Alttestamentliche Theologie, p. 341. Thus when in Deuteron
omy the grasshopper, which was reckoned clean in the law of Lev. xi. 21 f., is
left oat of the list, an actual change in custom is implied as having taken place.

538 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
We may confidently assume that Moses did not in his legis
lation neglect the regulation of ritual. "In general," says
Reuss,! " we cannot think of a religion without cultus in Semitic
antiquity." Some of the distinctive features of the Israehtish
ritual — such as those which concern the nature of the offer
ings, the treatment of the blood, the fat and the carcass — be
long to the most ancient legislation (see Exod. xxiii. 18, xxxiv.
25; Lev. vii. 25-27, xix. 5-8). But the developed ritual is to
be understood as Mosaic, only in the sense that it rests upon a
Mosaic basis and conforms to the Mosaic type ; and that the
written record of the ritualistic laws was all by the hand of
Moses we are nowhere told, and have ample reason to deny.
The preceding observations enable us to understand the posi
tion of the earlier prophets, who, although they never imply that
the law in their day was non-ritualistic, nor speak disparagingly
of sacrifices and offerings as such, do nevertheless relatively
exalt the ethical and disparage the ritualistic, in a manner very
difficult to reconcile with the belief that the, entire Grwndschrift
then existed, and was recognized as part of the fundamental law
of the nation revealed by Jehovah through Moses (see espe
cially Amos V. 25 and Jer. vii. 22).
This general position touching the origin of that great
Law-book which enters into the composition of the present
Pentateuch might be illustrated in many particulars. Of such
illustrations we choose the few following.
A. The Feasts. The feasts of passover and unleavened bread
are represented by all the historical sources alike as having
their origin in the beginnings of the national life (for the former,
see Exod. xii. 1-13, 21-27 ; for the latter, Exod. xxiii. 15, xii.
14-20, 34, 39, xiii. 3-10, xxxiv. 18; Deut. xvi. 1, 3). But
according to Wellhausen,^ the Mazzoth originally celebrated
the beginning, as Pentecost did the end, of corn-harvest. By
claiming that the earlier Jehovistic account reverses the relation
of the Exodus and the passover feast (see Exod. x. 9 and viii.
25 f.), and by assuming that Exod. xiii. 3-16 is the work of the
Deuteronomic redactor, the same author would bring the his
toric testimony for the origin of this feast down to a late date.
All we can affirm, then, is an ancient tradition that the escape
from Egypt coincided with that spring festival which this nation
kept in common with a large part of antiquity aS a result of
their nature-worship. But for the origin of Mazzoth in the
1 Geschichte der heil. Schriften A. T., I. p. SO. 2 Geschichte Israels, I. p. 87 1,

OFFERINGS AND SACRIFICES. 639
beginning of harvest there is, as says Dillmann,^ absolutely no
proof; and against it may be urged that in all the laws of the
festivals except Lev. xxiii. there is no allusion to the harvest,
that its duration for seven days does not correspond to the one
day of the Pentecost, and that the desert was no suitable place
to celebrate a harvest-feast. We see, then, no reason to break
the firm connection between these religious festivals and the
early history of the nation ; no reason, in the fact that they
refer to tlie year's course and correspond with the usages of
other nations, why we should either distrust the history, or
exclude the claim of revelation.
B. Sanctifying of the First-born. There is uniformity of
testimony from all the historical sources for the origin of this
rite. In memory of the deliverance from Egypt, the first-born
of man and beast were devoted to Jehovah. This historical
connection is implied (Deut. xv. 19-xvi. 8) in the literary con
nection of the law of the first-born with that of the feast of
unleavened bread, in the theorj'- that the Levites were substi
tuted for the devoted first-born of the nation (Num. iii. 13 and
viii. 17), and in the tradition of the address of Moses (Exod.
xiii. 1-16; compare xxxiv. 18 f.). Such specific and legalized
devotement and redemption of all the first-born of the nation
is peculiar to the Israelites, and no other satisfactory reason
for its enactment can be given than the one which lies in the
alleged facts and their related ideas. By the deliverance from
Egypt the entire nation became the possession of Jehovah, to
be redeemed and to acknowledge its redemption in the person
of its first-born children.
C. Offerings and Sacrifices. In Exod. xxix. 38-46, the law
of the daily burnt-offering is announced in connection with the
same great event ; viz., the redemption of Israel from Egypt by
Jehovah. But even this daily sacrifice of two year-old lambs
Wellhausen considers ^ as smuggled into the Pentateuch ritual
after the time of Ezra, and '¦'¦factitiously made a fundamental
part of the service of God." Dillmann fitly calls this opinion
of Wellhausen a reduetio ad absurdum of the critical principle,
that every law which cannot be shown, by other books than
the one in which it occurs, to have been in use, is to be assigned
an origin subsequent to those books. The laws relating to
offerings are, indeed, not given complete in any one place : the
maiu collection of those relating to the five general classes being
1 Exod. u. Lev., p. 581. 2 ibid., I. p. 81 f.

640 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
found. Lev. i.-vii. ; while Lev. xxii. 17-30 and Num. xv. 1-16
supplement this collection with respect to the animals allowed
and the relations of the vegetable offerings to the animals used
in the burnt and thank offerings, and Num. v. 5-10 and xv. 22-
28 contain additional matter concerning the sin and trespass
offering. This legalized system of sacrifices is referred to Moses
for its institution. It is not said, on the one hand, that Moses
invented all these forms of sacrifices ; ^ nor is it implied, on the
other hand, that the custom of the nation subsequent to Moses
always complied with his Torah. The question is in each case
pertinent : How far was the author right in ascribing the par
ticular law of sacrifices to the enactment of this one lawgiver ?
D. The Bay of Atonement. According to many of the critics,
this law is another fabrication resulting from the theoretical
tendency of the later age of Judaism.^ These critics can find
the germ of this observance only in the time of Ezekiel (xlv.
18-20), who on the first of the first and seventh months ordains
a great purification of the sanctuary. Wellhausen ^ asserts that
the great day of atonement (Lev. xvi.) was unknown to Jere
miah, and not in force 444 B.C., the year of the publication of
the Pentateuch by Ezra. But the introduction, after the time
of the Exile, of such a feast into the ancient Book of the Law as
a Mosaic institution, may be pronounced with Dillmann " abso
lutely incredible." Indeed, we can test the value of the argu
mentum e silentio, as Wellhausen makes use of it, by this example.
According, then, to this argument, the day of the atonement
did not originate until the first century of the Christian era !
For the first mention of it, outside of the Levitical law, occurs
in Philo, Josephus, and the New Testament.* That this festi
val is not mentioned in the prophetic legal writings is, consider
ing its nature, not very strange. It is more definitely a priestly
affair, and must have been less impressive upon the popular
religious life. The silence of Ezekiel concerning it is no more
difficult to explain than his sUence concerning the feast of
Pentecost. The need of special days of purification was felt
by other ancient nations, and was fostered by the Mosaic idea
of moral purity in the worship of Jehovah. Moreover, traces
of a remote antiquity appear in the law of Lev. xvi. : such are
1 On the contrary, see Lev. i. 3, ii. 1, iii. 1, which imply only the regulation of
existing custom.
2 So Vatke, George, and Graf. a Ibid., I. p. 114.
* Acts xxvii. 9 ; Heb. ix. 13.

THE QUESTION OF THE TABERNACLE. 541
the ceremony with the goat (verses 10 and 21), and the promi
nence given to the ark (verses 2 and 13 f.).
E. The Tabernacle. The following reasons led writers like
Von Bohlen, George, Vatke, Noldeke, and De Wette, to regard
the description of the tabernacle (Exod. xxv. ff.) as resting
upon a fiction : (1) its costliness, (2) its elaborate art, (3) the
brevity of the time allowed for the execution of the work,
(4) the fact that no trace of its existence appears in the history
between Moses and the first temple. These objections except
the last may be answered in detail, but even then the chief
difficulties have not been reached. The history, according to
WeUhausen,^ only permits us to suppose that a tent may have
existed as a covering for the ark in the Mosaic era, since we
learn from Hos. ix. 6 that tents were among the most ancient
coverings for idols. But the tabernacle of Exod. xxv. ff. is
nowhere found in the veritable history of Israel as recorded in
the books of Judges and 1 Kings. When we are told (2 Chron.
i. 3 ff.) that Solomon solemnized his accession to the throne by
a great sacrificial feast at Gibeon because the tabernacle and
brazen altar of Moses were there, we are forced to notice, says
Wellhausen, that the Chronicler is contradicting the earlier
narrative of 1 Kings iii. 1-4. That the Chronicler misunder
stands the earlier narrative, Wellhausen thinks evident from the
fact that he misuses the phrase, " a great Bamah."
The original tabernacle certainly appears to have been a
much simpler affair than the one described in Exodus. It is
called 1^.10 Son (tabernaculum testimonii ; orKrfvfj rov paprvpiov,
LXX.; "tent of assembly," Gesenius; Offenbarungs Zeit, Dill
mann). It does not seem to have been the sole place for offer
ing sacrifices, nor does the ark appear at first to have had there
its sanctuary (see Num. x. 33). After the conquest of Canaan
the tabernacle and ark appear at Shiloh, where through the
period of the Judges until the death of Eli we find the chief
sacred place of the nation. Upon the founding of the new
sacred place on Zion by David, the ark is brought from Kirjath-
jearim, and a new tabernacle made for it (2 Sam. vi. 17 ; com
pare 1 Kings i. 39, ii. 28-30) ; this tabernacle was the one
brought by Solomon into his temple (1 Kings viii. 4). Early
in the time of the kings, then, neither the Mosaic tabernacle,
nor— as we judge from all the critical indications as to the
date of this part of the ritualistic law — its description in Exod.
1 Geschichte Israels, I. p. 40 f.

542 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
xxv. ff., were in existence. It may be held that this description.
gives many features of the tabernacle in its more magnificent
condition, under David ; while the norm and law of it belong
to Moses. We must believe that the temple of Solomon was
copied from this tabernacle, rather than the description of the
tabernacle given according to an ideal of the second temple, —
since this second temple was only a weak imitation of the first,
without its ark and cherubs and magnificence, — unless we are
ready to reverse the entire order of the history.
F. The Priesthood. Upon the difficult and important ques
tion as to the origin and nature of the Levitical priesthood, we
can affirm neither one of the two extreme opinions. We do
not believe that the origin of the distinctive priesthood of the
sons of Aaron is of pos1>Exilian legislation, and was prepared
for by Ezekiel, who (xliv. 6-16) degrades the Levites from
their ancient position of equality, and assigns the priestly pre
rogatives, formerly enjoyed by the entire tribe, to the sons of
Zadok.i But neither can we accept any of the attempts which
have been made to reconcile the legislation of the middle books
with the historical position implied in Deuteronomy and the
historical portions of the Old Testament.^ An examination of
the above-mentioned passage in Ezekiel shows us that the
prophet is constructing by progressive approaches — so to
speak '¦ — an ideal priesthood for his ideal temple with its ideal
service. But in degrading the Levites for their infidelity, and
in making a few faithful ones from a selected branch of the
priestly family alone worthy of this ideal honor, he supposes
himself to be re-enacting the proper and ancient order of things.
He regards this order as having been disturbed by the illegiti
mate practices of the era immediately preceding. He does not
create, but presupposes, the legitimacy of this distinction (com
pare xl. 45 f., xiii. 13, xliii. 19). Furthermore, even in Deut
eronomy we find the germ of a distinction between the priests
and other Levites, as that distinction is made in the full Leviti
cal law. Thus (Deut. xxvii. 9 ff.) the priests are distinguished
from the tribe out of which they sprung ; and, although any
Levite on settling himself at Jerusalem is not to be excluded
from the priestly functions and revenues, yet only those Levites
1 See Kuenen, Theol. Tijdschr., III. p. 463; and Wellhausen, Ibid., I. P-
127 f.
2 See especially Curtiss, De Aaronitici Sacerdotii Origine, and LeviticarPriests,
Edinburgh, 1877. .

THE LEVITES AND THE SONS OF AARON. 543
who are at the central sanctuary are considered as priests, in dis
tinction from those who wander about, exercising in an illegiti
mate manner their priestly functions (xviii. 6 ff.). The house
of Aaron appear to have held the priesthood at the national
sanctuary of Shiloh (see especially Josh. xix. 51). The house
of EU, which we find exercising the priestly function as a tradi-
tjional inheritance reaching back to the Exodus (1 Sam. ii. 27 f.),
isi declared by the author of 1 Chron. xxiv. 3 f. to have been of
the descent of Ithamar.
But, on the other hand, other portions of the Pentateuch
and of the earlier historical books agree only partially with
the view of the so-called Grundsehrift touching the exclusive
prerogative of the family of Aaron. In the ancient account
of Exod. xxiv. 5, the young men of the nation are sent by
Moses to make burnt-offerings ; in the provisions for sacrifices
(xx. 24 ff.), it seems implied that any Israelite may offer upon
an altar to Jehovah. Not Aaron, but Moses and his attendant,
who is an Ephraimite, are represented (xxxiii. 8-11) as fre-
|uenting the sanctuary. The subsequent notices of ritual seem
very unlike the stately and set forms of the Levitical laws.^ In
the time of the earlier kings, the functions of sacrifice appear
not to have been confined to priests. Saul offers sacrifices
without rebuke for his profanity (1 Sam. xiv., xv.). David
appears in priestly linen, wearing the ephod, and offers burnt-
offerings and peace-offerings before the Lord (2 Sam. vi. 14,
17 f.) ; Solomon pronounces the blessing at the close of the
sacrifice (1 Kings viii. 22, 54, 55). Moreover, it is difficult to
interpret the Deuteronomic law so as to bring it into accord
with that of this fundamental Law-book. The writer of Deut
eronomy seems to teach (x. 8, xviii. 5, 7) ^ that God at Sinai
separated the entire tribe of Levi from the other tribes for the
exercise of priestly functions. So also (xxxiii. 8-11) are the
Urim and Thummim and the ministration at the altar made
the portion of the tribe. We are told (Exod. xix. 22 f.) of
priests before the givuig of the law ; and Aaron himself is spo
ken of (Exod. iv. 14) as though he came to his distinction frora
bis membership in the tribe. That the Deuteronomist uses the
^ See the ease of Samuel and Hannah in their approach to the sanctuary
(1 Sam. iii. 3 f.). Wellhausen considers this (I. p. 134) to involve a " colossal
contradiction" of the Priester-codex.
!.?* ^"^ scarcely do to refer the words, " the Lord thy God hath chosen him "
i (xviii. 5), to the priestly representative of the tribe; for see verse 7, the words, " as
all his brethren the Levites do."

544 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCEIPTUEE.
terms "priests" and "Levites "or "sons of Levi" a« though
they were interchangeable, there can be no doubt.^
We are brought, then, to the opinion, if not to the fixed con
clusion, that a difference of view and practice existed at differ
ent times as to the relations in which the Levites outside of
the family of Aaron stood to this family touching the priestly
rights and functions. The-, clergy were doubtless as tenacious
of privilege under the Old-Testament religion as they have ever
been. Sharp conflicts arose; for both traditional views had
their foundations of truth in ancient laws and practices, run
ning back to the Mosaic era.
5. The style and language of the so-called Grundsehrift do
not favor its late, not to say its post-Exilian, origin. It must
be admitted, that upon these points the conclusions of criticism
are very uncertain and conflicting ; yet, on the whole, they jus
tify the above statement. As to- style, what one critic regards
as manifestly ancient on account of its concrete and objective
manner, another for that very reason pronounces guilty of all
the circumstantiality and jejuneness of the post-Exilian and
priestly redactor. As to the possibility of imitating or culti
vating the style of an age long remote, it is difficult to pro
nounce with confldence. The second Isaiah is instanced as a
writer who was prevented by his peculiarly classic and noble
cast of mind, and by his familiarity with the best models, from
falling into the degeneracy of his age. Haggai, Zechariah, and
Malachi, although subsequent to the Exile, belong with the
writers of the previous age. Why may not, then, the Elohist
so saturate himself with the style of the earlier books, and so
enter into the spirit of the antiquity of his nation as he con
ceived it, that surprisingly few traces of the age in which he
actually wrote shall appear in his writings?
But what is the precise truth as to the grammar aud ety
mology of the author of the Grundsehrift ? This question is
still in dispute. The means for making the necessary compari
sons are few ; and all our conclusions may be largely vitiated
by our ignorance as to how we shall distinguish between writ
ings which are in a body of late date, and early writings into
which certain words and phrases of late form have been intro
duced at a late date. Delitzsch is doubtless right in denying
the correctness of many of the earlier statements of Grai,
Popper, and Kuenen. But his own positive affirmation —
1 See xvii. 9, 18, xviii. 1, xxi. 5, xxiv. S, xxvii. 9, xxxi. 9.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE ELOHIST. 545
« The so-called Elohistic language is ancient throughout : . . .
there is no trace of the peculiar exilic forms and syntax " i — is
at best very doubtful. The thorough examination of Ryssel
led him to the following conclusions. The language of the
Elohistic portions of the Pentateuch would assign them, so far
as its Aramaizing is concerned, to the second period of the
language ; viz., that between Josiah and 536 B.C. It is con
ceded by Ryssel, however, that certain parts of Numbers, in
themselves considered, should be referred to the time of the
later books of the Old Testament. But many of the conclu
sions of this author have been most seriously shaken by the
searching criticism and independent research of Giesebrecht.
According to this critic, a large proportion of the words and
roots distinctive of the Elohist can be shown to be either Ara
maic or Aramaizing.
Nevertheless, as the matter now stands, we find no sufficient
reason to depart from the most general conclusions of the
former critic, if only we allow due scope to the influences of
the latest work of redaction upon the language of the writings
revised.^ (1) The book of the Elohist can none of it have been com
posed subsequent to the Exile.
(2) The laws belonging to the priestly service, garments,
and ritual, are for the most part later than the rest, and were
written in the second age of the language.
(3) The principal part of the Elohist, the superior laws and
histories, belong to the earliest age of the language.
The results arrived at by this somewhat detailed examination
of the single case of the Hexateuch ^ may be made, after taking
1 Introduction to Curtiss's Levitical Priests, p. x.
^ It was the first intent of the author to present in detail the argument from
the style and language of the Grundsehrift, but the lack of space and the techni
cal nature of the subject have prevented. It remains only to indicate some of the
writings consulted: Eiehm, Stud. u. Krit., 1868, pp. 350 &., and 1872, 283 ff. ; Well-
hausefl, Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theol., 1877, p. 457 [note]; Klostermann, Zeit
schrift fiir luth. Theol., 1877, pp. 401 fE.; Ewald, Die Propheten, etc., II. p. 543 f.;
Eyssel, De Elohistae Pentateuchici Sermone, Leipzig, 1878 ; Giesebrecht, Zeitschrift
fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 1881, pp. 177-276.
' So much more space than its intrinsic importance' might seem to demand has
been given to the Hexateuch, for the following among otheT reasons: (1) The great
activity and interest at present manifested in this criticism; (2) The intricacy of
the problem, which fits its discussion to present all the lights and shadows of the
general work of Biblical Criticism; : (3) The' importance of the discussion with ref
erence to our conceptions of Old-Testament history and revelation; (4) The fact
that in this case criticism makes out 'the 'most complete refutation of that tradi-
ticiial view which has been mistakenly supposed to be essential to a true doctrine
VOL. L 2 il

546 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTURE.
into account the modifications appropriate to each case, to cover
all the composite works of Sacred Scripture. Of such works
many of the books of the Old Testament are examples, although
no other one can be called a growth in the same sense in which
the word applies to the Hexateuch. In the New Testament,
the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts — and they only in a much-
modified form — constitute the sole examples. These different
examples of composite structure exhibit the same phenomena
in different degrees : they may all, with perhaps the exception
of Proverbs, be contrasted with the Hexateuch ui this respect,
that they show a unity of authorship uniting all the composite
material, while the Hexateuch shows rather a unity of redac
tion. Indeed, in the other cases, although with varying de
grees of emphasis, the unity of authorship is the emphatic
consideration. The following few words wiU suffice with reference to the
case of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. That these three
books were originally but one work of the same author, has
been confidently affirmed as an assured result of criticism by
such critics as Zunz, Ewald, Bertheau, Dillmann, Graf, Noldeke,:
and Schrader. This view was pronounced problematic by
Bleek ; according to Nagelsbach, it is stiU by no means beyond
the borders of scientific controvertibility. That the books of
Ezra and Nehemiah were both written by Ezra, is the tradition
of the Talmud ; that Ezra-Nehemiah was originally one work,
may be regarded as fairly established. Assuming that this ,
complex book was by the same author as the two books of
Clironicles, the composite nature of the contents of the whole,
when regarded as united under one work of authorship, raises
many interesting inquiries. We have the difficult task of de
tecting the sources of which this author, who was also a re
dactor, made use. It is enough for our present purpose to
assert, that these sources are really historical, and are used by
the author in good faith, although not without large influence
from his own conceptions of the history and religion belonging
properly to ancient Israel. That Ezra and Nehemiah bear this
trustworthy historical character, can scarcely be denied : this
fact is a witness to the like character of Chronicles, on the the
ory of modern criticism that they all were written by the same
author. And yet the nature of the different parts of this com-
of Sacred Scripture; (5) The inaccessibility of most of the material to the raadeT
of English only.

EZRA-NEHEMIAH AND CHRONICLES. 547
posite and complex whole varies widely. Even in Ezra-Nehe
miah several sources^must be acknowledged. In Ezra vii. 27-
ix., the person Ezra speaks in the first person ; in Ezra vii. 1-11
and X., the same person is spoken of. Neh. i. 1-vii. 5 seems to
have been written by the person Nehemiah ; perhaps also x. 1-
37 and xii. 27-42, but apparently not xii. 1-26 ; while from xiii.
4 on, we have again the work of the same author. We seem,
then, to have in the Book of Nehemiah a work of the person
Nehemiah which has been interpolated in certain passages ; and
then the whole has been worked over, and incorporated into
the Book Ezra-Nehemiah.
Chronicles is the most extended and elaborate historical
work of the Old Testament : its history reaches from Adam to
the end of the Exile under Cyrus. ' All our previous conclu
sions, therefore, teach us to believe that the character of the
book — since its late composition is undoubted — must depend
upon the sources to which the author had access, and the use
which he made of them. Thatthe chronicler was acquainted
with our canonical books of Samuel and Kings, has been held
by Graf, Ewald, Bleek, by Bertheau in his later view, and with
qualifications by Dillmann ; it has been denied by Keil, Haver
nick, and others; it has been called by Zockler the -n-pwrov
i/fEvSos of Graf's theory of this book. We 'beUeve that the
author of Chronicles used writings which were substantially
identical with our present books of Samuel and Kings ; but we
deny that he, out of pure subjectivity and caprice, changed
these sources. Other sources than Samuel and Kings can be
pointed out in this composition, especially the work to which
• reference is frequently made ; viz., " the Book of the Kings of
Israel and Judah." The spirit of the work is undoubtedly
somewhat intensely Levitical and ritualistic : this spirit has to
some extent not only given tone to the work, but has also con
trolled the management of its material. The character of the
work is secondary, and its representations of history on the
whole not so trustworthy as those of the earlier books. But
all this may be admitted without finding ground to consider it
wholly unhistorical, or to accuse its author of arbitrary and
unscrupulous falsifying of history. And, according to the prin
ciples of judgment already established, all this may be admitted
without denying the work a place in Sacred Scripture.
The origin of the Synoptic Gospels is the most wonderful of
i all literary problems: in itself considered, and in its relations to

548 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
our theme, this problem is among the most important. But
after what has already been said in this and preceding chapters,
a very brief statement rather than a discussion of the subject
will suffice. The problem, as related to the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture, concerns both the origin and nature of the contents
of these Gospels, and also the personality of their authors.
In considering the origin and nature of the contents of the
Synoptic Gospels, as related to the origin and nature of Sacred
Scripture, we are forced to regard very remarkable phenomena,
both of similarity and of difference. The phenomena of differ
ence are such as belong to a real authorship and authorial
unity, and yet this authorship and unity are of a peculiar
kind. That different writers will differ in narrating the same
history is an inevitable result of their authorship. This differ
ence will involve the selection and management of their mate
rial, the order and style of their composition, the pragmatic and
dogmatic complexion of their product, the minutiae of the selec
tion and arrangement of words. It is already evident that the
writers of the Synoptic Gospels do thus differ among them
selves, and are therefore authors in the full meaning of the
term. But that writers of narratives whose work it is to give
a brief picture of the same events and the same personality
should agree as do the first three Evangelists, this is a rare and
stimulating phenomenon. And these writers do agree, not only
in having the same general progress and main divisions of their
history, but also in tying together certain groups of incidents,
in surprisingly extended and exact verbal coincidence, in the
common use of rare words and turns of expression, and in the
phrasing of certain quotations from the Old Testament in which
they together depart from both the Hebrew and the LXX.^
To explain these complicated phenomena of agreement and
difference we are obliged, therefore, to rely upon the power of
the constructive imagination, as that power is furnished and
guided by the results of careful criticism. The general reasons
for the phenomena may, indeed, be understood and described
without great difficulty. The contents of the Synoptic Gospels
are themselves the result of a~ previous process of preaching,
writing, hearing, and reflecting; they are, moreover, related,
one to another, in some form and order of acquaintance, and in
the use made by one author of the materials furnished or used
1 For a description of these phenomena, see articles by the author in the pibh-
otheca Sacra, January and April, 1869.

ORIGIN OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 549
by the others. But when we attempt with greater precision
to discriminate and describe the precise extent and order of
this process, our critical means fail us. After all the previous
researches have been taken into the account, we cannot fix with
absolute confidence upon the order of the origin (Matthew,
Mark, Luke; or Mark, Matthew, Luke; or Matthew, Luke,
Mark) of the Synoptic Gospels.^ Nor can we tell how many
and what sources Luke acknowledged himself to be using ; or
what precise form (if any) of the translation of an Aramaic
Matthew, or a Greek Ao'yta, may silently lie underneath the pres
ent First Gospel ; or perhaps whether some more original form
of Mark may not have preceded the present Gospel. We find
good grounds for accepting what may be called the prevalent
critical view, — in spite of the objections of Keim and others, —
viz., that the priority among' the Synoptic Gospels in their pres
ent form plainly belongs to Mark.^ We might proceed with
hypothesis, and describe a supposable form of constructing the
Synoptic Gospels. But, whatever form this hypothesis might
take, it is important to notice that the following three classes
of elements would enter into each one of these Gospels : (1)
elements of oral tradition, whether as fixed by the early preach
ing of the gospel, or as coming to the author's knowledge by
verbal communication of some one informant; (2) elements
from previous written documents, whether one or two of our
canonical Gospels, or one or more of the written sources out of
which these Gospels were formed; (3) elements of persona]
reflection and individual linguistic and other authorial pecu
liarities. As to the personality of the authors of the Synoptic Gospels,
we have, what we do not have in the case of the Pentateuch as
a whole, the assistance of a tradition which can justify itself
against the attacks of criticism. None of these Gospels, indeed,
can in its present form be traced to an apostle: it is even
doubtful how far any one of the written sources used by them
1 No other risumS of the state of the case, and proposal of a probable theory for
these relations, is perhaps on the whole so captivating as that given by Weiss,
Leben Jesu, I. pp. 24^84. The oldest of all the sources of our present Gospels is
the Greek translation of that Aramaic version of the sayings of our Lord which
was made by the Apostle Matthew. Mark was constructed on the basis of tradi
tion derived from Peter, and with the use of the original Matthew; Mark and this
original Matthew were both used by the present -writer of the First Gospel.
^ The priority of Mark among the Synoptic Gospels in their present form ap
pears more evident as seen in the comparative and party-colored text of Eush-
brooke's Synopticon, London, 1880.

550 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
was an apostolic work. But two of the three — viz., Mark, and
with especial confidence Luke — may be claimed to have been
the work of trained and trusted companions of apostles. Of
our present Matthew, the author must remain unknown ; but
the contents of this work, either through the other Evangehsts
or through some writing common to them all, may be indirectly
connected with the personality of an apostle. , That this apostle
was the one according to (Kara) whom the Gospel is affirmed
by the ancient tradition to have been constituted, there is good
reason to believe.
We may sum up the case of the Synoptic Gospels, regarded
as works of composite contents put together by minds who
imparted enough of their ovm thought and ideas to the contents
to justify us in calling them true authors of the works, in the
following way. The contents of these writings came to their
authors at second or later hand. They are, howeyer, histori
cally verified for the substance of their statement by all the
proofs belonging to such contents, and they are indirectly ref
erable to apostolic and early Christian authority. So far as
the elements contributed to the contents by the authors of the
writings are concerned, they may be referred in two instances
to men who were companions of apostles. In the remaming
instance, the composition must be left to speak for itself; this
witness to itself it gives by the very nature of the composition
in such manner as to satisfy all reasonable demands. In all
three cases the contents are such as to make pre-eminent claim
to the title of Sacred Scripture ; for they are substantially true
records, written in the spirit and from the point of view fur
nished by revelation, of the life and teaching of Him who is the
centre of all Scripture, and of all revelation as well. Moreover,
tliis claim from the nature of the contents is enforced by the
fact that the personality of the authors is both the channel of
apostolic impulse and inspiration as promised by Christ to his
apostles, and also the seat of Christian inspiration as vouchsafed
to all believers.
We consider now the cases of those books which have an
undoubted unity of authorship in the stricter sense of the word ;
we consider them as illustrated in the capital instance of the
Gospel of John. In this instance the personality of the author
is raised to the highest grade of importance. Of the Hexateuch
we may say, that, when once its composite nature and various
origin is pointed out, we have only a literary interest in the

THE QUESTION OF PERSONAL AUTHORSHIP. 551
question, who wrote each separate part of the entire record.
In respect to that part of Deuteronomy which the author of
the entke book refers to Moses as his written version of his
own Torah, we have, indeed, a further interest : we have tliis
interest, that the author should be correct in making the claim
when understood as he intended to make it. But even if we
could not substantiate this claim, we might simply have to con
fess again in this instance the general truth: The writers of
Sacred Scripture were not critics, and were not made infallible
in their estimate of the date and authorship of the writings
which they employed as sources. But with regard to such a
book as the Gospel of John, the whole aspect of our inquiries
is changed. The inquiry into the authorship of any writing in
Sacred Scripture, which has a clear claim to be esteemed the
product of one mmd and heart, necessarily lays emphasis upon
the quality of that mind and heart. Sometimes we can discover
this quality only by the writing itself. This is the case with
the Epistle to the Hebrews, on the quite certain conclusion that
it was not the product of the Apostle Paul. This is the case
with the Apocalypse, on tie probable conclusion that it was not
written by the Apostle John. This is the case also with por
tions of Isaiah and Zechariah, on the assumption that they were
not written by the prophets of those names ; and so with most
of the Psalms, and with passages scattered throughout many of
the Old-Testament writers. We do not know who were the
authors of these portions of Sacred Scripture ; but many of
them we hold to be iii the highest sense sacred and inspired,
on the ground that the contents of the writings are obviously
sacred, and obviously show thek authors to have been men of
inspired mind and heart. In such cases we may be quite indif
ferent, except as we are interested iu all such literary problems,
to the question of authorship. Some one composed these writ
ings; they are with us as portions of Sacred Scripture; they
are more or less obviously the work of inspired men. What,
then, if others than David composed hymns of praise, aspiration,
confession, to Jehovah ? What if some one better than Solo
mon exhort us to wisdom by proverbs? And if the second
Isaiah is not also the first, he is certainly quite as much beloved
and blessed of God in his prophecy as was that earlier prophet
whose work has been united witb his in the same manuscript-
roll. If the so-called second Isaiah be an unknown prophet, he
is none the less the "great unknown." To be sure, in cases

552 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTURE.
where the dispute as to authorship lies between a known apos
tolic and an unknown non-apostolic source, we cannot regard
it as a question of merely literary import. We should certainly
be inclined to regard Hebrews differently, if we knew it to be
the work of the Apostle Paul ; the Apocalypse also, if we knew
it to be the work of the Apostle John. But even in such cases,
we have only to substitute — the contents remaining the same
— the guaranty of Christian inspiration in the apostohc age for
the guaranty of apostolic inspiration according to the special
promises and opportunities of the chosen eye-and-ear witnesses
of Jesus Christ.
But in the case of the Fourth Gospel the inquiry is a much
more serious one. We shall not say that the genuineness of
John's Gospel is a question of life or death with our present
conception of Christianity; for this conception would remain
substantially the same if constructed from the Christian con
sciousness upon the elements of fact and doctrine given in the
other writings of the New Testament. And yet, what other
writing of the New Testament has so influenced this conception
as the Gospel ascribed to the Apost^ John ? What other has
so moulded Christian experience? We cannot rashly assert
what changes in doctrine and life would be Avrouglit by the
accepted proof that this writing is a forgery, its alleged history
of subjective origin, its doctrine of Christ the semi-Gnostic
speculations of the second century. That such a case is vastly
more important than that of any of the alleged spurious Epis
tles, or of Daniel, there can be no doubt. The history of the
Canon will show us why, for instance, the Second of Peter, or
James, or Canticles, or Daniel, can never make the same claim
to acceptance which belongs to the undisputed books of Sacred
Scripture. Moreover, the contents of these books are not to be
compared for importance with the contents of John.
For the full treatment of this most important critical inquiry,
the reader must be referred to the standard authorities.^ We
shall only present some of the salient points as they are most
intimately related to our general theme.
We begin by asserting the great antecedent improbability,
not to say full impossibility, that such a forgery should be com
mitted and foisted in the writings of the early Christian Church.
1 For the literature of this question, see Gregory's Appendix to the English
translation of Luthardt's work, " St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel,"
Edinburgh, 1875; and article in Smith's Bible Dictionary (American ed.).

THE DESIRE FOE PSEUDONYMOUS AVORKS. 553
Kostlin ^ has attempted, indeed, to show how by tha two forces
of conservatism and progress, operating upon the material of
the Old Testament, a history might be changed in character by
the substitution of idea for fact. Thus that idealizing way of
construing the Old Testament which is met with in Paul (for
instance. Gal. iv. 22), and throughout Hebrews, developed into
the method used in the writings of Justin, Tertullian, Lactan
tius, and the Epistle of Barnabas. Justin is so certain that
the Jewish codices ought to contain these needed passages of
Scripture, as frequently to charge the Jews with having ex
punged them.2 In the epistles ascribed to Ignatius, the same
idealizing process is applied to the person and history of Jesus.
The Christology of the Epistle to the Trallians finds itself much
too lofty and mystical to conform to the facts as given by the
Synoptic Gospels. In Ignatius ^ the birth of Jesus is accompa
nied by the appearance of a star which outshines all the others,
and gathers them about itself; his baptism is no longer the
pious conformity to a religious custom, but takes place iva rw
¦aoBei TO vScop KaOapicrg.^ The Very natural fact that there was
great popular eagerness to hear traditions concerning Christ
and the apostles resulted, Kostlin thinks, in much looseness of
principle and practice for the sake of gratifying thia eagerness.
Soon strong motives to refer constantly to the apostolic au
thority as a source of doctrine were everywhere felt; such
motives were partly apologetic, pa,rtly irenic, partly anti-hereti
cal. Moreover, there was not the same reverence which the
Church afterward felt for the apostles, with respect to the use
of their names and the effort closely to follow them in doctrine.
These appeals to apostolic authority to apologize for Chris
tianity, to pacify the Church, to oppose heretics, and to set
forth new doctrine with prestige, resulted, therefore, in many
pscMdo-apostolic writings.
As to the diligence and discrimination of the early Church
with respect to pseudonymous literature, when applying for
admission to the Canon, we shall remark elsewhere. It is
enough to say here, that the Gospel of John constitutes a case
largely unhke any other pseudonymous work, whether actually
received into the Canon or applying for such reception at the
hands of the early Church. This writing is prevented from
the comparison with any other case of pseudonymous Christian
' Die pseudonyme Literatur der altesten Kirche, Theol. Jahrbb. 1851, p. 149 f.
^ Dial, cum Tryph., 71, 72, 73, 120. 3 Ep. ad Eph., c. 19. * Ibid., c. 18.

554 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
writing : (1) by the subtle way in which it claims apostolic au
thorship as contrasted with the general ethical character of the
book ; (2) by the fact that its history requires careful analy
sis to reconcile it with the synoptic history, while the differ
ences are great and obvious ; (3) by the fact that a case cannot
be made out against the author as perverting any of the facts
of history for subjective considerations; (4) by the superior
scrutiny which the very contents of the book challenge ; and,
finally (5), by the fact that the acknowledgment of the book as
presumably genuine can be traced back too early to admit of
its foisting in as a forg'ery. It sbould require, then, the very
strongest proof to convince us that such a work was composed
and accepted within the early Chtirch, although spurious and
unauthentic. We turn now to the establishing of the last of the above-
mentioned objections to the possibility of regarding the Fourth
Gospel as ungenuine. That the external evidence for the Gos
pel of John shows no Weakness or gap which justifies the denial
of its genuineness, is admitted by some of the opponents of that
genuineness ; thus Keim ^ admits that the external testimonies
reach about as far baek in its case as in that of any one of the
Evangelists. We note at this point the important truth, that
criticism has been growing more conservative upon this ques
tion, and that there has been a recession from the late dates
fixed by Baur and Schwegler. Few now venture to fix the
writing and promulgation of this Gospel later than 140 A.D. ;
while Keim at one time dropped the date of its origin down
even to 100-117.^ As to the existence of a uniform and firmly
fixed tradition of the Church in the second half of the second
century, we need present Httle evidence; for the fact is not
disputed, and neither is the fact that the tradition of this period
underlies all the subsequent forms of tradition. Irenaeus
(t 202), whose connections with Asia Minor make his testimony
especially valuable, designates John as the latest of our Evan
gelists, and reports that he wrote his Gospel during his resi
dence in Ephesus, and directed it against the errors of Cerinthus
and the Nicolaitans.^ He regards it as a kind of moral necessity
that there should be four, and only four. Gospels.* Clement of
1 Geschichte Jesu, 1867-1872, 1, p. 137.
2 See Mangold's note in Bleek, Einl. in das N. T., p. 258 f. ; Dr. Ezra Abbot,
Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, p. 11 f.
s Adv. Haer,, III. 1, 1, and 11, 1. i III. 11, 8 and 9.

THE ARGUMENTUM E SILENTIO. 555
Alexandria reports that John wrote last of the Evangelists, and
because he perceived that in the other Evangelists the things
somatic were made evident (ra awpariKo. SeSr^Xwrai), and that at
the request of his followers, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, he
composed it as a pneumatic Gospel (irvevp-aTiKov e-ua-yyiXiov).^
When we add to these most direct testimonies such others as
might be gathered from individual writers and from the pres
ence of this Gospel in the earliest lists of canonical New-Testa
ment Scripture, we are founding in assured facts an argument
which reaches back beyond the facts themselves. This general
and unquestioning acceptance, involves a preceding process.
Different critics may differ as to the amount of time necessary
for the completion of this process, but none can fairly admit
that the case is not so strong as to need much evidence for its
overthrow. It is undoubted truth, that in the last quarter of
the second century the scattered parts of the Christian commu
nity had akeady for some time come unquestioningly to regard
the Fourth Gospel as the work of the Apostle John.
In examining history for traces of the existence of this Gos
pel previous to the middle of the second century, the amount
and clearness of the evidence recognized wUl depend largely
upon the presumptions taken into the examination. Those who
iind these traces unsatisfactory err in one or more of the three
following ways : they expect a different kind and degree of evi
dence from that which belongs to the age ; they make an un
warranted use of the argument from the silence of the ancient
authors ; they readily resort to supposititious and assumed apoc
ryphal writings to account for the very phenomena for which
the admission of the existence of John's Gospel is itself the best
account. The meagre and indirect and disputable nature of
much of the testimony is explained (1) by the paucity of early
Christian writings ; (2) by the loose and uncertain character of
all the citations (even from the Old Testament) which these
writings contain; (3) by the fact that no definite canonical
authority had as yet been given to any of the New-Testament
writings ; and, in many cases, (4) by the nature of the treatise,
or the persons addressed, where the alleged citation occurs.
The shifting use of the argumentum e silentio characterizes
the entire controversy. Hilgenfeld ^ asserted in 1850 that the
Clementine Homilies contained not a single example of the usa
1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI. 14.
2 Krit. Untersuch. iiber d. Ev. Justins, p. 388.

556 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
of John. But when in 1853 Dressel edited, from a cudex in
the Vatican, the missing conclusion of the Homilies, there
appeared in it ^ a significant citation from John's narrative of
the ma!.n born blind (ix. 2, 3). The other " echoes " from this
Gospel contained in the Homilies could then no longer — as
Hilgenfeld had formerly done — be assigned to a supposititious
source in the Gospel of Peter. The silence of the Homilies
could no longer be claimed to show that the Fourth Gospel did
not exist prior to 160. But the paucity of citations could stUl
be made to show that it was then regarded as somewhat new
and interloping.
The ready assumption of new and unknown apocryphal writ
ings, or of passages suited to meet the case from writings about
which little more than the name is known, was more resorted
to some years since than of late. Thus Davidson ^ was ready
to follow the expedient of Volkmar and others, when pressed to
acknowledge an objective connection between Justin and John.
Both Justin and the author of the Clementine Homilies, it was
affirmed, drew from the " Gospel according to the Hebrews."
Davidson was even ready to assert the priority of Justin to John.
And "Supernatural Religion," in order to escape the charge
of temerity which it brings against Tischendorf for claiming
Justin as a witness for the Fourth Gospel, labors through some
fifty pages to the conclusion that " the writings of Justm not
only do not furnish the slightest evidence of its existence, but
offer presumptive testimony against its apostolical origin.""
But that Justin was acquainted with the Fourth Gospel can be
maintained from his doctrine of the Logos ; for, although Justin
was probably much affected upon this point by Philo and the
Alexandrine philosophy, he could have derived his doctrine of
the incarnation from this Gospel alone.* That the doctrine
of Justin is developed from that of the Gospel, Professor Drum
mond and others have placed beyond reasonable doubt. Indeed,
after the examination which Dr. Ezra Abbot has given to the
claim that the celebrated passage in the sixty-first chapter of
the apology is so unlike John iii. 3-5 that it could not have
1 Hom. XIX. 22.
2 Introduction to the Study of the New Testament, London, 1868, II. p. 374 f .
= Vol. II. pp. 271-316.
< See especially the phrase aj-epcairos yevop-eva^, Apol., I. cc. 5, 23; and a score of ref
erences given by Dr. Ezra Abbot, Ibid. p. 42. Compare the articles by Professor
Drummond from which these references are largely taken, Theol. Kev., 1877, April
and July.

EAELY CITATIONS FEOM JOHN. 557
been quoted from the Gospel, the controversy upon this point
may be said to be closed. It may also be said to be settled
once for all, that Justin was acquainted with the Gospel oi
John. Hilgenfeld ^ admits the use of John by Justin in an iso
lated and subordinate way. Keim ^ says, " It is easy to show
that the Martyr had before his eyes a whole series of Johannean
passages." Weizsacker ^ has declared that the writings of Jus
tin are full of the echoes of the doctrine of the Logos in John.
We have evidence in Justin Martyr, then, which carries the
promulgation of the Fourth Gospel at least a decade or two
back of the middle of the second century. For the First Apol
ogy of this author must in all likelihood be placed somewhere
between the extreme dates, — 138 A.D. and 155 A.D. (Keim),
—and probably belongs to the years 146-148^
Several unmistakable citations from John in the Oratio ad
Graecos of Tatian, a pupil of Justin ; the existence of at least
two attempts at a harmony, involving the use of this Gospel,
soon after the middle of the second century ; the citation from
1 John iv. 3, in the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, on
the only tenable supposition that Gospel and Epistle are by the
same author;* the charge of Tertullian against Marcion that
he rejected the Gospels quae propria et sub Apostolorum nomine
eduntur, regarded as giving the very probable opinion of the
Church Father that this heretic about 140 A.D. rejected John ; ^
the acquaintance of Papias with the Gospel, which is proved by
dkect testimony to his acquaintance with the First Epistle, and
by several forms of indirect testimony,^ — these and other lines
of evidence carry back the argument to a like antiquity.
But still other evidence seems to reach back yet farther, and
even into the first quarter of the second century. This more
ancient evidence is in part derived from the unchallenged use
of this Gospel which was made by the Gnostic sect of the
Valentinians. That this sect did make use of this Gospel,
¦¦ 1 Evangehen, p. 346; and Einl. in das N. T., p. 734.
2 Geschichte Jesu, I. p. 138.
' See article in the Jahrbiicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1867.
* It is only as influenced by the desire to disprove the genuineness of the Gos
pel, that Baur, Schwegler, Zeller, and Hilgenfeld could deny the identity of its
authorship with that of the First Epistle.
' Adv. Marc, IV. 3.
^ Keim admits the acquaintance of PapiaS with the Fourth Gospel, but thinks
that Papias did not regard it as of apostolic authority. So Hilgenfeld, Der Kanon,
l'' 25. As to the significance of the " silence of Eusebius," we shall consider tho
trie view in the chapter on the Canon.

558 THE DOCTEINE OF 'SACEED SCRIPTURE.
Irenaeus assures us in the following words: "Hi autem qui
a Valentino sunt eo quod est secundum Joannem plenissime
utentes." ^ A pupil of Valentinus, Ptolemaeus, in his Epistle to
Flora,2 ascribes John i. 3 to " the apostle." Tertullian repre
sents Valentinus as himself making use of John for the establish
ing of his false doctrine.^ But the date of Ptolemaeus' work is
at the earliest not the other side of 150 A.D. (so Bleek), and
the testimony of Irenaeus may be held to be valid only for the
sects in his own day. We are then thrown upon the statement
of Tertullian in proof that Valentinus himself was acquainted
with the Fourth Gospel, — a statement which has been as much
over-maligned by some as it has been over-estimated by others.
Confirmatory evidence to this statement seems to be afforded
by the writing of Hippolytus, first edited by E. Miller under the
title " Origenis Philosophumena," Oxford, 1851. In this writ
ing (VI. c. 33, 34) the Devil is called o apxwv rov Kotrpov tow-ov
(compare John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11), and John x. 8 is given
as the word of Christ (VI. c. 35). The Philosophumena con
tain abundant references to the ideas and words of the Gos
pel, and these ideas and words are attributed to the earhest
of the Gnostic sects. But the loose manner of citation (<ifqirC),
and the compounding of the various sects into one Gnostic .
system without distinctions of time and development of doc
trine, do not permit us to affirm with certainty that Hippolytus
cites from Valentinus. When, however, this same writing
(VII. 22) cites a lengthy passage, with apparently verbal
accuracy, from Baskides,* another founder of a Gnostic sect;
and when this citation contains a passage from the prologue of
the Gospel (i. 9), and an utterance of Jesus at the marriage at
Cana, the argument becomes all that could be required. The
attempt to make out that Hippolytus is here only citing a later
Graecized form of the Gnostic system is only a subterfuge,
Basilides about the year 125 A.D. used the Gospel of John.^
Without asserting the wortlilessness of undoubted references^
to the Gospel in the Ignatian Epistles, on account of doubts as to
1 Adv. Haer., III. 11, 7. 2 Epiphanius, XXXIII. 3.
3 De praesc. Haer., c. 38. * See De Groot, Basilides, ed. Leipzig, 1868.
6 See Abbot, Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, p. 85 f., for a brief statement
of the present state of critical opinion. See Jacobi, Zeitschrift fur Kirchenge-'
schichte, 1876-1877, pp. 481-544; and Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift f. wissenschaftliche
Theologie, 1878, pp. 228-250, — for two recent discussions on opposite sides.
0 Such is the reference to John iv. and vi., which is made in both the shorter
Greek and tho Syriac recensions of Ep. ad Kom., c. 7.

THE WITNESS WITHIN THE GOSPEL. 659
thek date, genuineness, and integrity of text, we are willing to
dispense with the help of their evidence.
But we bave in the New Testament itself two confirmatory
witnesses for the genuineness of the Gospel of John. That the
entke chap. xxi. is by a later hand than that of the body of
the writing (probably, with the exception of verse 24 f., by the
author of the book), seems evident from the close of the pre
ceding chapter, and especially from the declaration of xxi. 24.
Without doubt the person who affirms of himself and others,
" We know (o'tEapev) that his witness is true (dXij^^s avrov -fj paprvpta
irriv)," is an unknown witness to the most ancient acceptance
of the Gospel. But this chapter is itself found in the earliest
MSS. and translations. That 2 Pet. i. 14 recognizes the tradi
tion which underlies John xxi. 18, we are confident ; although
the uncertainty of the date of the Epistle renders uncertain
the value of its supposed testimony to the Gospel.
In opposition to this evidence, which carries the traces of the
Fourth Gospel, with as strong probability as fitly belongs to the
case, back into the first quarter of the second century, there is
nothing to allege. Opponents of its genuineness on critical
grounds are not to be found in the history of early Chiistianity,
whether in the Church Catholic or among the sects. The im
port of the statement of Irenaeus,^ which is preserved only in
the Latin translation, when he speaks of certain ones who
"Ulam speciem non admittunt quae est secundum Joannis
evangelium," is not quite clear. Probably these heretics are
the so-called Alogi who denied that this Gospel was by John,
— the same persons of whom Epiphanius speaks.^ Those who
held these views attempted to justify them in part by pointing
out historical contradictions between John and the Synoptists.
But the real source of thek opposition to the Gospel was their
opposition to every thing deemed fanatical ; and so to the Logos
doctrine, and especially to the claim of the Montanists that their
leader was the Paraclete promised in John.^ The worthlessness
of thek critical judgment is seen in the fact that they ascribed
the Gospel to Cerinthus.
From the days of the Alogi to the weak attacks of the last
of the eighteenth and early years of the nineteenth centuries
the Fourth Gospel was universally accepted without question
In 1820 Bretschneider presented in thek modern form and
1 Adv. Haer., in. 11, 9. '^ Haer., LL
8 See Bleek, Beitrage zur Ev.-Krit., pp. 207-211.

560 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTURE.
critical connections the arguments against it.^ An era of criti
cism respecting this writing was introduced by Strauss and the
Tiibingen school.
In connection with these modern attacks, and beginning with
the monograph of Liitzelberger,^ the attempt has been made to
impeach the tradition, which, since the middle of the second
century, has assigned the last years of the apostle's activity
to Asia Minor and Ephesus. For this attempt, almost the only
impressive argument is from the skence of some of the apostohc
Fathers, and especially of the Ignatian Epistles.^ But the silence
of Writings of such a doubtful character as these epistles can
not contravene the positive testimony of Polycrates and Irenae
us ; the former of whom says definitely, in his Epistle to Victor,
that John died at Ephesus,* and the latter frequently refers to
John as having lived there.^ The view of Liitzelberger, after
being elaborated by Keim, Wittichen, Holtzmann, and Scholt
en, has been sufficiently refuted by HUgenfeld, Weizsacker,
Steitz, Krenkel, and others. The relation of this question to
that established opinion of the Tubingen school which affirms
the authorship of the Apocalypse by the Apostle John, and at
the same lime denies that the Apocalypse and the Gospel could
have been by the same author, is decisive. If the apostle wrote
the Apocalypse, he was in proconsular Asia ; if he did not write
it, the verity of the tradition which places him there is needed
to explain the false tradition of authorship.
In conclusion, we must affirm of the external evidence for
the Gospel of John, that it is so early and consentient as to
require for its refuting the clearest counter-evidence. That
such a pseudonymous writing could arise between the very last
years of the first century, when the apostle was still Hving and
teaching at Ephesus, and the later years of the first quarter of
the second century, and then from the latter date be unques
tioningly accepted alike by the Church Catholic and by the most
influential of the sects, — this makes a great demand upon our
credulity, even though we are not warranted in pronouncing it
absolutely impossible.
The clearest counter-evidence is, however, thought to be
1 Probabilia de Evangel, et Ep. Joannis Apost. indole et origine. In 1828,
Preface to his Dogmatik, he explained his doubts as inquiries intended to draw
out discussion, and expressed his satisfaction with the answers.
2 Die kirchl. Tradition iiber den Ap., etc., Leipzig, 1840.
3 Compare Ep. ad Eph., c. 12; and Ep. ad Tral., c. 5.
* Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., V. 24; compare III. 31. « See Adv. Haer., Xll. 3.

THE CLAIMS OF THE AUTHOR OF JOHN. 661
found in the Fourth Gospel itself, and in its relations to the
Synoptists and to the Gnostic speculations of early Christian
ity. Let us, then, see whether this be so. But in this kind of
seeing much depends upon the state of the mind's eye. We
cannot claim to be without the desire to make out a case for
the genuineness of the Gospel ; but this is surely no more like
Wind prejudice than the deske to make out a case against it.
And first of all we propose a few thoughts concerning the
consciousness of the author. This consciousness is so manifestly
that of the purest and loftiest Christian experience as to require
neither exhibition nor argument for the critical purposes of this
discussion. But it is equally manifest, that no other writkig of
the New Testament — not even the Epistles to the Ephesians
and Colossians, or that to the Hebrews — makes such a clear
and serene claim to an inspired and true view of the inmost
contents and eternal essence of Christianity as does the Gospel
of John.^ Apostle or not, this author claims to know by reve
lation what is the inmost personality of Jesus Christ, and what
are the trne divine connections of this personality. The claim,
unlike any sknkar implied claim in such a philosopher as Philo,
is an intimate and integral part of the author's Christian con
sciousness. Apostle or not, he claims to write as one who
could verify the promise of the Spkit made by Jesus to those
who were his chosen eye-and-ear witnesses (xiv. 26), as one
who writes out of that consciousness which is the gift of this
promised Spirit (xv. 26 f.). Moreover, by a somewhat compli
cated series of indications it is made clear that the author
intends to be understood as writing in the name of the Apostle
John. There is no doubt that the disciple repeatedly referred
to (xiii. 23, xix. 26, xx. 2, xxi. 7, 20) as the one " whom Jesus
loved (ov ¦Yiyd-Tra [ei^tXet] o 'Irjaovs) is meant to be designated, xxi.
24, as the author of the Gospel.^ The connections which the
author makes between himself and the eye-and-ear witness of
the Apostle John are often very subtle. In proof of the fore
going statement, examples may be found in his alleged acquaint
ance with the high-priest Annas (xviii. 15) ; the notice of his
first meeting with Jesus (i. 35-42); the commission by Jesus
of his mother to the disciple (xix. 26) ; and the fact that the
author does not once find it necessary to distinguish the John
1 Compare Kostlin, Theol. Jahrbiicher, 1851, p. 199.
' The attempt of Liitzelberger to find in these words a reference to Andrew is
maefeasible. VOL L 2 N

562 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
(6 (iairrLarrjs) whom he does name from the unnamed apostle.
The fact that he has been an eye-and-ear witness,^ the author
intends to assert, i. 14 (Kal iOeao-dpxOa ryjv Sofw avrov) and xix. 35
(Kat 6 ewpaKws pepjxpr-uprjKev) .^ If the claims to inspired insight,
to which attention has just been called, are mere pretension,
they are certainly boundless pretension ; if the claims to be an
eye-and-ear witness, to be indeed no other than the Apostle
John, are historically false, they are also remarkably crafty and
sly. But such pretension and craft we find it extremely diffi
cult to reconcile with the manifest purity and loftiness of the
author's Christian consciousness. Upon a judgment of this sort
of probabilities, we decline to yield the superiority to technical
criticism. It is plain, however, that the author writes from the depths
of a reflective consciousness. His insight appears to be no
mere result of sudden seizure by the spirit of revelation : it is
rather a growth of much meditation and affectionate care. This
very fact causes the question to be raised. How far does the
writer intend to give history or narrative of fact, and how far
merely ideas in an historical setting ? Beyschlag is quite right
in objecting to the answer which Keim suggested when he
affirmed that the Fourth Gospel is "in distinction from the
others not a purely historical, but an eminently practical, one."
For, as Beyschlag ^ joins Hase * in asserting, the other Evangel
ists also have not simply an historical, but pre-eminently a reli
gious, purpose. That the author of John has new conceptions
of Christ to introduce, we will not call in question ; but then
so had also the Apostle Paul. The latter is not for that reason,
however, to be accused of fabricating those instances of the
appearance of Jesus after his resurrection which he is the only
one to introduce. That the idea has shaped and fused and
glorified the historical facts, we do not refuse to believe. That
it has in certain cases so fused itself with the facts as to make
it difficult to distinguish between the bare objective facts and
the author's spiritual comprehension of and commentary upon
them, we are not loath to believe. But in those very portions
1 On the self-witness of the Gospel, see Weitzel, Stud. u. Krit., 1849, pp. 578-638;
and Kostlin, Ibid., 204 f.
2 The cKeli'o! of xix. 35 has been made to refer to some third person cited by the
author as his authority. That eKeii-os can be used of one speaking of himself, see
Buttmann, Stud. u. Krit., 1860, p. 505 f. That the iBea,T6.p.zBa is not subjective seeing
like that in the passage from Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., v. 1, 1, quoted by Kostlin, the
whole tenor of the book makes clear.
s Zur johanneischen Frage, p. 6 f. < Die Tiibinger Schule, p. 35.

THE GOSPEL NOT SPECULATIVE. 663
of his work where the idea has its pre-eminent influence, it is
always as an influence upon facts which the author claims him
self to have seen and heard. And how far he is from mere
speculation, the most speculative portion of his work may make
us aware. How rapidly does he pass over the inviting field of
doctrine pertaining to the pre-historic Logos, in order that he
may no later than the sixth verse of the first chapter speak of
the historical John the Baptist as the forerunner of the histori
cal Jesus Christ ! ^ It is he, the Logos made flesh, to whom the
faith of those who are to become cliiklren of God must attach
itself (i. 12-14). In the most mystical of his passages the
fundamental historical facts of the gospel, viz., that Jesus lived
and died in the flesh, are never lost out of sight. This may be
history as understood and depicted in the light of an idea, but
it is not speculation objectifying itself in a fabricated statement
of facts. Here, again, to suppose that the inmost religious con
sciousness of the author of the Fourth Gospel would permit
him to deal lightly with such facts, is only permissible when
the strongest evidence has been produced that this was the
case. So closely, indeed, does he attach his idea to the details
of history, that he has been held liable to the suspicion of " rab
binizing " in his interpretation of Old-Testament prophecy (xix.
24, 36, 37).
Can, then, this strong antecedent probability derived from the
external testimony, re-enforced as it is by the first impressions
gamed from the whole temper and style of the Gospel, be over
come by other internal evidences ? In further answer to this
question we must call attention to the relations in which the
Fourth stands to the other Gospels. We must not forget that
these relations are primarily literary relations, about some of
the elements of which there need be little or no doubt.^ The
Fourth Gospel followed the others : it presupposed an acquaint
ance with them, or with the writings and traditions out of which
they were composed, on the part of its author and his readers.
We cannot, however, suppose that these relations are purely
those of literary dependence : they are not such to the same
extent as is claimed by Holtzmann and others.^ The motives
¦ Contrast with the truth theoffensive declaration of the author of Supernatural
Eeligion, who accuses John of substituting for the "sublime morality" of the
Synoptists " a scheme of dogmatic theology" (II. p. 464).
^ See Beyschlag, Ibid., p. 54 f.
^ Por the view of Holtzmann, see Zeitschrift fiir wissensoh. Theologie, 1869.
pp. 62ff.

564 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and methods of the author of John's Gospel do, nevertheless,
furnish us with a general reason for his omitting most of the
facts and sayings which the Synoptists mclude. Special reasons
need to be given for points of contact rather than of diver
gence, when this Gospel is compared with the others; this truth
holds good, however, only up to the place at which the diver
gence becomes so great as to make it extremely difficult to
believe that both pictures of Jesus are substantially correct.
The entire method of Baur and his foUowers, when they intro
duce the author's idea — or rather their speculations as to his
idea — to account for omissions and alleged discrepancies, is at
once to be rejected. To suppose that the author of the Fourth
Gospel would undertake to obscure facts which had formed the
very warp and woof of evangelistic preaching and church
instruction for one or two generations previous, by merely pass
ing them over in silence, is to suppose him capable of the gross
est folly. But whenever he deals with incidents narrated also
by the Synoptists, and already long familiar to his readers, a
probable reason must be assigned for his dealing with them at
all. This reason is the design either to correct (as in. 24, and
possibly the changed time for the cleansing of the temple) or to
supplement (as in the ease of several minute historical notices
soon to be discussed) the preceding accounts.
We do not, then, feel as a crushing weight the force of the
question vktually discussed by Keim:^ Can a Gospel which
has only a selection of what is most difficult and exalted, and
yet undertakes to depict a course of particulars, give a true
picture ? For a selection of particulars with a view to exhibit
an ideal truth through them does not necessarily destroy the
historical character of a production, nor even merit the unquali
fied charge of being one-sided ; nor do we find in John's diver
gence from the Synoptic picture of Jesus a decisive proof of
the unhistorical character of his Gospel. In general we may
allege : It is to be expected that a Gospel in which an eye-and-
ear witness aims, on the basis of selected incidents of history
and selected discourses of Jesus, to set forth an idea of his per
sonality which is the result of long reflection, will differ from
Gospels in which those who were not such witnesses have
gathered into literary products materials which were derived
from the sources of oral tradition and fragmentary documents.
1 See Geschichte Jesu, I. pp. 121-136. The Gospel is indeed, as Keim calls it,
an Auswahl-Evangelium, p. 122.

THEOLOGICAL POSITION OF JOHN. 665
But are we to be told that we must therefore take our choice
between the two pictures of Jesus looked at in the gross?
This we decline to do. We maintain, rather, that when due
allowance is made for the nature of tradition and the limitations
of compilation, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, for
the effect of reflective Christian consciousness upon facts really
seen and heard, the two pictures may be blended in one.
Let us briefly test this claim in several particulars ; and, first,
as to the difference of theological position and form. The
theological position and form of the Fourth Gospel are, accord
ing to many critics, Hellenic, and belong to the second century.
Especial emphasis is laid upon the external and sometimes con
temptuous fashion with which its author speaks of the Jews.
Thek customs are alluded to as foreign (ro •rrda-xa twv louSatW, or
6 m6apia-pos twi/ 'lovSatW, etc. : sce ii. 6, 13, iii. 1, v. 1, vi. 4, vii. 2,
xi. 55) : they themselves are in one place, it is said, represented
as spoken of by Jesus as sons of the Demiurg6, — a genuine
Gnostic term of reproach. But this last charge ^ is built upon
a pretentious and false interpretation of John viii. 44. And as
to the objection, considering the time and circumstances in
which the Gospel was written by the Apostle John, we have no
difficulty in supposing that his attitude toward his own coun
trymen had become changed, as necessitated by recognition of
the fact that they had persistently and spitefully rejected Jesus
and persecuted his followers. We are also warranted in the
opinion, that some of the precise forms of language which the
author employs upon this subject mingle his commentary upon
the character of the Jews with his report of what Jesus said to
them.2 On the other hand, plain traces of his being a Pales
tinian Jew are found in his expressions, "Behold a genuine
Israehte " (i. 48) ; " salvation is of the Jews " (iv. 22), etc. ; in
his mterest in the fate of his nation (xi. 51 f.), and in his
minute historical and archaeological knowledge of the scenes
and incidents in the life of Jesus. And, although we cannot
claim with Bleek that his citations from the Old Testament are
any of them certainly taken from the Hebrew, we can point out
abundant Hebraisms in his language.^
' So Hilgenfeld, Evangelien, p. 288 f.
^ For example, xv. 25 (compare x. 34), where the law of Moses is spoken of a:?
your law, an expression which Mangold thinks could never have been used by
Jesns. Paul also speaks in similar way of the Jews and their religion : see art
icle of Professor Fisher, Princeton Eev., July, 1881, p. 62.
* Upon this point there is a tolerable agreement amongst critics of differout

566 THE DOCTRINE OF SACEED SCRIPTURE.
But especially do the hostile critics insist that the Christology
of the Fourth Gospel is too remote from the views of the other
Gospels, and of their time, to be placed earlier than the second
century. Moreover, it originated from Philo and the Gnostic
speculations, rather than from the reflective and inspked con-
ciousness of an apostle, reasoning upon the basis of Old-
Testament doctrine, and of facts which he had seen and truths
which he had heard from Christ himself. But consider: (1)
The specific Logos doctrine, so far as it is definitely taught and
embodied in the word Logos, is confined to the prologue of the
Gospel. It is set forth as the doctrine of the author himself,
and is not put into the mouth of Jesus, or of any other character
of the history. This forbearance indicates historic truthfulness.
(2) So far as concerns the teaching ascribed to Christ touching
his own personality, the Gospel of John is not radically unlike
the Synoptists. (3) Germs of a similar doctrine existed in the
Old Testament, and were developed in the apocryphal writings,
especially of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon. Moreover,
certain passages in the Synoptists show that the teaching bf
Christ himself, as understood by the narrators of his Ike and
doctrine in the first century, led up toward the doctrine of
John. In the writings of Paul we find, without the term .
Logos, an advanced form of the doctrine of the pre-existence
and divine nature of Christ. 1 Pet. i. 11 designates the Spirit
of prophecy in the Old Testament as rb iv airots m/ev/ia Xpta-rov.
The Apocalypse (according to these critics, a confessedly apos
tolic writing) teaches that Christ is 17 apx-fj rrjs Krlaews (in. 14), and
gives to him glorified the titles belonging to the divine name
(see i. 17, ii. 8, xix. 16, xxii. 13) : it even calls him 6 Xoyos rdi Oeov,
although the words are not used in their full Johannean sense
(xix. 13). (4) The intermediate position of the Fourth Gospel,
as an apostolic writing, is needed to account for the later forms
of the Logos doctrine. It is quite impossible to understand
the language of Justin Martyr fairly, without admitting that he
appeals to this apostolic authority for his doctrine of the Logos.^
If, then, we admit with Liicke,^ that the transition from the
Old Testament and its apocryphal writings to the Fourth Gos-
schools. See in Sanday (Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gos
pel, London, 1872, pp. 28 f. and 289 f.), who quotes largely from Wittichen, Ev.
Joh., pp. 5-7.
1 See Dial., cc. 48 and 105 ; and compare the argument o! Drummond in the
article referred to, and of Dr. Ezra Abbot, Ibid., 42 f.
- Commentary, I. p. 265.

ARGUMENT FEOM THE LOGOS DOCTEINE. 567
pel could only have been made through Philo, we have none
the less ground for claiming that the transition from Philo to
Justin Martyr, and the other Church Fathers, could have been
made only through an apostolic writing like John. (5) The
Gospel of John is not docetic, as are the Gnostic writings of the
second century : the effort to make out a case against the Gos
pel upon this ground utterly fails. As to the possibility in the
first century of a Jewish-Christian view of Jesus which should
include the two elements of his manhood and his pre-existent
divine nature, we have other New-Testament wi'itings in proof.
It has been asserted that the author of the Fourth Gospel in
tends by his skence, and by his form of treatment, to discredit
the bkth, baptism, conflict with temptation, and real suffering
of Jesus.^ His bkth, however, — not to press too much the
meaning of crdp$ in i. 14, — is alluded to (xviii. 37) ; his brothers
(ii. 12, vu. 5), his mother (ii. 1, xix. 25), his father (i. 46), all
appear as ordinary personages. He is even called " son of Jo
seph," an expression as far as possible from Gnostic docetism.
His bodky sufferings and weakness are alluded to (iv. 6, 7, 8, 31,
xix. 28) ; vehement disturbances of soul are attributed to him
(xi. 15 contrasted with xui. 21, xi. 33-38, xii. 27 f.), and even
strong anger (xi. 33, 38). Nor is his gradual development by
any means denied. He is represented as learning of things in
the ordinary human fashion (xi. 3-6, 34).
We find, then, nothing in the Christology or general doctrinal
position of the Fourth Gospel which prevents our considering it
as the result of apostolic and inspired reflection upon the same
facts as those to which all the Gospels refer.
But the miracles recorded in this writing are a particular
offence to many critics ; and certainly their value to apologetics
is by no means too small to account for this offence. Besides
the general objections against all miracles, in which these have
thek full share, we are warned that the miracles of the Fourth
Gospel are unkke those of the Synoptists, and are regarded by
their narrator from an unreal and speculative point of view.
Now, if we had to admit exaggerations and misunderstandings
of the miraculous deeds of Jesus in this Gospel, this would not
of itself prove the author not to have been an eye-and-ear wit
ness. But we are compelled to no such admission ; for it is not
true of the seven mkacles recorded by John, that all or any of
'them are so essentially different from those of the Synoptists
1 Compare Keim, Geschichte Jesu, I. p. 110 f.

568 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
as to suggest the theory of another and higher kind of influence
than that elsewhere attributed to Jesus. Indeed, one of the
most stupendous of all the miracles — the miraculous multipli
cation of the loaves — is attested by all the Evangelists. And,
as Beyschlag^ insists, the very fact of selection involves the
choice of what is more astounding and extraordinary, or at
least more impressive for the author's purpose. The theory of
Baur, that the author is engaged in setting up miracles that he
may show the valueless character of a faith which is attached
to them, is absolutely without proof.^ The purpose for which
the miracles are brought forward, the writer of the Gospel
sufficiently defines (a-ripela, xx. 30, 31) : it is in order that faith
may be produced in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. This
purpose is such as makes an accusation of fabricating the his
tory of the miracles no less grave than an accusation of impious
fraud. Again, the discourses of Jesus, as recorded in the Fourth
Gospel, show a marked peculiarity. This peculiarity is one
which differences them somewhat widely from those of the
Synoptists, although the amount and bearing of the difference
raay readily be exaggerated. It cannot be denied, however,
that a considerable difference really exists, and has also in all
the past been observed and acknowledged.^ But consider the
contrast which must always exist between the facts of Christ's
discourses, and the record which we have of them. For several
years together, some parts of which were crowded with the
intensest activity, he spoke to the people. This speech was
various in occasion, in manner, in the characteristics of the
subjects taught, and with respect to the characters and needs
of its hearers. And we have preserved in the Synoptists not
so much of the whole as would require, for hearing it, as many
hours as the years during which Jesus taught. Moreover, even
that small amount of the discourses of Jesus which is preserved
in the Synoptists owes its peculiarities in part to the manner of
its preservation ; for the Synoptists give us only specimens, or
examples as it were, which the early preachers of the gospel,
1 Zur johanneischen Frage, p. 172.
2 See Professor Fisher, Princeton Eeview, July, 1881, p. 78 ; and Supernatural
Origin of Christianity, p. 138 f.
8 Justin Martyr cannot be judged to have been unacquainted with John,
because he says of Christ's sayings, ppaxeU 6e Kal trvvTOjaot irap' avrov Adyot yeyovaaiv,
Apol. i. 14; for \6yoi, probably means in this place "discourses," and Justin's
intention is to contrast those of Jesui with the long harangues of the sophists.

THE DISCOURSES IN JOHN. 569
by unconscious process of selection, had preserved and trans
mitted to the Church and to the world. But we surely cannot
say that this meagre record comprises examples typical of all
the manifold discourses of Jesus, since we have in fact another
and fourth Gospel, containing selected discourses of Jesus upon
somewhat different subjects and occasions, some of which were
addressed to different classes of hearers, and all of which have
come to us in a quite different way ; viz., as fused and shaped
in the reflective consciousness of an apostolic eye-and-ear wit
ness. We admit without hesitation that traces of the author's sub
jectivity abound in all the discourses reported by John : they
are what John remembered of the teachings of his Master
upon his favorite themes, and are not always unblended with
the commentary upon them furnished by years of reflective and
mspked thought. Of such traces we cannot use the word
which Mr. Sanday ^ employs, " unauthentic," without making
the explanations to which this critic would himself doubtless
assent. Plain traces of the author's subjectivity are found in
passages like vii. 21 and x. 26, where the discourse of Jesus is
made to refer to actions and words that have just been recorded
in the Gospel ; and iii. 16 or xvu. 3, where the Evangelist lets
Jesus speak in the thkd person, although professing to give the
exact words. To this same subjectivity it is in part due, that the
discourses of Christ in this Gospel bear so much resemblance in
wording and style to the Fkst Epistle of John ; and that John
the Baptist is made to speak in a manner unlike that reported
of him in the Synoptists.
But that Christ did actually teach both his disciples and the
people concerning those themes which are most dwelt upon in
John, we may gather from the Synoptists themselves. The
doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete is touched upon
ia Matt. xi. 31 f. and Luke xii. 10 ; the office of the risen Lord
in sending the Spirit, in Matt, xviii. 20, xxviii. 20 ; and the
promise of his sending, in Matt. x. 20 and Luke xxiv. 49. That
Jesus sometimes used with the trusted few a form of address
very unhke his ordinary form, is suggested by Matt. xiii. 34 ;
Mark iv. 11, 33 f. ; Luke vki. 10. Nor are utterances which
appeared enigmatical, and were misunderstood, wanting in the
Synoptic Gospels.2
' Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel, p. 300.
^ On the whole subject of these resemblances between the Synoptists and the

570 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCEIPTURE.
We must further remember that the validity of a certain
conception of the self-consciousness of Jesus is entangled in
the substantial verity of the discourses in John's Gospel and of
the few similar passages of the Synoptists. To the truth of the
contents of this self-consciousness of Jesus, the Christian con
sciousness in all ages of the Christian Church both appeals and
responds. We notice, in conclusion, the more specifically historic rela
tions of the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptists and also to a true
history of the life of Jesus. And here upon all important mat
ters, where a seeming discrepancy exists, we are ready to affirm
the validity of John as the authentic account of an eye-and-ear
witness. It is not too much to say, that, in spite of the appar
ent divergence of the two histories, we could have no consistent
conception or symmetrical picture of this life without the his
torical notices of the Fourth Gospel. The account of John is
historical, indeed, only in the sense that it is based upon histori
cal verity, and contains many traces of accurate acquaintance
with historical facts ; it uses this knowledge of the verity and
facts, however, to frame a discourse upon the personahty of
Jesus. Among the examples which "may be adduced to sustain
the statement just made are the following: (1) The number
of the festival journeys and of the years of Christ's ministry.
The very ground on which Weisse declared against the genuine
ness of John is an argument in its favor. The antecedent
probability of several journeys to Jerusalem previous to the
last passover cannot well be denied. There are, moreover,
indications of such journeys to be detected in the Synoptists
themselves (see Luke xiu. 34 f. and Matt. xxiu. 37 f.).^ The
discipleship of Joseph of Arimathea, whose permanent residence
in Jerusalem seems to be implied in his possession of a tomb
there (Matt. xxvu. 57 f.), and the relations of friendship be
tween Jesus and the family at Bethany (Luke x. 38 f.), look in
the same direction. On the one hand, then, we can see how
the more private activity of Jesus at Jerusalem fell out of the
popular account, out of the more strictly Gaklean group of inci
dents in his ministry ; and how, on the other hand, the Fourth
Gospel admits of an extended and predominant activity in Gah-
Fourth Gospel, see Luthardt, Der Johann. Ursprung, p. 185 f.; Beyschlag, Ibid.,
pp. 187-233; Fisher, article in Princeton Eeview already referred to, p. 72 f.
1 The efforts which have been made to escape the conclusions from Christ's
lament over Jerusalem (ttoo-okis riiiKjia-a, etc.) are all worthy of the term Bleek uses
concerning one of them, — eiw Mittel der Despemtion.

INDICATIONS OF HISTOEIC TEUTHFULNESS. 571
lee during the year and a quarter which elapsed between the
festival of v. 1 and that of vii. 2. (2) As to the day on which
the Last Supper occurred, two questions may be proposed : first,
is there a real discrepancy between the account of John and
that of the Synoptists? second, if such a discrepancy exist,
which of the two accounts is correct? In answer to the fkst
question, we are not as yet ready for an unqualified affirmative. ^
It must, indeed, be admitted that the apparent discrepancy has
never been removed. But in case the apparent be a real dis
crepancy, we stkl feel the force of those considerations which
would make us give the preference to the narrative of John.^
(3) Beyschlag 3 rightly claims that only the Fourth Gospel
enables us to form a satisfactory and realistic picture of the
causes which led to the arrest and death of Jesus. Only in it
do we see the storm of opposition gathering against him through
the long polemic and intense hatred excited during his resi
dence at Jerusalem. (4) Bleek * significantly urges in favor of
John the fact, that the declaration of the Synoptists as to the
failure of the disciples of Jesus to understand his predictions
of his own death and resurrection corresponds better vsdth the
enigmatical manner in which the predictions are given in John
than with the definiteness of the form in which they are recorded
by the Synoptists themselves.
Furthermore, numerous delicate and subtile indications of
historical truthfulness and of the apostolic eye-and-ear witness
may be pointed out in the Fourth Gospel. We do not think
it necessary at this date to answer in detail the instances of gross
historical ignorance formerly alleged against its genuineness;
such as that the author introduces, i. 28, a Bethany in Peraea
which had no existence (when, xi. 18, he shows himself ac
quainted with the Bethany near at hand), or that the etymo
logical remark of ix. 7 betrays a distant Gentile writer. That
the acquaintance of the writer with Palestine, its customs and
1 Professor Fisher declares (Princeton Eev., p. 68) : " The renewed examination
of the Gospels has led me more and more to doubt whether the Fourth Evangelist
really differs from the Synoptists as they are ordinarily understood."
' In favor of the correctness of John, see Bleek, Beitrage, pp. 140 ff. ; and Einl.
in das N. T., pp. 209 ff.; and Usteri, Comm. crit. in qua Ev. Joan., etc.: contra,
see especially Keim, Ibid., III. p. 469 ff. No discussion of the relation of the
passover controversy in the second century to the genuineness of the Fourth
Gospel is introduced here, because we are confident that the choice of the day
for celebrating Easter has no reference whatever to the seeming discrepancy
between John and the Synoptists, or to the genuineness of this Gospel : this has
Been proved by Sohiirer and others.
' Zur johanneischen Frage, pp. 87-94. » Einl. in das N. T., p. 230.

572 THE DOCTEISrE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
geography in the time of Christ, is sufficiently accurate for' the
old age of one who had spent his youth amidst its scenes, is not
only maintained by Ewald, Weizsacker, Wittichen, and other
defenders of the genuineness of the Gospel, but is also admitted
by Keim.i In the background of the loftiest and most ideal
passages, the soberer colors of history are always to be seen.
Realistic touches, such as could scarcely come from any other
hand than that of one whose eye had itself seen and heart most
keenly felt the thing described, abound in this Gospel. We
are graphically told, it was the next day after, about the tenth
hour, that John the Baptist xvas standing with two of his disci
ples (i. 35) ; the name of the servant who lost his ear under
the stroke of Petet's sWord still lingers in the memory, and as
well the sharp ring of the Master's command, "Put up thy
sword " (xvik. 10, 11).^ Even where the impression which the
disciple received from the words of his Lord may perhaps have
been originally confused or incomplete, the Inemory of the
words seems clear (see xiv. 31 ; which is not to be understood
as a mere transcript of Matt. xxvi. 46 or Mark xiv. 42).^
We may therefore sum iip the case, as it stands for and
against the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, in the following
terms. The external evidence is as ancient and unkorm as
could reasonably be expected: it is, however, less complete
than we could wish. But there is no reason to suppose that
any lack of desired completeness is due to the tardy or hesitat
ing reception of the Gospel by the early Church. In the last
half of the second century, it Was univers&Uy received as the
work of the Apostle John ; it was regarded as one of the au
thentic and, in some sort, authoritative memoirs of Jesus by
Justin Martyr in the second quarter of this century ; traces of
its existence and use are found in the last years of the first
quarter of the same century. There is no Reasonable doubt,
then, as to the bearing of the external evidence.
The conclusions from the external evidence are confirmed by
the claim of the Gospel itself. Out of his Cliristian conscious
ness, as enriched by reflection and illumined by revelation, the
author professes to give to his readers, upon the basis of facts to
1 For a list of correct archaeological notices in the Gospel, see Beyschlag,
Ibid.,p. 128, note.
2 Note how realistic are the words BaAe ti|v ii.dxat.pav els tijv BrjKiiv, as contrasted
with the form in Matthew,
8 As to such indications of truthfulness, see the Untersuchungen of Weizsacker,
and the work of Sanday already referred to, pp. 246 Ji.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 573
which he was himself an eye-and-ear witness, the true spiritual
meaning of the person, the discourse, the life and death, of Jesus
Christ. It is as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and who knew
the inner meaning of what he had himself heard and seen, that
the author writes. We need the strongest proof to charge such
an one, against the historical evidence of his own and of the
next following ages, with an unjustifiable fraud, a subtle and
crafty and pretentious forgery.
We find such strong adverse proof neither in the Gospel itself,
nor when we consider it in its relations to the other New-Testa
ment writings. We do find here, indeed, a somewhat different
conception, and a widely different picture, of the personality of
Jesus. We find undoubted evidences that the Johannean con
ception is the result of mature reflection, and that its picture
of Jesus is composed of selected incidents and discourses as seen
in the light of this reflection. We find no reason to deny that
the conception and picture are true to the many-sided character
and work of Jesus Christ. We find also not a few indications
that the Fourth Gospel is the writing at first hand of one who
was himself an eye-and-ear witness ; and that, as such, it fitly
contrasts with the works of those who at the second and third
remove from the person of Jesus gathered and edited such frag
ments of his history and sayings as had been previously selected
and preserved by the evangelistic activities of the Christian
Church. Having thus grounded in historical and critical researches
the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, we have no hesitation
in afBrming what position it must take in Sacred Scripture. It
is the " heart of Jesus Christ " with which we here come in
contact. Inspiration and reflection, uniting upon the choicest
and most undoubted material of history, and fusing all this
material with the holy characteristics of revelation, are nowhere
else so apparent as in the Gospel of the Apostle John.
Of those books in the Old Testament, the nature of whose
authorship is related to their position in Sacred Scripture some
what in the same manner as is that of the Fourth Gospel, the
Book of Daniel is, with the exception of Deuteronomy, perhaps
the most important example. This writing, like the Gospel,
makes no direct claim to have been composed by its alleged
author ; for the words of xii. 4 may be understood to include
only chaps, x.-xii. 4, while those of vii. 1 appear to refer only
to chaps, vii. and vik. There is little doubt, however, that the

574 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
almost uniform Jewish tradition, which made Daniel the author
of the book, could rightfuUy appeal to the fact that the writer
intended to be understood as speaking in the name of Daniel
throughout. Nor is there good reason to dispute the unity of
the book ; as has been done not only by some who deny the
genuineness of it all, but also by others (Sack and Herbert)
who ascribe the last part to Daniel, and the introduction (chaps.
i.-vi.) to some later hand. Its unity of authorship is made
clear by the close connection of single words and phrases, as
well as of different parts of the one plan, — a connection so
close, indeed, that the first two chapters seem to anticipate all
which follows.
The case of this book is made more difficult by the fact that
the apostles seem to appeal to it as though it were written by
Daniel (see 1 Pet. i. 10 f. ; 2 Thess. ii. 3 ; 1 Cor. vi. 2 ; compare
Heb. xi. 33) ; and to thek testimony appears to be added both
the immediate (Matt. xxiv. 15) and mediate (x. 23, xvi. 27,
xxvi. 64) witness of our Lord himself.
And yet it is, critically considered, very difficult, if not quite
impossible, to believe that this writing in its present form ori
ginated earlier than the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Some
of the historical objections to the genuineness of Daniel have
already been elsewhere indicated ; it would be easy greatly to
multiply them. Moreover the external evidence is not only
weak, but is even on the whole adverse. The mention of
the person Daniel, with apparent reference to Dan. iii. 26, in
1 Macc. ii. 59 f., only proves that the prophecy was recognized
by some as canonical at the time when the apocryphal writing
was composed. The date of First Maccabees is about 100 B.C. ;
that is, some sixty or seventy years after Antiochus Epiphanes.
The position of the book in the Hebrew Canon shows its late
date, and difficulty in finding entrance. The story of Josephus
(Ant., X. 10 and 11, and XI. 8, 5) is itself quite too unhistorical
to authenticate any thing. The absence of any influence from
this book upon the other prophecies, which, if it be genuine,
followed its composition, — upon Haggai, Malachi, and the first
eight chapters of Zechariah, — is significant. Such epoch-mak
ing Messianic predictions could scarcely have failed to impress
themselves upon subsequent writers. For the same reason the
silence of Sirach (xlix.), where we should expect mention of
Daniel among the prophets of Israel, is equally significant.
Besides all this, the prophecy of Dan. xi. 21-45 and vki. 9 ff.,

THE AUTHORSHIP OF DANIEL. 575
23 f , and other passages, seems to be made with direct reference
to Antiochus Epiphanes; while much of its history is best
understood in the light of the history of First and Second Mac
cabees. Not a few proofs may be added to those above-men
tioned, from the nature of the language used in Daniel.^
As to the highly valuable contents of the book, its apocalyp
tic and consolatory passages, its mighty influence upon the doc
trine of Messiah, there can be no question, however the question
of its genuineness may be decided. As to its mterpretation,
we may affirm with Delitzsch : ^ whether it originated in the
time of the Exke, or in that of Antiochus Epiphanes, we have
always to apply to it the apocalyptic measure. Applying this
measure, we must assign to it somewhat the same position in
the Old Testament as that which belongs to the Apocalypse in
the New. The considerations which have occupied us in the
case of Deuteronomy, combined with such as belong to all
alleged pseudonymous writing of those times, do not warrant us
in refusing that acknowledgment which Daniel won from the
Jews and the early Christian Church. And we have already
seen that we cannot quote even the apostles as inspired au
thority upon critical questions of authorship, and that our Lord
was quite content to employ the titles belonging to the books
of the Old Testament without either raising or pronouncing
upon the assumptions concealed in those titles.
We close this discussion of the relation which exists between
critical conclusions as to the authorship and structure of the
biblical books, and the general doctrine of the origin and nature
of Sacred Scripture, with the following summary of results : —
1. This relation may be affirmed to be in general very inti
mate, and sometimes controlling. Each special case, however,
has its own rank, and requires in some sort a separate treat
ment. Of many of the books of the Old Testament we may
affirm, that in respect to our estimate of them, and our defer
ence to thek claims for a place in Sacred Scripture, it makes
httle or no difference by whom they were written. The author
ship of a considerable number of the sacred writings will always
remain unknown. We have simply to judge of them by their
contents as considered in their relations to the entire record of
revelation, and by the fact that they have been admitted to a
place in canonical Scripture. This statement applies, however,
1 See Schrader in De Wette's Einl. in das A. T., pp. 498-601.
' Article in Herzog, Keal-Bncyklopadie.

576 THE. DOCTRINE OF SACEED SCRIPTURE.
to only a few of the New-Testament writings. But, as we have
already seen, it is, for the most part, the nature of their con
tents which constrains the later biblical writers to accord the
predicates of Sacred Scripture to the earlier writers. Of the
inspiration of such writings, in the narrower and more technical
meaning of the word "inspiration," we can speak only so far
as we are warranted by the contents. Hebrews is what it is,
whether it be written by Paul or not. Inasmuch as criticism
has made it clear that this writing is not from an apostolic
hand, we are amply satisfied to accord to it such Christian inspi
ration as the nature of its contents permits. But Leviticus, if
it were written by Moses, would be only what it is; and neither
Chronicles nor Ezra-Nehemiah can be made the equal (the one
in accuracy, the other in broad prophetic spirit) of the earlier
historical books by assigning them to any particular one of the
Jews after the Exile.
In certain cases the authorship of the sacred writings is not
wholly unknown : it is known, or supposed to be known, with
a given degree of confidence. In certain cases we cannot avoid
feeling that the question of authorship is important in its bear
ing upon the question of inspiration : in some cases it may seem
almost decisive. There can be no doubt, that, in the narrow
and more technical sense of the word, we should pronounce the
Pentateuch " inspired," as we cannot now, if we could show that
it was written by Moses. On the contrary, it does not appear
that the latter part of Isaiah could present any larger claims to
be regarded as the work of an inspired mind, if it could be
shown to have been composed by the first Isaiah ; for the un
known prophet is obviously not simply the peer, but even the
superior, of the one whom we know by the name Isaiah. The
question of the authorship of the Pentateuch, however, is not
one which has its most important bearings upon the doctrine of
Sacred Scripture as a mere question of authorship. The more
important critical inquiry is not. Who wrote the Pentateuch?
It is the question of authorship as indkectly affecting all our
views of the reality of Old-Testament history, and ofthe nature
and origin of Old-Testament revelation, which most intimately
affects also the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. And, finaUy, in a
case like that of the Fourth Gospel, the question of authorship
becomes of the utmost importance to our doctrine. We cannot,
indeed, safely affirm, that, if the Apostle John did not write
the Fourth Gospel, historical and doctrinal Christianity must

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 577
suffer a total change ; nor can we safely forget, that, whoever
wrote this Gospel, its conception of Christ, and of the truth of
Christ, receives abundant confirmation from the continuous wit
ness of the Christian consciousness. But, on the other hand,
it must be admitted, that complete critical proof of the spurious
ness of the Fourth Gospel would profoundly change our concep
tion of Sacred Scripture, and would not leave untouched our
conception of Christianity itself.
Whke, then, the relation of critical questions as to the
authorship of the biblical books, and the general question as
to the origin and nature of Sacred Scripture, is always very
intimate, this relation admits of a large range of importance
and interest. Some questions of authorship are comparatively
unimportant; others are important, but not decisive; still
others are of the greatest concern.
2. We may distinguish two classes of biblical writings, be
tween which, although in a somewhat crude and indefinite way,
the different books of Sacred Scripture may be divided. Of
these two classes, one comprises such writings as are more com
posite in structure ; the other, those which are more truly the
literary product of a single mind. To the former class essen
tially belong even such writings as the Synoptic Gospels ; which,
although they are manifestly the works of single authors, never
theless sustain complex relations of dependence to one another,
and to the previous compositions of other authors. To the latter
class essentiaUy belong such writings as the Book of Isaiah ; for,
even upon the admission of its double authorship, we have to
consider it not as one composite whole, but as two works which
have suffered the fate of being edited and bound together.
The foregoing distinction is not without great importance for
our subject. Of a whole so composite in structure as is the
present Pentateuch, we cannot affirm the quality of inspiration
in the same sense in which we employ the word when speaking
of a work like the Fourth Gospel. We cannot affirm, that is
to say. that such a writing is the work of a single inspired mind,
—hke that, for instance, of the Lawgiver Moses, the Poet David,
or the Apostle Paul or John. It is, to be sure, abstractly pos
sible that the last redactor of the Pentateuch might have been
a specially inspired mind, and that, as being such a mind, he
might so have managed all his material as to confer upon it the
quality of his special inspiration ; but, as a matter of fact, we
nave no reason to make any such claim for a redactor. The
VOL I. 2 0

578 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
last redactors of a writing are, as far as appears, precisely those
persons whom we should not select as the ones in whose person
ality to lodge its claim to inspiration, and to a place in Sacred
Scripture. For the very work of redaction is a subordinate
work: it proceeds upon the assumption that the work previ
ously done is that which is worthy of the highest predicates
which can be affirmed of the whole. It is not the inspkation
of Ezra, or of the scribes of his era, to which we can attribute
the moral excellence of the Pentateuch. We have, then, to
regard the Pentateuch as a growth rather than a work ; but a
growth may be as truly inspired as a work, although in a differ
ent manner and sense.
In cases like those of Ezra-Nehemiah, and especially of the
Synoptic Gospels, the above considerations must be supple
mented with others like the following. Our estimate of the
origin and nature of some portions of Sacred Scripture depends
upon the answer to two inquiries : What are the contents of
this Scripture ? and. Who was its author ? For the origin and
nature of a writing, as shown even by its contents, may be two
fold. Some of its elements may be due to previous growths of
tradition and written documents ; other equally important ele
ments may be due to the mind and heart of him who is not sim
ply thek compiler and last redactor, but is also, in the full sense
of the word, their author. For the Christian inspkation of the
authors of the Synoptic Gospels, and for thek special fitness
through intercourse with the apostles, we have special proof
which lies outside of the contents of these Gospels.
In still other cases, the emphasis of our estimate is laid upon
the personality of a known author. We can, indeed, affirm
nothing of any writing, by reason of its authorship, which is
contradicted by the contents of the writing itself. We cannot
affirm that the writings of Moses are true history, simply on the
ground that Moses could not make mistakes in history; nor can
we make the personality of John and Paul bar out all examina
tion into the validity of the facts, or the truth of the doctrines,
which they record and teach. But knowing what we do of these
personaUties, and of the verity of the divine communion with
them, we cannot fail to regard differently any writings which
can prove their claim to bear their names.
3. We see, therefore, that the phenomena of the authorship
and composition of the biblical books re-enforce the lesson
which has already been often enforced. We have a large variety

SUMaiAEY OF CONCLUSIONS. 579
of works united under the general term of Sacred Scripture ;
we have various opinions to form respecting the origin and
nature of these works. The questions before us are those of
fact and history. There are many differences of estimate and
claims to admit : there are many distinctions demanded in the
effort to understand each case. Judged by their contents, some
portions of Sacred Scripture put forth no claim to be regarded
as the work of inspired minds, beyond that general claim wliich
belongs to every writer who has his individual share (whatever
it may be) in the ideas of revelation, and in the interest of be
lievers touching the things of the divine kingdom. Judged solely
by the token of their authorship, many portions of Sacred Scrip
ture have no claim whatever to make : we do not now. know,
and we shall never know, who or what manner of men their
authors were.
But whether judged by their contents, or by the known
personaUty of thek authors, or by both tokens, certain other
portions of Sacred Scripture put forth far different and higher
claims. These portions are such in contents that the Spirit of
revelation shines and breathes through both their thoughts and
their words. They are contents of truth, which, as we know
with a certainty proportionate to the evidence afforded in each
case, have been given to the Church by men pre-eminently
moved by this same Spirit. That the Spirit was given to these
minds and hearts, we know from all our knowledge of their
personality ; and we infer without doubt that the same Spirit
has been communicated through the personality to the written
products. Moreover, that these products may fitly be caUed
mspired, we also infer from inspection of the products them
selves. Sacred Scripture, then, is made up of a considerable number
of different Uterary products, whose claims differ widely as to
trustworthiness both with respect to fact and to doctrine, and
as to the possession of the Spirit of revelation. In brief, we
are considering the origin and nature of each separate scripture
hi the total of Sacred Scriptures, when we are considering the
authorship and composition of the separate books. And, accord
ing to the results of our consideration, do we affirm or deny
certain quaUties vrith respect to each. At this point of our
inquiry, however, we stand again upon the threshold of another
truth. 4. It is the divine historic process of revelation, and the

580 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
work of the community of believers in recognizing, collecting,
and preserving all its separate writings, which give to the total
product called Sacred Scripture whatever unity of origin and
nature it may possess. In other words, a Spirit of revelation
moving in history, and the same Spirit moving as Providence
in the formation of a Canon of Scriptures, is the truth necessary
to our examination both as its postulate and as its result.
It has been said, that a coUection of writings which is one
growth may be spoken of as inspired, as truly as the individual
composition which must be regarded as one person's work ; but
the attribute of inspiration must here be understood in a some
what different way. It is true, however, of all inspiration, that
while on the one hand it belongs to the individual soul, it is
also on the other hand to be regarded as arising out of, and
coming to, and operating for, the community of believing souls.
A growth like the Pentateuch is to be regarded as inspked in
the degree in which it can be shown — by whomsoever or by
how many soever written — to have partaken of the Spkit of
revelation vouchsafed to the community in which it grew.
The Bible is not the poorer because it contains such inspked
growths. To this great truth, that the Bible is, not only in its separate
parts but also in its totality, the product of the Spkit of reve
lation working largely by historic processes and by providential
guidance and inspiration of a community of believing souls, —
to this great truth we shall return again and again. Upon it
our investigation into the history of the Canon relies; and
it will shape the entire second part of our inquiry into the doc
trine of the Sacred Scriptures as holding, scripturaUy fixed, the
eternal word of God.

CHAPTEE VIII.
THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE AS EELATED TO THE
LANGUAGE AND STYLE OP THE BIBLICAL BOOKS.
Some of the more indkect relations which exist between
the language and style of the biblical books and the doctrine
of Sacred Scripture have already been briefly considered. The
phenomena of language are of more or less importance in de
termining every critical inquiry concerning the date and au
thorship of ancient writings; these phenomena are, indeed, in
certain instances, of capital importance. Nor do the biblical
writings constitute in any respects exceptions to this general
rule. The researches of the last chapter made it clear, how
ever, that, in the case of certain writings of the Old Testament,
the very nature of thek origin as composite growths, or as
ancient compositions which have been subject to one or more
redactionary revisions, demands especial caution in applying
the argument from the characteristics of language to the criti
cal theories of origin. But this caution must be impartially
applied. If Wellhausen is right in applying it to the linguistic
researches of Ryssel and others whose conclusions are adverse
to his theories, we are equally right in applying it to those who,
like Giesebrecht, support these theories by the favorable con
clusions of their linguistic researches.
We are now to consider certain general reasons, which belong
to the very nature of the Hebrew language and of its use by
the biblical writers, and which explain why it should be diffi
cult to argue from the language and style of the Pentateuch to
the date of its origin. In some cases of the Hebrew books, it is
possible to make this argument with more confidence than
belongs to the case of the Pentateuch. The late date of some
of these books is as manifest from the character of their lan
guage as is the relative feebleness and lowness of that Spirit of
revelation which moves within them. In these cases both the
critical question of authorship, and the dogmatic question as to
581

582 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the nature and degree of inspiration, are, to a certain extent,
included together in the language. In still other cases, and
these by no means unimportant, the question of the unity of a
biblical book may be determined with some good degree of
probability from the phenomena of its language. In this way,
as we have already seen, we may assume vrith considerable con
fidence the existence within the Pentateuch of the works of
various authors. In this way also may we draw conclusions as
to the single or double authorship of Isaiah or Zechariah. But
in none of these cases can we safely make our investigations a
mechanical counting and tabulating of words. The general
questions of the development of the language as a whole, of the
effect of redaction and textual changes, of the unconscious and
self-conscious selections of the author, — selections, as deter
mined by his education, acquaintance with and preference for
other preceding authors, taste and purpose in writing, and, in
deed, aU the influences which enter into authorial peculiarities,
— and of the laws pertaining to the kind of literary composition
taken in hand, must all enter into each conclusion.
Such argument as the foregoing is especially conclusive in
the cases of certain writings of the New Testament; for in
these cases we do not have the same difficulties to contend with
as those which belong to most cases from the Old Testament.
It cannot be denied that the great difference in language and
style between the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel is a
weighty argument against their unity of authorship ; but, on
the other hand, the simUarity in these respects between this
Gospel and the Fkst Epistle of John is an argument in favor
of their common authorship. It is difficult to convince one
whose sense for language and style is not confined to mere num
ber and roots, that the author of Hebrews is the Apostle Paul.
Moreover, by the same means, we see at the first inspection that
the Book of Acts must have been composed from different
sources, so great is the difference in the language and style of
its different parts ; and still, by the same raeans, we conclude
on further investigation that the same author made use of these
different sources throughout.
The more indirect relations which exist between the doctrine
of Sacred Scripture and the language and style of the biblical
books might be greatly multiplied; but enough has already
been said concerning them in the various preceding chapters.
It is our present purpose to set forth certain relations more
direct than any of those.

INSPIRATION OF LINGUISTIC FORM. 583
The general claim which involves the consideration of the
more direct relations has also already been considered. We
have found the writings of Mosaism professing to bring before
us a few messages in the precise language in which they were
given by Jehovah to Moses; and although we cannot verify
this claim in any instance for the Hebrew words which we now
possess, the general bearing of all such claims is no less apparent.
We have seen that the general formula for the concrete enact
ments of the Mosaic ritual is : " The Lord spake unto Moses,
saying ; " or some equivalent for this formula. The prophets
also claim to bring to the men of their own time the words of
Jehovah to Israel ; and, so far as we bave an authentic record of
their utterances, we have the means of examining the language
which they claim to have been the result of the revelation and
inspiration given to them. Most clear and unmistakable of all
such claims is that made by the Apostle Paul in the passage
which is the biblical locus classicus for this subject ; viz., 1 Cor.
ii. In this passage, the claim is made that the form of speech
— simple, unpretentious, free from rhetorical artifice and adorn
ment, yet effective — which the writer employs is adapted to
the contents of truth which it conveys. Nor is this adaptation
to be regarded as a matter of accident, or even of human con
trivance and effect: it is rather brought abput by the same
Holy Spkit who revealed the contents of truth which the lan
guage served to convey. Form, in some deep significance and
practical import, — form and content were adapted to each
other: they were both divinely adapted. The Spirit which
gave the content gave also the form.
But that we cannot press the seemingly conclusive claim to
speak and write inspired words so as to base upon it any theory
of verbal inspiration resembling that of the Jewish rabbis, the
Church Fathers, or, above aU, the post-Reformation Protestant
theologians, has also been asserted. The assertion has been
further demonstrated by the results of every step of our re
searches hitherto. In respect to the claim of Paul, however,
we are not, by reason of such failure, in any the worse case ;
for this claim is abundantly confirmed by the appropriate phe
nomena. It is confirmed with all the depth of meaning which
the apostle himself seems to have attached to it. It is confirmed
by a scientific examination for which he himself had neither
equipment nor necessity, and by historical and linguistic re
searches which elevate the claim to a position far beyond that

584 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
which it could have had in the apostle's own mind. The claim
goes to the extent only of asserting that the Divine Spkit fur
nished to those who taught the truths of the gospel a form of
expression for its truths, which was far fitter and more effective
than any of the forms to be learned from the rhetoric of the
schools. But the investigation shows us how this same Divine
Spirit, acting as the Spirit of providence through thousands of
years of human history, and as the Spirit of revelation through
hundreds of years of scriptural experience, and as the Spirit
of providence, revelation, and inspiration, in the personality of
the individual authors, has fitted the linguistic expression
of biblical truths to the inmost essence of the truths them
selves. It is to a brief sketch of some of the results of such
scientific investigation that our attention must be directed in
the present chapter. The more strictly dogmatic and specula
tive consideration of the relations between ideas, feelings, and
purposes, and the language which bodies them forth, between
the divine mind and the human as requiring a means of com
municating thought, and between the authority of the message
and the fallibUity of its manner of conveyance, belongs to
another great division of our general theme. Such dogmatic
and speculative inquiries wiU, therefore, be deferred to their
proper place. At present we deal only with facts, and quite
direct inferences from facts.
It is true that the alleged facts are very difficult of exact
ascertainment, even by use of the best authorities upon the
nature of the languages in which the Bible is written. It is
also true that the drawing of the most direct inferences often
depends upon the attitude assumed toward the whole question
of revelation and inspiration. The linguistic critic, who sees
nothing new in the ideas and vital forces of Christianity, will
set a low estimate upon the power of its constructive spkit in
originating the New-Testament Greek ; and certainly he who
sees nothing divine in those ideas and forces wUl scout at the
conviction that there is any thing divine to be recognized in
the linguistic phenomena of the New Testament. But with our
assumptions, and with the helps provided — as yet in only too
meagre abundance — by modern scholarship, we may reach tol
erably satisfactory conclusions along the lines of fact. We
shall try not to claim for the biblical ideas and spkit a power
over language which they have never evinced. We shall try
not to read our own conceptions into the inferior or different

DIFFERENCES IN LINGUISTIC FORM. 685
import of scriptural words. And yet, especially in the case of
the New Testament, we shall also try not to underestimate the
constructive power of its spirit and ideas.^
It is presumable from the first, that the general effect of reve
lation and inspiration upon the language and style of Sacred
Scripture wUl vary in form, and differ in degree. Certain effects
may be of the most general sort ; they may, therefore, be con
sidered as belonging to the very nature of Hebrew as a Semitic
language, and of the later Greek as that out of which the New-
Testament Greek was specifically shaped. Other effects may
be quite plainly traceable to the influence, more or less direct,
of certain definite ideas of revelation. In stUl others, the indi
vidual authors may have to be taken more prominently into the
account. In general we may distinguish between language and
style ; although, in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, we shall
find that the peculiarities of the language are so marked and
strong as to force into the background individual diversities
of style. And, with regard to authorial peculiarities of style in
general, when we have once noted thek undoubted existence,
and the bearings of the fact of their existence upon the general
doctrine of revelation and inspiration, their further considera
tion belongs rather to BibUcal Introduction, or to the special
introductions which preface the study of particular books. We
shaU confine our discussion, for the most part, to the general
claim made for the language and style of the Bible as adapted
by the Divine Spkit to the contents of biblical truth.
In regard to the language of the Old Testament, we are met
at the outset by the paucity of our means for forming a true
estimate from the comparative point of view. The origin and
relative antiquity of the Hebrew language, and of its earliest
written forms, cannot be determined with certainty ; nor have
we the materials for making a definite and detailed comparison
between it and the other Semitic languages, or between the
biblical Hebrew and that employed in non-biblical literature
or in the intercourse of common life. But, although we cannot
tell when and where the Hebrew language originated, we can
classify it with the Aramaic and Arabic as one of the three
,groups of languages which have been brought, since the time
of Eichhorn, under the common term Semitic : by Jerome, and
bystudeints preceding this time, they were called "Oriental lan-
' As to the necessity of avoiding the mistakes of hoth extreme views, see some
temaika in Schleiermacher's Hermeneutik und Kritik, p. 56 f.

586 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
guages." These are easily separated from all the Indo-European
languages, and are united among themselves by several quite
permanent characteristics, especially by the definite patterns
and substantially common forms of their trkiteral roots. But
the Hebrew which the Israelites used before they became a
nation, and which was by their use developed into the bibhcal
Hebrew, was yet more closely allied with contemporaneous
forms of speech, all record of which has perished from the earth.
Of Hebrew, Renan ^ says, " We cannot doubt that this language
has been common to many other peoples." It is, however, only as
the particular language of the sons of Israel that it has reached
us. That the Canaanites, on the invasion of the Hebrews, spoke
a language very analogous, there is sufficient reason to beUeve :2
there is not, however, sufficient reason to affirm that the latter
borrowed their subsequent language from the former. Essen
tially the same language was spoken by kindred tribes surround
ing Canaan. The Moabite language from the stone of Mesha,
the Phoenician proper names on ancient inscriptions and coins,
the ancient Canaanitish names of persons and cities, and the
fact that no difficulty anywhere appears between the Hebrews
and these neighboring peoples in understanding one another,
are an evidence of this. The use of the word "sea" (d;) for
the west seems to show conclusively that Canaan was the an
cient seat and home of the Hebrew. Fragments, inserted in
the Hebrew literature from the archives of these neighboring
peoples, are supposed to be found in the genealogy of the Edom-
ites (Gen. xxxvi.) ; the narrative of Gen. xiv., where Abraham
is spoken of (verse 13) as though he were a stranger ; and Num.
xiii. 22, where the synchronism between the founding of Hebron
and that of Tanis in Egypt is pointed out.
The origin of written characters among the Hebrews is in
volved in the same obscurity which envelops the origin of the
language. A very large measure of independence in the use of
their alphabet must be admitted for aU the Semitic languages;^
but whether the most ancient centre of this use, and of its de
velopment, was in Babylon or in Egypt, cannot confidently be
affirmed.* Nor is it possible to trace the art of writing Hebrew
back to any definite date within which it must be confined. In
1 Histoire g^n^rale et Systeme compart des Langues S^mitiques, p. 108.
'¦^ See Gesenius, Geschichte der hehraischen Sprache, p. 16 f.
8 See Ewald, Lehrbuch der hehraischen Sprache, p. 116.
* Compare Eenan, Langues S^mitiques, p. 113, with Ewald, Ibid., p. MSt.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE HEBREW. 587
the oldest writings — in those of the Mosaic era, and even pre
ceding it — the art appears as already having passed through
a long period of development. It appears, indeed, as so far
developed, that the literature which remains from the earliest
times shows no essential differences of language from that of
the times not long preceding the ExUe. The most ancient
known form of the language is that which has already been
used as the language of writing.^ Indeed, the degree of gram
matical development which their most ancient form possesses
seems to imply several centuries of previous use in writing:
just as the comparative freedom from onomatopoetic roots for
the names even of the most familiar animals implies a great
antiquity lying stiU farther back for the development of the
spoken language.^ Inasmuch, then, as the art of writing was
a growth of centuries, even at the time of the Exodus, and as,
on account of the radical difference which exists between the
Hebrew and the Egyptian systems, the former system could not
have been derived by the Israelites from the latter, we must
hold that they shared it, in common with other Semitic peo
ples, in a period antecedent to their sojourn in Egypt. To this
conclusion, neither the frequent use by the Israelites of me
morial stones, trees, and altars, in the patriarchal period, nor the
apparent infrequency of the use of writing in the narratives of
the same period, is a formidable objection. Both are rather to
be explained by the ancient usages of all the Semitic peoples.^
For a more detailed comparison of this ancient written He
brew with the contemporaneous written forms of the most closely
cognate languages, we have, as has been said, no material. This
is both cause and effect of the fact noticed by Renan: "In
Hebrew we attain the primitive archives of that race whose
records have by a remarkable destiny become the archives of
the human race. For the Hebrew is to the Semitic race what
the Sanscrit is to the Indo-European race, — the purest and
most complete type of the famUy, and the depositary of its
historic, linguistic, and reUgious secrets."* We see, then, in
this fact, the general effect of Old-Testament revelation and
inspiration upon the Hebrew language, regarded as a literary
1 See Ewald, Ibid., p. 22.
' See Gesenius, Geschichte der hebr. Sprache, p. 14 : compare Herder, Geist
fler hehraischen Poesie, Leipzig, 1825, 1, p. 305 f.
' Gen. xiv. and xxiii. seem to imply contemporaneous records : see Keil,
Einleitung in das A. T., p. 13 f.
' Langues Se'mltiques, p. 108.

588 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
whole, and compared with the other most closely allied lan
guages ; but we are unable to specify the characteristics which
enter into the general effect by a comparative study of these
languages. In regard to the effect which this revelation and inspiration
may have had in differencing bibUcal Hebrew from the language
of contemporaneous common life among the same people, we
have almost as great a lack of evidence. We know little of
Hebrew except as the Old-Testament language.^ The literature
of the Old Testament is, however, itself so varied in character,
and in its relations to the ideas and forces of Old-Testament
religion, that certain very valuable truths are to be iUustrated
by a comparative study of this literature. We may compare
certain books, or parts of books, vrith others, to detect the rela
tive effect of the admixture of foreign influences. With the
Hebrew of the rest of the Old Testament we may compare the
Chaldaic passages of Dan. ii. 4-vii. 28 ; Ezra iv. 8-vi. 18, vii.
12-26; and Jer. x. 11. The effect of their aloofness from
Greek culture, and lack of sympathy with it, may be illustrated
by the absence of all Greek words and ideas from the Old-
Testament writings, except in the Chaldaic passages of Daniel.
and Ezra. The limitations of Hebrew intercourse and concep
tions may be Ulustrated by the occurrence of certain Indian
words like D'.'^nK , lignum aloes (Num. xxiv. 6 ; Prov. vu. 17 ;
Ps. xlv. 9 ; Cant. iv. 14) ; and 1^, a species of ape (1 Kings x.
22; 2 Chron. ix. 21), and D\'3fi, peacocks; or of Egyptian
words like ii<;, a canal or river, and 'HN, marsh-grass or bul
rushes, and tw, byssus ; or of certain Persian words.^ By a
comparison of the language and style of the earlier with that
of the later books, very important conclusions concerning the
influence of the ideas and spirit of revelation may be attained.
Such a comparison results in establishing a marked difference
between the admirable clearness, simplicity, purity, and gran
deur of most of the earlier writings, and the lack of these
qualities in many of the later. The difference, when established,
evinces the general truth, that the form of expression corresponds
to the amount and kind of the indwelling spirit : as in the case
of all other human literary products, so also in the case of those
1 Upon the extra-biblical means of studying ancient Hebrew, see Gesenius,
Geschichte der hebr. Sprache, pp. 47 fe.; and Introduction to Hebr. und Chald.
Handworterbuch, ed. 1878.
" See Gesenius, Geschichte, etc, p. 59 i.

SECULAR HEBEEW LITEEATUEE. 689
which we are wont to regard as sacred and divine. The Spkit
of revelation which moves through the ethico-religious ideas
of the time, or by more direct methods upon the minds of the
writers of Sacred Scripture, shows its own force and quality
by the approach which it secures to a certain ideal standard of
expression, — the language and style of revelation itself. To
acknowledge and freely to discuss this difference, is only to
recognize intelligently the divine method of self-revelation.
The style of Ezekiel and Daniel, when compared with that of
the earUer prophets, simply gives token which is unmistakable
of a less clear and pure and elevating influence from the spirit
ual impulses that unite with the historic and personal to form
this style.
Moreover, we may compare those books, and portions of
books, belonging to whatever age, which exhibit few or no to
kens of influence from the ideas and spirit of revelation with
those which exhibit the clearest tokens of this influence. Even
in the Old-Testament writings as they have come down to us,
there are certain portions which, for this purpose, may be con
sidered as purely secxdar. That considerable secular Uterature
once existed in the ancient Hebrew language, we have some
indications in Sacred Scripture itself. In 1 Kings iv. 29 f.
we find mention, as attributed to Solomon, of three thousand
parables and proverbs and one thousand and five lyric songs,
besides botanical and zoological works. To the class of writ
ings the language of which is more distinctively secular, certain
entke books of the Old Testament belong; viz.. Canticles,
Proverbs, Esther, and, much less completely, Ecclesiastes.
Fragments of literature which primarily arose outside of the
sphere most moulded by ethico-religious ideas and by the spirit
of revelation, have found their way within this sphere after
being somewhat changed in linguistic form. Such fragments
are the ancient song of Lameeh (Gen. iv. 23 f.), the enumera
tion of the sons of Japheth (Gen. x. 2-5), the snatches of the
popular songs upon the taking of Heshbon (Num. xxi. 14 f.
and 27-30), the ancient song of the weU (Num. xxi. 17 f.).^
The song of Leborah and the mashal of Balaam should perhaps
be enumerated in this connection. The great abundance of
similar Uterature, only a part of which has found its way into
' It is thought by some that the title Al-Taschith is taken from a vintage-song,
of which the first line was, " Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it " (see Ps. Ivii.,
and compare Isa. Lev. 8).

690 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
even the uttermost limits of Sacred Scripture, is indicated also
by the allusions to fables about plants and trees in Judg. ix.
8 f. ; 2 Kings xiv. 9 (compare 1 Kings iv. 33). If we adopt the
view of Ewald,! that Canticles originated in Northern Palestine,
and therefore under the influence of Aramaic and Phoenician
forms of speech, we have in this a partial explanation of its
peculiar position in respect both to the rest of Hebrew litera
ture and also to the remaining books of the Canon. But these
examples, and whatever others might be collected, of portions
of writings, both within the Sacred Scriptures and without, the
language of which must be regarded as secular, do not sufBce
to modify the general conclusions. The only Hebrew of which
we have any considerable knowledge is sacred Hebrew; it is
that particular cast of one of the three great Semitic languages
which was produced through its use as the means of express
ing and recording the facts and ideas of the revelation made to
ancient Israel. It is only by noting certain general character
istics which belong to Hebrew in a superior degree when com
pared with other forms of the Semitic, or to it as one form of
the Semitic when compared with the Indo-European, that we
are permitted to iUustrate onr general theme.
Among such characteristics we note, first, a certain remark
able exclusiveness. The group of peoples which have been
called Semitic, for the most part with respect to thek language,
form a class apart with respect also to religion and reUgious
influence. According to Renan, the effect of monotheistic reli
gion upon their language is seen in the fact that their names
for Deity, " even when they take the plural form, all imply the
idea of supreme and incommunicable power, of perfect unity." ^
The exclusiveness of biblical Hebrew, the language of Old-
Testament revelation, is especiaUy characteristic. " The word
' goddess ' would be in Hebrew the most horrible barbarism."
The conceptions and terms which distinguish the speculative
pantheism of India, or the mythology of ancient Greece and
Rome, are excluded from Hebrew ; and so is the literature be
longing to them. Poems reciting the genealogies of the gods,
epics telling of the wars of the gods, have no place in Hebrew
Scripture.^ Philosophic and scientific terms, both on account
of the Hebrew cast of mind and conception of culture, and also
on account of the close connection in ancient literature of such
^ Die Diohter des Alten Bundes, p. 78. 2 Langues Sdmitiques, p. 6.
8 Compare Ewald, Diohter des Alten Bundes, p. 23.

CHAEACTEEISTICS OF BIBLICAL HEBEEW. 591
terms with the language of reUgion, are also almost entirely
excluded. Certain styles of expression are, for simUar reasons,
rarely or never found in Hebrew. Punning, sarcasm, and
various kinds of wit, do indeed appear ; but humor, except in
the narrative of the exploits of Samson, rarely makes a ripple
upon the surface of an Old-Testament manuscript-roll. The
language of discussion, the forms of dialectic, the terms of ex
pression which exhibit the subtler analyses of thought, are only
meagrely found. Nor, unless we accept the doubtful views
which would find exceptions in Canticles and Job, does the
dramatic element appear.
We notice next the fixedness, permanency, and consequent
independence, of biblical Hebrew. These quaUties belong to
Hebrew pre-eminently, even when compared with the other
most closely aUied members of the Semitic group.^ Fixedness
is, in a wonderful degree as compared with the Indo-European,
a characteristic of aU this group. This characteristic is in part
conditioned upon the strength of the consonants, and the per
sistency with which given sounds, with thek meanings, are con
nected with a given number of invariable characters. Lan
guages which can construct a verbal root out of a single vowel,
or a single consonant and a short vowel, must be in a perpetual
flux.2 The element of stabiUty is connected with the perma
nence of the written form of the language. This form is such
as to make the written word not a full equivalent for the
sounds uttered when it is spoken, but rather the symbol for an
idea which the mind of the reader fills up with its complement
of sounds ; it is, however, for this reason a symbol fixed, and
not subject to the changes of vowel-sounds in the word as pro
nounced. For the conveyance of ideas in fixedness of form, the
trisyUabic consonantal method of writing is wonderfully adapt
ed. The fixedness of these Semitic languages is further due to
the type of mind, and habit of life, to which they correspond,
to an inherited and organic adaptabUity for the utterance of
certain fixed sounds, and to the relatively inorganic and un-
plastic condition of the languages themselves. Such immobility
is iUustrated by the finding of the Moabite stone, the language
of which, both lexically and grammatically, in the turn of its
sentences, its style, and whole manner of expression, agrees
with the Hebrew of the historical books of the Old Testament.^
^ See Gesenius, Handworterbuch, p. xxiv. ^ Compare Ewald, Lehrbuch, p. 26 f.
^ See Bertheau in Herzog and Plitt, article Hebraische Sprache.

592 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTUEE.
Renan goes so far as to affirm, that, upon matters of prime
necessity, an Israelite of the time of Samuel and a Bedouin of
to-day could manage to understand one another. This charac
teristic, which belonged to Hebrew as a Semitic language, bib
lical Hebrew possesses in heightened degree ; because the forma
tion so early of a classical literature, and the fixedness of idea
and form which belongs to a somewhat definite ethico-religious
sphere, co-operated in its case with the normal tendencies of
the language.
Closely connected with the characteristic of fixedness is that
of the unity and uniqueness of biblical Hebrew. All the devel
opment of this language from the time of Moses, and onward
through a long series of great historians, poets, and prophets,
concerns only the peculiarities of expression.^ Certain differ
ences in style appear : words distinctive of particular books or
groups of books may be pointed out. But, with the exception
of the few passages which bear most plainly the marks of Ara
maizing, for nearly a thousand years the literature appears essen
tially identical in linguistic pecuUarities. A special unity marks
the literature for about five centuries, from the epoch of David
and Solomon to the time of the ExUe. Moreover, the Exile
itself had comparatively little effect upon the bibUcal Hebrew ;
because those Jews who were carried into captivity belonged to
the aristocracy of the nation, took the national archives with
them, and, although dwelling in Babylon, really were less Ara-
maized in language, views, and customs, than the poorer orders
of the people who remained at home to be corrupted by admix
ture of Syrian influences. From these Babylonian Jews came
the post-ExiUan Scriptures and the later redactionary work
upon the whole Old Testament. A remarkable grammatical
and linguistic unity, a form of language which is fixed and con
ventional to such a degree that the legal and historical lit^^rature
is almost completely impersonal in character, thus belongs to
most of the Hebrew Scriptures. This unity and uniqueness
evince the effect of the normal peculiarities of a Semitic
language, and the special effect of repeated redactions ; but they
also evince the unity aud uniqueness of that historic process of
revelation whose record the literature contains and preserves.
The simplicity of the biblical Hebrew is largely the result of
the simplicity and unique unity of the biblical ideas ; but it is
also grounded in the native simplicity of the Semitic languages.
1 See Ewald, Lehrbuch, p. 33.

DEFICIENCIES OF THE HEBREW. 693
Certain deficiencies of these languages, as contrasted with the
Indo-European, furnish in part the linguistic basis for this sim
phcity. Calm reflection, the contemplation of cause and effect,
the deUberate process of ratiocination, are lacking: the sen
tences are accordingly lacking in real periodicity. There .is
httle or no interweaving of parts under compUcated relations
of superiority, co-ordination, and subordination. Subject and
predicate are merely placed together, and left without defining
thek relations. The different parts of the sentence are bound
together by the simple repetition of vav. An absence of parti
cles signifies a lack of nice distinctions in the relations of ob
jects one to another. The distinction between the perfect and
imperfect is the inadequate substitute for a system of tenses.
The neuter gender is lacking. The verb does not precisely
characterize its own mood. These peculiarities of language are
certainly very grave linguistic defects ; they are such defects as
must always enter into the results of the study of the Old Tes
tament. They render it difficult to prove truth from the inter
pretation of single passages. For, beyond a few simple reli
gious ideas presented in different relations and connections, it
' is difficult to secure the testimony of the Hebrew authors to
definite statements of truth. Old-Testament theology, so long
as it reUes upon the scientific interpretation of single proof-
texts, does not succeed in foundkig itself securely. But these
pecuUarities are by no means to be regarded merely as linguistic
defects. From a higher point of view they show another side.
From this higher point of view they show the adaptation of the
language to the kind of a literature through which the record
of revelation was to be preserved for the race. This childlike
simphcity is adapted to the language of poetry and prophecy ;
it is, moreover, very favorable to the revealing and fixing of the
ideas of revelation in the language of poetry and prophecy. A
few great truths regarding God and the soul, and the relations
of the soul to God, must be lodged in expansive form, and with
expansive force, within the mind of the race. They must be
lodged at a time when, and in connections where, the most con
crete and direct conceptions and terms are alone apprehensible
ty the mind. The simplicity and unique unity of the ideas to
be communicated demand a corresponding form of expression.
It does not follow, however, that these characteristics are in
compatible with real definiteness of knowledge, or even with a
fitting comprehensiveness and variety of knowledge. For the
VOL. I. 2 P

594 THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCRIPTURE.
very process of revelation tends to fix and define as well as to
multiply its own ideas ; and, when the record of the process
can be studied in its own unity, the application of historico-
critical methods, combkied with religious sympathy and insight,
can derive from this record as a whole all that variety of com
prehensive ideas which it contains.
Closely connected with the above-mentioned characteristic is
that quality of sensuousness and passionateness which belongs
to the Hebrew of the Bible. The Semitic languages have re
course to the description of an organic movement in order to
set forth the idea of a human mental activity. The predomi
nance of the verb and verbal elements gives also a pervasive
vitality to all the sentences.^ Anger is depicted by physical
accompaniments of the passion; by the hard breathing («)«),
by the heat (ji^n), by the tumultuous movement of boiling
(T^), by the noise of breaking Qi"]), by trembling (d;?"i).^
Slowness in breathing (D'sx ijis) is patience, shortness of
breathing (D'ax i^p) impatience. The idea of the true is
taken from solidity or stability, that of the beautiful from light.
The bone (Q^JJ.) of any thing is its very substance ; the word
for "bone " is used with the genitive of things for the pronoun
self. Similar phenomena are, indeed, found in aU the earliest
forms of language ; but, as Renan remarks, what distinguishes
the Semitic famUy is, that " this primitive union of sensation
and idea is always preserved." The Hebrew continues to re
mark, that a man opens his mouth when he speaks, and that
when he grows angry his countenance falls. The special influ
ence of this characteristic sensuousness and concreteness upon
the Hebrew poetry will attract our attention farther on. We
remark here, that this characteristic gives a certain poetic effect
to all the language; and with it are connected some of the
most effective types and figures of speech which are embodied
in the very lexicography of the Hebrew in common with the
other most closely affiliated languages.* ¦(W'n, the diminutive
of t:''N, the little man, is the pupil of the eye (either because
of the image reflected in miniature [Gesenius], or as a term of
endearment [Fiirst] ) ; to be slain or conquered by wine is to be
drunk ; to shine and to be proud (nni) is applied to the bright
ness of fresh verdure and beautiful flowers.
1 See Herder, Geist der hebr. Poesie, I. p. 6 f.
2 See Eenan, Langues S^mitiques, p. 22 f.
8 Compare Gesenius, Handworterbuch, p. xxv. f.

THE LACK OF LITERARY STYLE. 695
These qualities of fixedness, unique unity, concreteness, and
lack of reflective analysis and periodicity of sentence, form the
partial explanation of the fact, that the Hebrew writings are so
largely wanting in what is, technically called, literary style.
The Semites, according to Renan, rarely turn the stylus. A
strict regard for literary unity does not characterize the Old-
Testament works. The character of the divisions into which
the sentences fall, both in poetry and in prose, is largely
physical, and determined by the need of repose in respiration.
Rhetoric and grammar were not recognized by these writers as
specific and necessary forms of knowledge in preparation for
authorship. Their language, as we have it, shows an almost
complete absence of distinctively grammatical and literary cul
ture ; its anomalies stifle the rules which inodern grammarians
have constructed for it ; its exceptions and klogical contradic
tions, rather than its studied variety of expression, make possible
the prolix grammars of Ewald and Gesenius. The reader of
the Old Testament must not be disturbed by such trifles as
changes of gender, or unfinished, suspended, and inconsequen
tial phrases. He can read inteUigently only as he lives over
again the very vital, the compressed and abrupt, the passionate
and unreflecting, mental experience of its authors. But if he
thus read he wkl understand how such a language and mode
of Uterary effort, in the wisdom of divine providence, may be
best adapted to send forcefuUy into the dull minds of men the
truths which can weU dispense with mere smoothness and pol
ish of form.
We need not enter at length into the debate as to the rela
tive wealth in words and ideas of the biblical Hebrew. In
general we may agree with KeU and others in maintaining, that,
although poor in words for abstract conceptions and definite
grammatical relations, it is sufficiently rich in those images,
ideas, and conceptions which have to do with the practical and
religious Ike.^ Leusden counts the number of Hebrew and
Chaldaic words in the Bible as 5,642 ; the number of Hebrew
roots has been estimated at 500. Herder calls attention to the
fact, that the number of botanical names in so small a circuit as
the remains of the Hebrew writings is 250.^ In his just view,
1 See Einl. in das A. T., p. 40 f. ; and compare Schultens, De defectibns hod.
hngnae hebr;, § 12 f. ; Gesenius, Geschichte, pp. 47 ff. ; Winer, Ueber die Armuth
der hebr. Sprache; Eenan, Langues Semitiques, p. 136 f.
' Geist der hebr. Poesie, I. p. 8.

596 THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCEIPTURE.
it would be unfair to demand of the Hebrew writers a vocabu
lary of Phoenician wares or Arabian philosophic speculations.
Numerous names appear for natural objects, such as the ox and
the lion ; there are no fewer than eleven names for the rain,
with reference to the different seasons and modes and effects
of its falling. In general we may say that the ckcle of ideas
is limited, but the vocabulary for these ideas is extensive. The
paucity of roots is compensated for by a variety of forms, in
some instances remarkable. Thus on, to raise up, is made to
do service in scarcely less than a score of different conceptions ;
and Qip, to station or cause to stand, in even more. In Ps.
cxix. the 176 verses relieve their monotony of ideas by a great
diversity of terms for the law of Jehovah. Fourteen synonyms
have been counted for the idea of trust in God, nine for the
pardon of sin, twenty-five for the keeping of the Torah. The
poverty in compounds which represent complicated processes
of conception, and in those auxkiary words which imply nice
discriminations of relations, is to be contrasted with the wealth
in words which stand for objects as representing some particular
form of their qualities, or manifestation of their activities, and
especially in words for definite Old-Testament religioiTs and
ethical conceptions.
The illustration of these general characteristics, however,
varies with that wide difference which obtains amongst the
different portions of the Hebrew Scriptures. Tins difference
is due to one or more of the following four causes : (1) the
varieties of the literature ; (2) the changing nature of the lan
guage ; (3) the personaUty of the different authors ; (4) the
amount and quality -of influence from the ideas and the spirit
of revelation.
The varieties of literature in which the Hebrew Scriptures
are given may, for our purpose, be spoken of as these three :
prose ; poetry ; and the literature of prophecy, which has prosaic,
poetical, and semi-poetical elements combined.
In its prosaic passages the biblical Hebrew is least distinctive
ly the language of revelation. The prose of the Old Testa
ment shows only those general providential influences which
operated to shape this one among the Semitic languages so that
it might become the vehicle and record of the facts and ideas
of Old-Testament revelation. The Hebrew style of writing
prose was not, during the golden age of Hebrew, essentially
different from the popular manner of speaking. " According to

THE FORMS OF HEBREW POETRY. 597
its essence," says Ewald,i " the Hebrew prose is perfectly simple
and artless, but alive with beautiful imagery, and in places
where the material furnishes an impulse it rises to poetic
flights." It is in its poetry, and in its prophecy so far as tins is either
strictly poetical or semi-poetical, that the influence of the ideas
and spirit of revelation upon the Hebrew language is most
clearly manifest. For this reason a more careful discrimination
of some of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry is indispensable
to our subject. The variety of forms assumed by Hebrew
poetry is small ; this poetry is in general pre-eminently lyric.
The lyric sometimes approaches the epic, or, as Ewald expresses
the truth, contains the stuff and germ of epic ; as, for example,
in the Song of Moses (Exod. xv.), or that of Deborah (Judg. v.).
Poetical compositions approacMng the dramatic, or introducing,
as it were, the speech of different personalities responding to
each other, are found in passages like Judg. v. 28-30; Ps. xxiv.
7-10, and in the Books of Job and Canticles. The gnomic
poetry (so-called) of the Hebrews belongs to a later age, and is
rather the product of reflection upon the accumulated wisdom
of the past than of inspired feeling in view of great ethico-reli
gious thoughts made clear by revelation to the poet's soul. In
the various forms of the lyric the Old-Testament literature is
rich, as both its contents and its various names for this species
of poetry abundantly testify.^ Snatches of song are found em
bedded in the narrative : as, for example. Gen. iv. 23 ; Num.
xxi. 17 f., 27-30 ; Exod. xvu. 16 (?) ; 2 Sam. iu. 33 f., v. 8, xx.
1; 1 Kings xk. 16. Hymns of thanksgiving and praises, hymns
of contrition and mourning, — whether for the sins and suffer
ings of the nation or for the sins and wrongs of the poet him
self (see Ps. iii., iv., v., vi., vii., x., xi., xiii., xxxix., li.), — abound
in the Hebrew Psalter. Of songs in lamentation for the dead
1 Lehrbuch, p. 20; compare Herder, Ibid., II. p. 14 f.
2 See Ewald, Die Dichter des Alten Bundes, pp. 29-50; and compare art. He
brew Poetry, in Smith's Bible Dictionary, for the names used to designate the
different forms of the song. The term Tty, song, is the most general name for a
poem as spoken by the voice alone; it i.s applied to Canticles (i. 1), and to the
poetical prophetic passage of Isa. v. 1. "ilDlD, a song to be accompanied by an
instrument, translated ^akp.o's by the LXX., is used in 57 superscriptions of the
Psalms (Fiirst), and in these only (Gesenius). S'3tyD, a, special kind of lyric,
which, as Ewald afBrms on the basis of its etymology and on the ground of Ps,
xlvii. 7 ("sing ye praises with understanding"), denotes a skilled and artistic
production, is used of various Psalms (xxxii., xiii., xliv., xlv., lii.-lv., Ixxiv.,
Ixxviii., Ixxxviii., Ixxxix., cxlii.): this is, however, a doubtful conjecture (see
Piitst).

598 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
we have notice in the case of Josiah (2 Chron. xxxv. 25) ; in
stances of such songs ascribed to David are found, 2 Sam. i.
17-27, and ik. 33 f. That wedding-songs abounded, we may
conclude from Jer. vii. 34, xvi. 9, xxv. 10, xxxui. 11. In the
Psalter, Ps. xlv. is the only example of a wedding-song ; and
this has been preserved in canonical Scripture, because the aUe
gorical interpretation of it made it the vehicle of ethical and
religious truths. Of songs for temple-service, Ps. xlvi. and
xlviii. may serve as examples. Of special songs for occasions
like the celebration of a victory, or of the birthday of a king,
or of special offerings, Ewald instances Ps. xx., xxi., Ix., Ixxxv.,
and cxv. We cannot fail to notice certain important relations
between this great predominance and variety of lyric poetry
and the influence of revelation and inspiration upon the struc
ture and uses of Hebrew Scripture. It is characteristic of the
sacred songs of Israel, to be free and unpremeditated outbursts
of the moral and religious thoughts and feelings of the human
soul. Thek fitness to be the vehicles of revelation, and the
effect of inspiration upon their linguistic form, are both con
nected with this characteristic. With it are also connected
certain ethical imperfections, — as, for instance, in the case of
some of the imprecatory Psalms, — which are due to the uncon
trolled expression of feeling.
Other truths similar to the foregoing are suggested by a study
of the various forms of figurative language which abound in
the Hebrew poetry. Here, as in all literature, the images pre
sented are dependent upon the nature of experience ; this is as
true when the speech is of the loftiest matters as when it is of
the lowliest. " In the tent of the shepherd," says Herder, " God
is a Shepherd." ^ And in the life of the family he is best known
as a Father. But by virtue of these Hebrew figures of speech
the human race will continue to know the Infinite One under
the terms of the twenty-third psalm, — " The Lord is my shep
herd ; " and will continue to pray to him after the manner of
Jesus, — " Our Father who art in heaven." So to the mind of
the Hebrew poet or seer, God appears a husbandman going
through the various processes of the husbandman's life.^ He
threshes the mountains, and reduces the hUls to chaff, he uses
the winnowing-fan to scatter the enemies of Israel, or beats them
1 Geist der hebr. Poesie, II. p. 9 f.
2 See Hab. ill. 12 ; Joel iii. 13 ; Jer. li. 33 ; Isa. xvii. 13, xxi. 10, xli. 15 f. ; Mic.
Iv. 13.

THE METAPHORS OF HEBEEW POETEY. 599
with a flak, or prostrates and overrides them with a corn-drag
or a threshing-wain. He clears up his vineyard from the stones,
and then, when he is disappointed in its fruitage, throws down
its wall and makes it waste (see Isa. v. 1-7). Or, most terrible
of all, he treads his enemies under feet, and appears stained
with their blood as one who has trodden the bright-red juice
from the grapes in the wine-vat. It is the narrowness of expe
rience which necessitates the Umitations of the Hebrew figures
of speech; but this narrow experience is made to yield its
utmost service in vivifying and enriching the poetic language.
The one river with which the writers were most familiar sup
phed them with metaphors variously wrought out; the one
high range of mountains visible to them served as the recurring
symbol for the august and the sublime.^ The fructifying power
of the word of Jehovah is like rain and snow upon the earth ;
the utterances of Deut. xxxii. 2 f. drop as rain and distil as
dew. Light and darkness stand for prosperity and adversity,
joy and sorrow ; and the figure of speech is pushed to its extreme
limits as it rises to its loftiest majesty, when it is declared that
Jehovah wiU be the light of the nation so as to dispense with
sun and moon (Isa. Ix. 19 f.), or to put them both to shame
(xxiv. 23). The ravaging king of Assyria is compared (Isa. x.
14) to one who robs a bkd's nest , the strongholds of the land
are represented (Nah. iii. 12) as falling into the hand of the
conqueror Ulie the first ripe figs into the hand of him who
shakes them from the tree. Not a few of these metaphors, even
such as abound in the loftiest poetry, would appear, were it not
for thek ethical and religious significance, coarse and offensive
to modern eyes : they are all judged fairly, even as respects
thek Uterary exceUence, only when sympathetically regarded
from the ancient Hebrew point of view.- It is only in those
cases, relatively few in the Old Testament, where a seeming
violation of modern rules of taste is not obviously connected
with the presentation of ethical and religious truth, that the
influence of the spirit of revelation over the language totally
ceases to be felt. The license of Solomon's Song is one of met
aphors rather than morals; its obscurity is rather due to sur-
., plusage of metaphor than to any supposed need of an allegorical
intei-pretation. ' See Isa. ii. 13 ; Ezek. xxxi. ; for the people, or the church-state, Isa. xxxiii. 9,
^xxv. 2 ; for Jerusalem, Isa. xxxvii. 24 ; for the teiriple, Zech. xi. 1
' Compare Lowth, Poetry of the Hebrews, ed. 1789, 1, p. 112 f.

600 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTUEE.
The influence of the ideas and spirit of revelation upon the
poetic and prophetic language is especially marked in certain
cases of personification. Of the forms of personification, that
which is the most sublime and most fraught with consequences
is the personification of an attribute or activity of Jehovah him
self. The personification of the word of Jehovah as a creative
energy or formative force in nature is closely connected with
the Hebrew view ofthe supernatural (see Gen. i. and Ps. cxlvii.).
It has been brought about in the long historic process of reve
lation, that those truths which' were first apprehended rather in
figurative form, and presented by the oriental imagination in its
intense personifying power, have become the great guiding ideas
of the world's reUgious thought. Idea and imagination united
to make the Hebrew poet and seer conceive of the thunder as
Jehovah's voice, the light as his garment, the heaven his tent,
palace, or temple, the winds his messengers, but especially of
all events and things as the products of his word. This per
sonification of the divine word, at first a figure of speech fit
for the inspired poet and seer, has entered as a vital germ into
all Christian thought and doctrine regarding the very being of
God. Wonderful and spirited instances of prosopopoeia occur in
many passages of the Prophets ; as, for instance, where Jeremiah
(xlvii. 6, 7) addresses the sword of Jehovah, or Isaiah (xiv. 4-
27) represents all the products of nature, the existences of earth
and Hades, as exulting over the downfall of Babylon.
All our Christian language, and much of our sublimest mod
ern poetry, represent simUar ethical and religious objects of
thought by repeating these ancient Hebrew metaphors and
other figures of speech. Herder declares^ that the tone of Job,
the Prophets, and the Psalms still resounds in the poetry of all
the European languages ; MUton's creation-hymn and his morn
ing-song of Adam repeat the figures of speech found in Ps. civ.
and cxlviii.
And, when we inquire more technically into the poetic struc
ture of the ancient Hebrew lyrics and other poetic compositions,
we need not fail to discover proofs in it of the influence of the
spirit of revelation upon the structure of the language. These
proofs follow in part from a study of the psychological nature
and origin of Hebrew parallelism.^ Into a detailed examina-
1 Geist der hebr. Poesie, I. p. 76, and note.
3 Compare Herder, Ibid., I. p. 19 f., and II. p. 2 f.

THE HEBEEW POETIC RHYTHM. 601
tion of the nature of the Hebrew poetic rhythm, we cannot
enter ; nor can we even raise the question whether there be not
tokens of metres in some degree resembling those of the ancient
Greeks.^ We need simply to bring forward the fact which
Ewald ^ elaborates with a rare combination of Hebraistic learn
ing and philosophical insight. The use of such rhythm as the
Hebrew poetry employs testifies to the successive flow in upon
the soul of mighty thoughts which stk up strong emotion : hence
that movement of increase and relapse which is like the rising
and faUing of the breast under the force of the troubled soul,
like the movement upward or downward with the successive
strokes of the bird's pulsating wings. The form of rhythm
most characteristic of Hebrew poetry is that known as parallel
ism. The sententious style, which is especially adapted to
poetry in gnomic or didactic form, is common in the Plebrew lit
erature to every form of poetry. The accumulation of thought
and feeling result, then, in the repetition of short sentences which
are disposed in distichs : they are, as Lowth remarks, like what
Sirach says of the works of God, — " two and two, one against
the other." It is the subUmity of the thought, and the indis
pensableness of the method to all Hebrew poetry, which pre
vent us from regarding this form as essentiaUy repetitious and
tedious. The beauty of style and grace of rhythm — in what
ever degree these quaUties belong to Hebrew poetry — are,
that is to say, largely dependent upon the quality of the ethico-
religious ideas which they express ; it is the spirit of revelation
moving amidst the poetic members which prevents them from
falling into unbearably graceless and ungainly motions. For
these reasons also it is that the poetical quality of the Hebrew
songs cannot be found by the application of the laws of versifi
cation, as we understand this term. It is only when the spirit
ofthe reader follows after the spirit of the writer, runs forward
and then checks itself, rises and then falls, utters its sorrows in
short-lived sobbing, or its joys in brief outbursts of exultation,
— only, indeed, when a spirit somewhat the same in its ethical
and spiritual quality has animated both writer and reader, that
the truest and most enduring poetic value of these compositions
can be felt.
The influence of poetic inspiration has to a certain extent
been felt, not simply upon the form of expression, but even
1 As Lowth (II. pp. 2 ff.) and others have maintained.
" Dichter des Alten Bundes, pp. 5 ff.

602 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
upon the vocabulary of the language. This influence is felt m
all languages ; but in the case of Hebrew it is noticeable only
so far as it has been predominatingly ethical and religious.
ni'^N and n; and Ss, as used alone, are poetic names for God.
Antique words, which are either remnants of earlier poems, or
were in their earlier use employed in prose, have lingered in the
poetry. Forms, the antiquity of which reaches back into the
usage of the common Semitic, Ewald ^ would find in the use
of nari, Ps. viii. 2 ; and of oijj (" their string," as of a lyre, and
so "their sound"), Ps. xix. 5.
We should notice in passing the relation of the simphcity,
ethical weight, and rhythmical paraUelism of Hebrew poetry to
its translation. These quaUties render it more poetical when
somewhat literally translated than when paraphrased in metrical
form. And although, as Herder complained, the relative dif
fuseness of modern languages compels them to use ten words
where the Hebrew used three, the straightforward unpoetized
translation of the Hebrew is the most poetical way of rendering
its peculiarities. Even such pregnant constructions as Ps. Ixxiv.
7, " They have profaned to the ground thy sanctuary," and Ps.
xiii. 1, 2, "How long, Jehovah, wUt thou forget me forever?"
are scarcely exceptions to this rule.
It has already been said that the language of prophecy lies
between that of poetry and that of prose. Hymns or odes
appear in the prophetic compositions (for example, Jon. ii. ;
Ezek. xix. ; Hab. iii. ; Isa. xxxiv. and xxxv. ; the song of
Balaam, Mic. vi. 6-8). Prophecies that are songs are found,
Deut. xxxiii. ; 2 Sam. xxiii. ; Num. xxiv. ; and in the Psalter.
In times of pecuUar exaltation of spirit, the prophet rises natur
ally into the higher form of poetic or semi-poetic speech ; and
then he descends again to prose for making his announcements
of fact (compare Isa. viii., ix.). Instances of the various kinds
of parallelism have been pointed out in the writings of the
prophets ; antithetic parallelism combined with the repetition,
twice or thrice, of the same sentiment, is found Isa. liv. 7, 8, and
Ixv. 13, 14 ; synthetic parallelism forming triplets, in Isa. xiv. 4-
9, and Hos. xiv. 6, 7 ; other beautiful examples of parallelism in
prophecy meet us in Isa. Ix. 1-3 and liii. 1-5, or in Hos. xi. 8 f.
Instances of strophe of various kinds have been alleged by
Ewald in his work upon the Prophets (I. pp. 59 ff.). Nor does
it appear strange that much of prophetic language is nearly or
1 Dichter des Alten Bundes, p. 207.

GROWTH OF HEBREW LITERATURE. 603
quite rhythmical, when we remember the use of music in the
earUer prophecy (see 1 Sam. xix. 20-24 ; Exod. xv. 20 f. ; and
compare 1 Chron. xxv. 1-3), and consider that the movements
of the soul which express themselves in either poems or prophe
cies are so similar, while the very effort to write down the pro
phetic utterances of the past would kindle anew the fires of
thought and feeling.
Thus, then, are aU the more important characteristics in re
spect to which the Hebrew language has been influenced by
the ideas and spirit of revelation, evinced in the most marked
degree by the more poetic passages of the Old Testament.
Inspkation, considered as affecting the manner and form rather
than the subject-matter, exhibits its chief effect in the language
of poems and semi-poetic prophecies. But this manner and
form are not in the Old Testament conflned to designedly artis
tic compositions, as is the case in our modern languages. What
ever the soul clearly apprehends and forcefully feels, that is
most hkely to be expressed, if at all, in poetic form. The soul
of this form, when assumed by the ancient and biblical Hebrew,
is the distinctively ethico-religious thought and feeling which
demand to be expressed. The Old-Testament form of impas
sioned and figurative expression is pre-eminently ethico-reli
gious ; with a few exceptions it is exclusively so. The plastic
art which fashions the language is learned only by referring the
writer's condition of mind and heart to the indwelling Spirit of
Jehovah. It was said, in the second place, that the characteristics of
language vary in the different portions of the Old Testament
according to the historic changes which were undergone by the
Hebrew language as a whole. A remarkable stability and fixed
ness did indeed belong to the biblical Hebrew. But this lan
guage would have been either more or less than human if its
stability and fixedness had been complete. Moreover, the
literature of the Old Testament lies upon both sides of the cul-
mmating point in the life of the language ; and in this accumu
lating literature we can trace the growth of the language to its
perfect bloom, and through its subsequent decay. This historic
process gives the explanation in part of those relative imperfec
tions of most of the later literature to which attention has already
been called.
The history of the sacred poems of Israel follows closely the
history of its sacred rites. The impulse which the deliverance

604 THE DOCTRINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
from Egypt gave to the national literature of Israel has been
compared by Delitzsch ^ to that received by the Greek literature
from the defeat of the invading Persians. The influence of the
Torah and of prophecy upon psalmody was by no means small
in every period of the Hebrew literature. The author just
quoted is warranted in declaring, that, great as were David and
Isaiah in lyric song and prophecy, without the law of Moses
there would have been neither David's psalmody nor Isaiah's
prophecy. Ewald sees the germ of a song invoking Jehovah
in the ery with which the camp was broken up, — "Arise,
Jehovah, and let thine enemies be scattered, and let them that
hate thee flee before thee ; " and as well in that with which it
was pitched again, — "Return, Jehovah, unto the myriads of
Israel." Instances of Psalms only remotely connected with
the law and the prophets are, indeed, not infrequent (e.g., viii,
xxix., xxxik.). But that many songs, especially such as were
designed for the temple-service, were born of the revival of the
national interest in ritual after the return from exile, we have
abundant proof. The nation was then frequently caUed upon
to sing unto the Lord a " new song " (see Isa. xUi. 10 ; Ps. xcvi.
1, xcviii. 1, cxlix. 1).
The inferiority, both literary and ethico-reUgious, of the later
compositions of the Hebrew Scriptures, cannot be denied;
although we may not say, as Renan ^ does quite too indiscrimi
nately, of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Jonah, Chronicles, Haggai,
Zechariah, Malachi, Daniel, Ecclesiastes, and the post-Exilian
Psalms : " The style of these books is flat and without relief,
their thought is duU, their religious ideas more narrow, thek
credulity less naive, their poetry less spontaneous." As to the
last complaint, it is quite certain that the Psahns now lose much
of their spontaneity and freshness ; they are made up after the
copy of earlier versions of divine praises, rather than passionate
outbursts of souls stirred by communion with the object of
these praises. But even the spirit of revelation does not inspire
individuals to move with freedom, purity, and originality in a
language which is no longer that of the fullest popular life and
present religious experience ; and this spirit did not move iu
the nation as in the days of its earlier poets and prophets.
The various conditions, already briefly mentioned, combine
with those indescribable conditions which are furnished by a
1 Zeitschrift fiir luth. Theologie, 1870, p. 21 f.
2 Langues Semitiques, p. 150.

INDIVIDUALITY OF THE AUTHOES. 605
free personality to occasion the third order of differences spoken
of above. The ideas and the spirit of revelation move upon the
individual author in shaping his expression according to his
individuality. And inasmuch as the individuality of the in
spked author is none the less truly, because of Ms inspiration,
a free personality, these ideas and this spirit flnd expression in
many different forms. Precisely what the form will be in each
case, depends not simply upon the movement of ideas and spirit,
but also upon the nature of the person within whom, and of
the historic conditions under which, the movement occurs. We
have, as a result of these varying influences, various forms of
language and style, more or less commendable (and more or less
faulty) from the literary point of view. We have this variety
because we have many workmen set by one Spirit to do each
his appointed work for the common weal. We may, therefore,
speak of Ecclesiastes as penetrated with Aramaisms, and as
resembUng in some respects the Talmudic and rabbinical writ
mgs. We may speak of the language of Job as a peculiar com
pound, apparently of different, and almost diverse, elements.
In its ruling ideas and poetic diction it approaches some of the
Psalms ; in its gnomic character, and frequent introduction of
wise and sententious sayings, it is like the so-called Solomonic
writings ; ^ on account of its dramatic and conversational struc
ture it borrows much from the common speech, and from idioms
that are either Aramaic, or belong alike to Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Arabian forms. We may in like manner freely examine
the peculiarities of language which belong to each Hebrew
writing. With the beginning of the prophets who wrote their prophe
cies, that is, just before and after 800 B.C., there begins a new
epoch in Hebrew literature ; the more ancient impersonal writ
ing of law and history gives way to the personal authorship of
the inspked messenger of Jehovah. It is from this time onward,
then, that the peculiarities which belong to personal authorship
become more strikingly marked ; considerations of style, in the
more definite meaning of the word, enter henceforth into the
estimate which we have to form of the origin and nature of each
Hebrew composition. Each of the prophets has his peculiar
character, as Jerome ^ long ago observed. Judged by all the
} Parallels between Job and Proverbs are given in Eosenmiiller's Scholien zum
Hiob. Proleg., pp. 32-34 ; and see Gesenius, Geschichte der hebr. Sprache, p. 34.
^ I'ref. in XII. Proph.

606 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
highest and most exacting standards, the writing of Isaiah
presents the most finished literary style attainted by ancient
Hebrew ; this is true as respects " taste, proportion, and perfec
tion of form." His elevation, majesty, elegance, and diversity,
combined with dignified simplicity, render him classic when
compared with the best literary models of all languages and
times. Amos, coming forth from the ranks of the people, em
ploys such Aramaic forms as belonged to the speech of common
life in distinction from the language of books ; ^ but the other
marks of rusticity in style, of which complaint has been made,
are mostly confined to the figures of speech natural to a shep
herd and gardener,^ and do not prevent a high estimate of his
sublimity of thought, splendor of diction, and elegance of ex
pression. Hosea and Micah may be described together as for
cible, pointed, and concise ; but the former is obscure on account
of his brevity, and his tone is strikingly local and individual.
Nahum is bold, ardent, sublime. Of Habakkuk, if we foUow
Michaelis in saying that his exceUences are those of an imitator,
we must also affirm with the same critic that they are in the
first rank ; his " Pindaric " ode, as Ewald characterizes chap, in.,
is unrivalled in majesty of thought and diction. Of others of
the prophets, considered as stylists, we cannot speak so highly ;
and, moreover, we cannot fail to discover, that in certain in
stances the lowering in quaUty of style impUes a lower degree
of influence from the ideas and spkit of revelation. The infer
ence from style in expression to degree of spiritual influence is
not made on the false assumptions that revelation and inspka
tion cannot manifest themselves in varieties of style, or that the
fact and degree of their influence are to be measured by Uterary
niceties. Nevertheless, it remains true that form of expression
and degree of spiritual influence bear some relation to each
other ; and style, in Hebrew literature, is so largely a result of
ethical and religious causes, of the ideas and spirit of revela
tion, as to warrant an inference between the two, whether the
inference relegate the particular writing to a high or low grade
in the scale.
The objection to the rusticity of the language of Jeremiah is
ancient, as are also the complaints of his grammatical ignorance.
A relatively smaller portion of his work is truly poetic ; he has
1 See Ewald, Lehrbuch, p. 21.
2 See i. 1, ii. 13, iii. 4, 5, 12, iv. 2, 3, 7, 9, v. S, 11, 19, vi. 12, vii. 1 1, viii. 8, iK. 3,
9, 13, 14.

INDIVIDUALITY OF THE AUTHOES. 607
not the dignity of movement, or purity of diction, which belongs
to the earlier prophets ; there is a certain suggestion of a rela
tive weakness, xationally and ethically considered, when we
compare his style with theirs. We must admit, then, that the
total difference is not one merely in the amount of apparent
Aramaisms. Jeremiah and Zephaniah have neither the literary
nor the ethical loftiness of the earlier prophets. And, if our
position with regard to the entke relation between the Hebrew
language and Old-Testament revelation is correctly taken, we
note something deeper than a merely superflcial difference of
style when we note how prosaic are Haggai and Zechariah. But
Ezekiel has justly been caUed the worst of all the prophets from
a literary point of view. Certainly many impurities of language
and grammatical abnormities are to be found in his writings.^
His most highly wrought passages are prosaic and imitative .^
He takes up the famiUar figures of speech used by the older
prophets and poets, and draws them out into such detaUs, with
such rhetorical excesses, as to mar their effectiveness.^ " His
imagery," says Lowth, " is crowded, magnificent, terrific, some
times almost to disgust; his language is pompous, solemn,
austere, rough." The pecuUarities of style in this prophet
also are not whoUy to be explained by the change which the
Hebrew language was undergoing: they are rather due in a
higher degree to the personaUty of the author as influenced,
not alone by his surroundings, but also and chiefly by the ideas
and spirit of revelation. They are, then, themselves to be con
sidered in proof of the nature of those ideas and the character
istic influence of that spirit.
The further consideration of the more general relations which
must be held to exist between the language and style of the
Old-Testament writers, and the origin and nature of their writ
ings regarded as Sacred Scripture, must be postponed untU we
have examined also the case of the New Testament.
In passing from the study of the language of the Old Testa
ment, regarded as both a vehicle and a product of revelation, to
that of the New, we are at once made aware of a great increase
in means for comparative examination, and a corresponding
increase in the extent and definiteness of the results which can
,' * Gesenius, Geschichte der hebr. Sprache, p. 35 f.
" Compare Keil, Einl. in das A. T., p. 23.
' See hia method of deaUng with the figure of speech, that the beasts and birds
of prey shall assemble to feed upon the slain of Jehovah (xxxix. 17-20, compare
*^^- 13 15) ; and see Michaelis' note in Lowth, II. p. 89 f.

608 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCEIPTURE.
be reached. The New-Testament Greek can be copiously Ulus
trated, both as respects its similarities and differences, by com
parison with that of the classic Greek authors. It can be less
copiously illustrated by comparison with contemporary or sub
sequent authors who used the Koiv-q, or later literary Greek. It
can to some extent be compared with that form of the later
Greek which prevailed in the common speech, and upon which,
as its distinctive linguistic basis, it is itself bukt. Moreover,
the history of those changes and growths of concepts, and rare
or wholly new forms of words, which it embodies, can be some
what satisfactorUy traced in the LXX., the apocryphal writings
of the Old Testament, and in some other Jewish writings which
have the same religious tinge. Finally, then, the quickening
and moulding power over language of distinctively Christian
ideas, the more exact lines and forms of speech with which the
inspiring new religion, and the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit,
have wrought out effects in human consciousness and human
expression, can also be made clear. We can affirm with confi
dence what Schleiermacher ^ caUed the " sprachbildende Kraft
des Christenthums : " we can speak, as does Rothe,^ with good
reason, of a language of the Holy Ghost. The process of com
parison by which we reach the scientific form of these affirmar
tions cannot, of course, be followed by us in detaU. The
barest sketch of its elements and outline must suffice. Neither
the ancient classic Greek, nor the kow-^, whether as spoken by
the multitude, or as written by the authors of the time, con
tained a phraseology which was fit for the conceptions and for
the religious phenomena of Christianity.^ The Greek of the
LXX., and of the Old-Testament Apocrypha, must also be re
formed and enriched in order partiaUy to meet the demands of
this new form of religious life. And yet both the koiv^, and the
religious language of Judaism, are to a large extent found every
where in the very substance of New-Testament Greek.
We find, then, three principal elements, or factors, each of
which must be considered in order to understand the relation
that exists between the language and the spiritual life of the
New Testament. These three are : (1) the koiv^, which forms
the substance and menstruum, or linguistic solvent, of the
other elements of the New-Testament language ; (2) the words
' Hermeneutik, Berlin, 1838, p. 68. 2 Zur Dogmatik, p. 238.
8 See Winer, Grammar (translation of Professor Thayer), p. 34: compare Eeuss,
Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., I. p. 35.

THE ORIGIN OF NEW-TESTAMENT GREEK. 609
and forms of speech which had resulted from the previous
attempts of the Jews to express the conceptions of Old-Testa
ment religion in Greek, and the chief source of which is the
Septuagint; (3) the words, and turns of expression, which are
the most special result of the formative influence from the
specific ideas and spkit of Christianity itself.
We consider first, very briefly, the origin and nature of the
mvri. The earUest forms of the Greek language, as made known
to us by its most ancient literature, are three, — the Aeolic, the
Doric, and the Ionic dialects. The peculiarities which distin
guished the spoken language are matters of indirect proof;
but, as written language, each dialect is the form which in
the most remote historical antiquity had established itself as
the favorite one for a particular kind of literature. The Ionic
is the favorite form for epic poetry ; the Doric, for lyric in the
war-songs, reUgious hymns, and the choruses in general; the
AeoUc, for that pecuUar kind of lyric which may be called sub
jective, and in which Alcaeus and Sappho sung. But the Attic,
which originated chiefly from the Ionic, and occupied a middle
position between the hardness of the Doric and the softness
of the Ionic, became the prevalent language of literature after
Athens had become the Uterary centre, and after the ancient
forms of Uterature had for the most part given way to the
drama, the oration, history, phUosophy, and the other forms in
which the Attic writers of Athens excelled. But the Macedo
nian conquest, in its general breaking-down of ancient barriers
and distinctions, included those of language as well. How
profound were the changes which took place in the Greek
language, we can judge, although caUing in question the pro
priety of the assertion of Steinthal,^ who insists that genuine
Greek died soon after the time of Alexander : its organic and
living development as a language, that is to say, forever ceased.
But a certain kind of Greek, which in its turn underwent a
certaui kind of development, became far more than ever before
the speech, not only of the civilized ancient world, but even of
barbarians ; if, indeed, the jargon of the latter can properly be
caUed Greek. In Athens itself, a form of the Greek language
relatively very pure continued to maintain itself; but the
Attic, which was spoken in the Macedonian court and by the
Macedonian soldiery, spread itself not only over the lands
inhabked by the ancient Hellenes, but also over the Macedonian
1 Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Alten, p. 38C.
VOL. L 2 Q

610 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
provinces of Syria and Egypt. For we are not to look upon a
Macedonian dialect as the fundamental form of the kow-i^, but as
constituting after the time of Alexander the leading form or
type of those various corruptions and debasements which united
to form this koivt^. And inasmuch as they who were most active
in thus mixing the ancient forms and usages of the Greek with
one another, and with other elements from languages not Greek,
were largely merchants, soldiers, stroUing players, and quondam
slaves, it is not doubtful that the spoken Greek of the crowds
became a much debased and corrupted affak. Under the worst
conditions, a jargon was formed in which the nice distinctions
of the classic language were almost wholly lost. Different
case-endings of nouns were confused. Monstrosities of verbal
construction appeared, even to the extent of phrases and sen
tences which it is impossible to translate with confidence on
account of their breach of all the laws of grammar known to
the ancient Greeks.^ A mixing not only of different dialects
of Greek with an admixture of foreign languages, but also of
the rural forms of. speech with those of the centres of trade and
commerce, went on. " If Antioch was an Asiatic Athens," de
clares Steinthal, " it was only a Hellenic oasis in a Hellenistic-
barbarian desert." But the Spirit of revelation, moving in his
tory as Providence, did not permit the language of the New
Testament to attach itself either to an Asiatic jargon or to a
special Alexandrine dialect.
While the Koiv-q, considered as the spoken language of the
world's motley crowds in intercourse, was undergoing these
various stages of corruption, from the slight changes of Athe
nian Attic after Alexander's time to the barbarisms of Nubia
or rural Syria, this same Koivrj, considered as the language of
the later Hellenic literature, was undergoing its own changes,
closely related to those of the spoken language. For, on the
one hand, many of the writers of this entire period made praise
worthy and quite successful efforts to write a Greek which
should be pure from the worst corruptions ; but, on the other
hand, not even the most strenuous and successful of them could
exclude the influences which were in the very air they breathed.
Among the Jews, only a few of the most learned, such as Philo
1 See Steinthal, Ibid., p. 405 f. For example: b>^v for tropiiiivrm, vripdi/Cthat
which is liquid) for water ; t6 p.iv irpiuToi/ oin-af , for the first time ; vUrip.a ihctA t^v
ixBpiiiV, for victory over the enemy. Oi ydp ^iKoveiKoi p.ov dpirdiia rSiV ywaiKiav Kal Ta
iraiSCa ainSiv (I rob my euemies of their wives and children), is a specimen of
Nubian Hellenism. '

DIFFERENCES OF THE KOINH AND CLASSIC GREEK. 611
and Josephus, attained a style approximating to literary Greek.^
But the literary Greek to which they most nearly attained was
itself not classic Greek. The extreme purists of the old ortho
doxy looked upon the assertion that New-Testament Greek
is not faultless, when judged by the ancient classic models, as
savoring of blasphemy. The work of the Holy Spirit upon the
language of the Christian writings which their view demanded,
could have been nothing less than a perpetual miracle, reaching
to the minutest details of etymology and syntax. But careful
research has now made it certain, that the writers of the New
Testament can as little be commended for being perfectly true
to the best models of the written Koivrj, as they can be charged
with writkig the worst form of the jargon described above.
We must, then, consider the basis of the New-Testament
Greek as laid in that form of the Koivri which was the spoken
language of the region in which the New-Testament books
arose. In other words, the New-Testament Greek is, funda-
mentallj' considered, Hellenistic Greek; it is such Greek as
was spoken by the Jews and other surrounding peoples in their
daily intercourse at the centres of civilization. The New-Tes
tament diction is itself the best example of the spoken Koivri.
In this diction it is not important, even if it were possible, to
distinguish the peculiarities of a so-called Alexandrine, or a so-
caUed Syrian, dialect. But some examples of those differences
between classic Greek and this spoken Koiv-q, which the New-
Testament diction itself Ulustrates, must be noted in passing.
That greater uncertainty of spelling which belonged to the
first MSS. of tlie New Testament is a variation from the classic
Greek which was shared by the written and spoken koiv-tj. The
process of changes in spelling through which all New-Testament
MSS. have passed makes it difficult to cite with confidence in
stances Ulustrating this fact. But these MSS. have the style
of speUing which belonged to the time and region in which they
were made, or to their models : their spelling is in part, then, to
be accounted for on the supposition that it originally varied
with the different authors of the first models. A confusion
appears of short and long vowels and of single vowels and
diphthongs. ^ In some cases there is a failure to observe the
augment, in others a false augment, in still others a repetition
' See Winer, Grammar, p. 21.
^ '^ See Steinthal, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, p. 415; and compare Lip
sius, Grammatische Untersuchungen fiber die biblische Griicitat, Leipzig, 1803.

612 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
to the number of two or even three augments.^ These faults,
as judged by a classical standard, were not confined to the New-
Testament diction, as the writings of Phrynichus and the prac
tice of Plutarch and others assure us. Confusions of gender,
innovations in the inflections of nouns and verbs, also appear.
Words from the different ancient dialects had become absorbed
into the common speech ; such are the Attic 6 o-kotos, and from
the Ionic the word ^pdw (see Acts xxi. 24; 1 Cor. xi. 5).^
Other words which were rare in the ancient literature of Greece
had become parts of the speech of common life. Newly com
pounded words, or new signiflcations of words found in the
classic Greek, had been made part of the koivti, and thus pre
pared to serve the purpose of expressing Christian thought.
Such words are dyeveaXoyrjro's (Heb. vii. 3), dvTiX-vrpov (1 Tim. ii.
6), iyKparevopai (1 Cor. vii. 9, ix. 25), ayvorrjs, irapa^dr-rjs, for a
transgressor of law (found in Aeschylus, Eum. 553), ^coo-TvyiJs in
the passive sense (found in Euripides : see Rom. i. 30), dyoryi/for
one's mode of Ike, eixapio-reiv to return thanks, dvaKXiveiv to re
cline at table, and certain diminutives Uke Kopdo-iov, not admit
ted into pure Attic, but derived from popular usage, and found
in later literary Greek. Changes of ancient customs had in
troduced changes in the meanings of their descriptive words:
for example, the word yevea-ia — which had originally meant a
feast in honor of the dead, held on the recurrence of his birth
day — had come to be used instead of yeveOXia, a birthday feast.
Thus the word in late Greek for an announcement — i-TrayyeXIa
— had been made ready for its New-Testament use in the
meaning of that supreme announcement which is the promise
of salvation by the gospel. Thus also SaXp.wv or Saipoviov had ac
quired in the later spoken-Greek the meaning of an evil spirit.
Especially interesting are the cases of certain words, which,
having been employed only for coarse uses in the classic Greek,
had even by the vulgar usage been preserved for the nobler uses
of the New Testament : xop^a^eiv (to fodder, or fatten in a staU)
was used as a low word in the later comedy for filling one's self
full of food ; but by popular usage to signify the satisfying of
a human being with food, it had been made ready to be used in
the ideal sense of satisfying the hunger of the soul (see Matt.
1 See riveiaypiivTi, RcV. iv. 1.
2 For lists of these words, see Winer, Grammar, p. 24; Planck, De Vera Na
tura atque Indole Orationis Graecae N. T., p. 18 f.; Schirlitz, Grundziige der Neu
testamentlichen Gracitat, p. 15 f. ; and the larger lexicographical works to which
these writers refer.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE SEPTUAGINT. 613
v. 6). It is, then, only in the exercise of its right as one form
of the Koarj, that the diction of the New Testament and the
LXX., after the analogy of classic Greek, forms and employs
compounds like alpareKxya-la (Heb. ix. 22), and SiKaioKpiaia (Rom.
ii. 5), and the various compound verbs with irpos and vTvep and
other prepositions that add less to the meaning than to the
sonorous sound.
That the spoken Koivq was the form of language alone suit
able for the expression and promulgation of the religious ideas
of Christianity, is clear from both its subjective and its objective
relations to this use. The capacity for figurative construction,
the manifoldness, the versatility, the wealth of accumulation,
which belonged to Greek, were incomparably greater than be
longed to any other language of antiquity. But since the good
to be distributed was a common good ; since, as Zezschwitz i
declares, " it is the sacred prerogative of the gospel never to be
first preached otherwise than in the language of humanity and
to the poor," — the diction of the New Testament was most fitly
not the classic Greek, nor the literary Greek of its own time,
but the language of the multitudes, the spoken Koivrj."^ A seeth
ing sea of language — ancient dialects compounded, old poetic
forms, and new constructions of popular speech, with somewhat
from many other forms of popular expression — ¦ was waiting to
be brooded over by the Divine Spirit.
But the impress of the ideas and spirit of Old-Testament rev
elation upon the Greek language had already been felt in the
formation of the language of the LXX. and of the apocryphal
books of the Old Testament. Upon the basis of the koivtq, espe
cially as spoken in Alexandria, a technical religious language
of the Jews had arisen, and had become the principal medium
for the internal communication and the outward promulgation
of Old-Testament ideas. The Greek translation of the Old
Testament had become for great numbers of the Jews, who
were either obliged or inclined to use a translation of their
ancient Scriptures, at once the only version of those Scriptures
^ Profangracitiit und biblischer Sprachgeist, p. 9.
^ As to the extent to which the Greek was used in the Christian era, see Eenan,
Histoire gene'rale des Langues Semitiques, p. 223; De Wette, Einl. in das N. T.,
§ 1, and the references to Hug and Credner found there; Schirlitz, Grundziige,
P- 13 f.; Eeuss Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., p. 31; Milman, Bampton
Lectures, 1827, p. 182 f. ; Fairbairn, Hermeneutical Manual, p. 10 ; Westcott,
W. New Testament, Smith's Bible Dictionary ; and Eoberts, Discussions on the
Gospels, pp. 26-316. (The view of this last author, that Jesus and the apostles
cuBtoniarily spoke in Greek even when addressing Jews, cannot be justifled.)

614 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and the only form of Greek literature which they knew. This
translation, therefore, exerted a pre-eminent influence over the
form of Greek written among the Jews, both of Judaea and of
the Diaspora. Considered as Greek, it represents the grade of
purity retained by the spoken koivj? of Alexandria.^ The LXX.
give us poor Greek, even as compared with Philo and Jose
phus ; but the LXX. for the most part keep clear of the worst
of the jargon which must have prevailed in the region around
them. This Greek of the LXX. differs, however, from that
spoken by the Greeks and Macedonians of Alexandria in that
day, chiefly by containing innumerable manifestations of the
Hebrew form of thought and language. What we know as
Hebraisms, in the widest sense of the word, abound in the Sep
tuagint. The necessity for these Plebraisms in biblical Greek
may be considered as twofold : it consisted partly in the sub
jective feeling of the Jews, that the Greek which they heard
spoken had no words and phrases with the import needed, and
had not the ring, the traditional form and manner of expression,
which satisfied them ; it consisted also in the objective fact, that
they must communicate the ideas of Old-Testament religion iu
Greek, and in such Greek as they could construct and manage
with reference to the materials at their disposal. These Hebra
isms, then, are not simply many in number; they are also mani
fold in form and completeness. Their range is from the most
perfect Hebraisms, or those words, phrases, and constructions
which are most strictly peculiar to the Hebrew and averse to
Greek usage, to the most imperfect, or such words, phrases, and
constructions as were probably derived from Hebrew and yet
are not infrequent also in Greek usage. The following kinds
of Hebraisms (in the widest meaning of the word) need only
to be noticed : ^ (1) Hebrew- Aramaic words which are simply
transposed into Greek letters ; (2) words where the Hebrew
derivative meanings were attached to a Greek word the primary
signification of wbich most nearly corresponded to the Hebrew
(thus v-ip'^-i) — bride — denotes also daughter-in-law after the
analogy of nba in Gen. xxxviii. 11, and elsewhere ; evXcr^Civ, like
the Hebrew ^"12, means /awstojoercZeMm^remH; and ktiW means
thing created) ; (3) derivative words formed to fit Hebrew con
ceptions, but after the analogy of the Greek vernacular (such
1 See steinthal, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, p. 409.
2 Compare Winer, Grammar, p. 27 f.; Bleek, Einl. in das N. T., p. 87 f.: Schir
litz, Grundziige, p. 30 f.

HEBRAISMS IN NEW-TESTAMENT GREEK. 615
are (nrXayxyi^ea-Oai, dvaOepari^eiv, and ¦7rpoo-&)Tro.\7;iiTctv) ; (4) WOrds
and phrases which have a derived and figurative meaning, not
unknown to Greek, but familiar to Hebrew, and introduced into
biblical Greek from the Hebrew (a-n-eppa for proles, dvdyKrj for
distress, aropa of a sword) ; (5) phrases which arose from the
verbal translation into Greek of Hebrew vernacular expressions
which were more or less foreign to the Greek (yevea-Oai Oavdrov,
atpa eKxieiv, dvotyetv to a~r6p.a, all of which a Greek would readily
imderstand ; and Trpoa-um-ov XapifSdveiv, and Xoyi^ecrOai eh SiKaioa-ijvrjv,
which a Greek would perhaps have found at first unintelli
gible) ; (6) phrases that show the Hebrew predilection for cir
cumstantiality and figurative forms of speech (such as 4>evyeiv
OTTO irpoa-wTTov rivos and iypd(j>rj Siot x^'pos) ; (7) technical terms and
phrases of religion.
Without dwelling upon those Hebraisms which consist rather
in the departure from the grammatical forms of Greek, we con
sider several examples of that class of Hebraisms which was
mentioned last above. The chief office of the Greek of the LXX.
in preparing a diction for the New Testament was rendered in
the form of those technical words and phrases which were made
to represent the ideas of Old-Testament religion. Inasmuch,
then, as Christianity is in some sort grounded, both ideally and
historicaUy, in the Old-Testament religion, the language of the
Greek version of the Old-Testament Scriptures is pre-eminently
the reUgious language made ready for the writers of the New
Testament. Indeed, most of those words and phrases of Chris
tianity which express its technical religious facts and ideas are
the gift of the LXX. : they are so, although the import of these
words and phrases was much changed and expanded by the
spkit of Christianity. Of this general statement an illustration
or two wkl for the present suffice.
The conception which corresponds to the Hebraistic phrase
^aaiXeia rcru Oeov is the grandest of all human conceptions, and of
growth so slow as to correspond with its grandeur. The foun
dation of this conception is in the covenant relation into which
Jehovah enters with Israel, and which distinguishes this people
from the other peoples of the earth, making them the people of
his kingdom (see Exod. xix. 6 ; Deut. xxxiu. 5). Between this
most ancient and the Christian conception of the kingdom of
God, stands the prophetic. Upon this basis of Old-Testament
revelation is built the import of the phrase (Saa-iXeia rov Oeov in the
Christian cUspensation. For the expression belonged to the

616 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
school-language of the religious community among the Jews.
The biblical conception of the divine holiness as affecting the
speech of the LXX., and, through them, of the New Testament,
has been discussed by Zezschwitz and others.^ For this general
conception four principal classic Greek words were employed;
viz., dyi/ds, a-epvos, oo-tos, and lepos, — aytos, which is allied to d-yvo's,
becoming comparatively infrequent. Of these lepos and oo-tos
turned the thought rather godward (lepos, according to Pape,
being used of whatever concerns the gods, and especially of what
is consecrated to them). But lepos is used only twice in the
New Testament, and in neither case as implying ethical quality :
in the LXX. it (lepov) is used only twice for the sanctuary, and
in both cases to translate a word expressing only the externals
of the sanctuary (1 Chron. xxix. 4 ; Ezek. xlv. 19) ; but in the
Apocrypha of the Old Testament it is regularly used for the
Jewish temple. Biblical Greek, then, rejects the word lepo's in
a sense implying the idea of ethical holiness.^ But although
lepo's and dyvo's appear synonymous in non-biblical Greek, bibUcal
Greek makes a distinction between them, and reserves the lat
ter word for human purity. But oo-tos in biblical Greek remains
true to the fundamental classic meaning, while gaining much in
depth and intensity : it is used by the LXX. some thirty times
to translate Tpn, the fundamental conception of the Hebrew
being " to be well-disposed." It is dyios — a word rare ki Attic
Greek and in the literary Koivq — which the religious community
adopted and regularly employed to express its religious idea
of holiness. And here all local concentration of holiness is
involved in the appearance and self-revelation of Jehovah. This
term the LXX. employ nearly one hundred times for E?np^ ; for
the presence of the source of all holiness is that which renders
things really sacred. The New Testament, while departing
from the usage of the LXX. by using lepov for the temple, con
forms to its use of dyios ; the departure, as Zezschwitz thinks, is
due to the fact that the inner principle of holiness has stripped
from the external place of divine glory its former jwasi-moral
sanctity. For the New-Testament use of the word KoV/ios also,
the LXX. prepare the way by departing from the Greek usage.
Pythagoras, according to Plutarch, was the first to call the
world by this term on account of its evra^ta ; Platonism used it
1 Profangracitat, pp. 13 ff. ; and comp. Trench, Synonymes of the New TestK"
ment, I. p. 182 f.
- This although if/jtu! is the word which the LXX. use to translate jnji

CONSTRUCTIVE INFLUENCE OF REVELATION. 617
for the ideal world-order. But of the Hellenistic writings, only
those which are apocryphal (especially the Books of Wisdom
and Second Maccabees) use the word in this meaning ; by the
LXX. Koa-px)^ and Koa-p.eiv are used only in the debased sense of
adornment ("i;',).-^ In New-Testament usage the Koapos is the
very opposite of an ideal world, or a divine, orderly, and beauti
ful whole. The opposition which the Old Testament sets forth
as existing between the people of Jehovah and the Gentiles,
Paul and John enlarge : it is the opposition between the present
fleeting and sensual order of affairs, which calls out the lusts of
men by external adornment, and the pure moral beauty of God
and his kingdom, that expresses itself in the changed meaning
of the word Koa-pos.
Other instances of this mediating office which the language
of Old-Testament revelation, when given in the forms of the
Koarq, performed for the diction of the New Testament, we need
not notice. Old-Testament revelation and synagogical use com
bmed with the later use of Greek to prepare a form for the
utterance of Christian facts and ideas. But we cannot mag
nify the action of the preparatory forces so as wholly to account
for the new diction. Not all these forces in their combined
working could shape the form of speech which should be fitted
for Christian experience and reflection to employ and fill. If,
as Schleiermacher ^ justly claims, every spiritual revolution de
mands in some regards a new form of expression, this demand is
pre-eminently valid and imperative on the part of the greatest
spiritual revolution of all. For the ideas and the spirit so won
derfully new, there must be found a new language which should
serve them as their recognizable form. We have, then, to con
sider the elements of the New-Testament diction which are
most distinctively due to the Christian spirit and the Christian
ideas. The elements which constitute the claim of the New-Testa
ment writings to be caUed the language of the Holy Spirit as
the inspirer of Christian minds and hearts are three : (1) certain
specifically Christian symbolism , (2) a certain new and dis
tinctively Christian import given to words formerly in use;
(3) certain new compounds formed by the necessities of the
new Christian ideas.
' This is true, according to Zezschwitz, even of those passages which speak of
'M stars as being the adornment of heaven; see note, p. 22.
' Hermeneutik, p. 64.

618 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
In constructing the more specifically Christian symbolism, the
need is manifested that the new ideas should have a definite
new circle of figures of speech and figurative phrases fitly to
embody and convey them. Such figures of speech are for the
most part constructed after the analogies of Semitic, and espe
ciaUy of Old-Testament language. Thus does Christ call him
self 0 Troip,r]V 6 KoXos and -^ apTreXos 17 aXrjOivri. Thus also do the
phrase, .dvwOev yewaa-Oai, and the Xovrpos iraXtyyeveo-tas of the SOUl,
come to stand for Christian conversion; as well as the word
ima-Tpe<j)eiv, which Luciaii (Consc. Sist. 5) used in the moral
sense, and which the LXX. used for a positive obedience to the
authority of Jehovah. In the same manner Kara a-dpKa . . . elvai
or ^-^v or Trepnrareiv bccomes Contrasted with the life and activity
which are Trve-vp,aTi, iv TTvevpari, or v-tto tov rrvexipxtros.^
In estimating the new wealth of meaning which Christianity
gave to the technical religious terms of Judaism, we can scarcely
speak too strongly. The words are the same familiar words of
Old-Testament revelation which must have fallen without shock
from their sound upon the ear of the reader of the LXX. or the
hearer of the talk in the Jewish synagogue. And yet no more
completely new words were ever given to the world of religious
thought. It has been said of the Pauline use of StKaioo-wi?, that
every Jewish hearer or reader would have been obliged to say
of the apostle, " This man uses our word in a different sense
from ours."
The wealth of new meaning imported into the ancient words
by the life-giving spirit of Christianity has been, after all the
special investigations, quite too little prized or understood.
But a very few from the many most notable examples which
might be adduced must now stand for them all.
Among all the examples, none is more notable than dydm], a
word, as representing the pure conception of love, not found in
unbiblical Greek , in such Greek dydinyo-ts stands for affection.
The LXX. employ the word seldom outside of Canticles ; but
the conception which they attach to it includes, according to
Cremer, affection that chooses its object with decisive wkl and
readiness for self-sacrifice. The biblical conception of dydirq as
a moral energy is distinguished from that of the noble Greek
word KJjiXavOpwTTia, to which the biblical <f>iXaSeX^ia more nearly
corresponds : ^tXavdpwma is that affection which duly belongs to
the object as a personal friend and benefactor, or a fellow-citi-
1 See Schirlitz, Grundzuge, pp. 36 fE.

SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN WORDS. 619
zen, or as one entitled to it on account of misfortunes. But the
New-Testament conception of dydm] as the fruit of the Spirit
(Gal. V. 22) is a creation of Christianity. This love is not pri
marily regarded as a characteristic of humanity but of divinity,
—the very reverse of Aristotle's view, that Deity exists not to
love but to be loved. This dydTn? is given to men for recog
nition in the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ (1 John iii. 16) ;
it characterizes the cUvine essence, for God is essentially love
(1 John iv. 8). Surely here is life-giving power creating a body
for itself from the materials furnished by the human develop
ment of language.
The Christian meaning of mo-ns is much more nearly in accord
with the fundamental idea of the word in classic usage. Even
in classic Greek, mo-rts is persuasion which is based on confidence
in the person or thing trusted, rather than on knowledge ; more
rarely it is fidelity, or the pledge of fidelity, an oath, or its
means, or some form of evidence and proof. So that in Plato
(Bep., X. 601, E.) TTicrris and i-n-ia-T-rip,r], 6 TrtoreuaJV and o etStos, are
contrasted. By Xenophon (Mem. I. 1, 1) the word vopit,oi is
used to designate beUef in the gods, although the confidence is
regarded as based on tradition. The idea of confidence in a
person, as distingmshed from knowledge, is the priceless gift of
classic Greek to the New-Testament idea of irto-rts (compare
2 Cor. V. 7 ; Heb. xi. 27 ; Rom. iv. 18 ; John xx. 29). But classic
Greek could not fuUy evolve the idea of reUgious faith : such an
idea did not correspond with the fundamental Greek conceptions
of the relations existing between the human and the divine.
Personal relations with God as a basis of confidence are, how
ever, involved in the Hebrew use of the words nan, non, and
nip. But in the New Testament the idea is expanded so as to
mclude all the essential relations of the religious life. The New-
Testament era becomes contrasted with that of the Old Testa
ment as pre-eminently characterized by Trto-rts (see Gal. iii. 23,
and compare Acts vi. 7, xvii. 31).
The word €A.7rts was originally used of the expectation of
future things ; sometimes of evil things (as in Herodotus, vi.
109, 3, ix. 113, iXwop-evos Be ri ol KaKov elvai), but generally of future
good. In the later Greek also iXms sometimes meant anxiety,
or fear. In the New Testament the word is always employed
in the good sense, but more specifically of that expectation of
eternal salvation which is joyful and full of firm confidence.
That one expectation is alone deemed worthy of being caUed

620 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
hope (ikms) which concentrates in itself and satisfies aU the
other expectations of the human mind. The relation of this
word to another word for a cognate conception is further in
structive: viropov-Tj is patient and constant expectation. This
latter conception is most prevalent in the Old Testament, as
the LXX. clearly saw, and showed by using it to translate njpn
and nipri, — words in which the idea of binding fast, and so of
mental strength or constancy, is fundamental. In neither sense
can hope be recognized as existing where the promises of salva
tion under a covenant have not reached ; and, where there is no
such hope, there the power of moral purification which belongs
to such hope cannot exist (see 1 John iii. 3).
That conception of the LXX. which is nearest to the New-
Testament conception of x"/''* is eXeos as a translation of iDn.
In the New Testament our thought is raised from the signifi
cance of simple kindness and good-will, to that favor of God
and Christ which secures and dispenses the benefits of the gospel.
The special meaning, then, of the word x°-P'-^ in the Christian ter
minology, is most definitely due to the specifically Christian
ideas which it embodies. In classic Greek it signifies whatever
is pleasant (alles woriiber man sich freut. — Pape). But what
a vast distance between this meaning and the specifically Chris
tian import which is the gift of revelation to the world through
the inspired mind of the Apostle Paul !
Zezschwitz has shown at length in what a wonderful manner
Christianity has dealt with certain words in the vocabulary of
the Greek psychology. Of principal significance is the fact, that
the word Ao'yos in the sense of "reason" — the rational faculty
in man — is foreign to the Scriptures, while irvevpa, which is in
its psychological meaning foreign to other Greek, becomes from
the first the predominant psychological conception of the bibli
cal Greek. The conception and use of irvevp-a for the seU-con-
cious and innermost psychical life of man, or for the divine
principle of life which is imparted to man as the principle of
his new divine life, belong to the Bible alone. The Bible, then,
can introduce us to the phrase irvevp-a rov ®eov, — a phrase which,
according to Zezschwitz, would be unintelligible in classic Greek.
But all the theology of the Bible, and all the experience of the
Christian life, are dependent upon the true and full conception
of this phrase.
Only a little less suggestive and forceful than the instances
in which Christianity has given a positively new import to its

EXCLUSIVENESS OF NEW-TESTAMENT DICTION. 621
own words and phrases are those in which it is negatively dis
tinguished by the absence of certain ethical or quasi-ethical
conceptions and terms, important and common to the diction
of non-biblical Greek. Such are the terms with their concep
tions, KoAos Kdya^os, p.r]Bev ayav, dvBpeia, aperrj, and a-wt^ipocnjvq, in the
peculiarly Greek sense. The sacred words eia-e/ieia, a-i/iw, and
o-sjSojiiat, &om wMch we might expect so much, are used, Jon. i.
9, when the prophet confesses Iks fear of divinity, and in the
New Testament for the service of idols, or the traditional piety
of heathen and proselytes. Yet this feeling of natural piety, and
the externals of worship to which it leads, are not treated in
the New Testament as they were in the Old, while the opposite
do-EjSEia is impUcitly condemned. But plainly this kind of piety,
concept and word, could not satisfy the conditions of Chris
tianity. In the room of these vanished or diminished concepts
and words come others which fiU the vacant places. Of raTret-
vonjs, TUTravo^pooTjvr/, in the meaning of the ancient Greek for
TaTEiTOs, viz., servile and crouching, the biblical usage knows
nothing ; but it dignifies the ancient word, and employs it for
the virtue of modesty, and freedom from arrogance. The right
attitude of lowliness before God in view of sinfulness, and of
gratitude in view of pardon, demands an expression for a new
and crowning vktue of Christianity. And if New-Testament
Greek makes little of the vovs as an independent faculty in man,
it emphasizes the o-waSijo-tSj^ or conscience, which is regarded,
not as an independent ethical faculty, but as the seat and organ
of divine ethical ideas and influences.
Of the power of Christian ideas and the Christian spirit to
make absolutely new compounds, we cannot speak with perfect
confidence ; for we cannot often affirm with perfect confidence
that any compound is absolutely new. In order to make this
affirmation in the case of the New-Testament diction, we should
need to know all the words which occurred, not only in previous
hterature, but also in that technical religious speech which was
distinctive of the Hellenistic Jews. Not a few cases occur,
however, in which we must with great probability refer a new
compound to this power ; in the case of those compound words
which are most manifestly vehicles for purely Christian thought,
we need have no hesitation at all.
'According to Zezschwitz (p. 53), this word is found in a sense allied to
tie biblical, only in one passage, viz., of Diodorus Siculus (iv. 65) ; but, on the
contrary, see the investigations of Kahler in his Das Gewissen, 1878, 1, pp. 32 ff.

622 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
How marvellously intense and comprehensive this formative
power over language, due to the influence of distinctively
Christian and spiritual causes, must be estimated to be, it is not
easy to describe in words. But let any thoughtful reader go
carefully through with a list of such expressions as most exhibit
this power, and then make the estimate for himself. What
strange new life in language has entered the world in the
diction of the New Testament ! What changes would modem
thought and literature have to undergo in order to abstract
from them all that is due to the new import and power which
Christianity gave to human speech ! ^
The detailed consideration of the linguistic characteristics
which are exhibited by the different authors of the New-Testa
ment books belongs to the special Introduction of those Books.
But to our purpose it belongs rather to note the nature of these
differences, and the inferences from the fact that the differences
exist at all. The one spiritual influence was, in respect to lan
guage as in respect to other forms of its expression, distributed
in a variety of powers and gifts. The distribution corresponded
in general with the laws which have already been considered in
other connections. In the case of the New Testament the per
sonal elements are more prominent, and consequently the au
thorial peculiarities more marked, than in the case of the Old.
This difference between the two Testaments is in part due to
the superior flexibility and more subtle variabUity of the Greek
as compared with Hebrew, and in part to the fact that the
expression of the various forms of Christian inspiration was less
limited by conventionalities than was the case with the Old-
1 The following list of words and phrases, which have been either compounded
or largely changed in import by the influence of Christianity, will perhaps be
helpful in an investigation like that suggested above. 'AK<j>a (e-yiu eVi to a sai to »,
Rev. i. 8), a^uo-cros (r?) for the bottomless pit; dyaOoavvrt, dyaSoepyita, dyadoiToUta, otyioy,
dyioi (oi) for Christians; aytd^u, iyioTijs, dyt.(0(rvvri, dyiatrpo^, dydjri], dStEXiftoTTj^, dvTiKvTpov,
a7rd(TToAo9, dTo\vTpix>(ri^, at^LAdyaOoy, jSajTTt^w and ^aTTTttr/ia, yevvd<T6aL dviadev, SlaKOCOS, SiKaio-
crvi-Tj and the other compounds of Sikiuos, Sola and ivSo^dia), e'lprivri, eKnA^iria, iKkiysaBai.
and e«AeKTOt (ot), eAm?, ivSwap-diii, iiriaKoiTO^, eTrtaKon-^, aAAoTptoen-t'cTKOTro?, epya, evayye^LOV,
evayyeXi^eaOai and euayyeAt'o'TTjs, cuSoKt'a, ^oIt), Odvaro^, KaSapi^ia, KapSloyvioaTyi^, KaToKKaaaeiv,
icTjpu'TTctv and Kripvypia, kASi^ . . . tov dprov for the sacred repasts ; koKeZv, KKrjais and kAtjtoi
(ot), KOtftovt'a, k6(TP0<;, \0VTp6v, XvTpbjtn^ and AuTptuT^y, juttpTU?, piaTaLOTrji, fiaraiotii and tunaio-
Aoyo!, p.eTdvoi.a and peravoiu), (ivirTijptoi/ (used, however, for a revealed secret in classic
Greek), iSd?, the manner ot life belonging to the Christian community; ottcoSoji^ and
otKoSoiLtcif in the figurative sense; oAtytJirto-TO?, bp.o\oyia, hpyri, 7rapdtKA»jT05 (6), irtitrxetv in
the technical sense of Christ's passion; TrtVrts, mo-Tot (ot) for Christians, and irtirTm'eti'
ei? t^iv or eirt) X., irfeOjUa and irvevp.arLKO';, Trpea^vrepo^, <rdp$ (ij) and uapKiKO'; in the theO-
logical sense; aKdvSaKov and fTKavSaki^eaBaL, auCeiv, trtoTOp and atanipia, TairctfoTijs aUd
TaTTeivoij>potTvv7], xapt; and x.dpi(rfia, i/^uxv and i//vxt«05.

AUTHORIAL PECULIARITIES OF LANGUAGE. 628
Testament forms. The manifold forms of Christian utterance
which the writers of our Christian Scriptures adopt is what we
should expect from the intensity and limitless character of the
new spiritual life.
In the Synoptic Gospels we have the narrative of Clirist's
sayings and life given to us in common language and style, which
are largely determined by the characteristics of the gospel mes
sage as spoken by Jews in their peculiar religious and techni
cal form of the koiv^. But abundant subtle indications show
that each of the Synoptic Gospels is the work of an author who
¦contributes to his materials not only the selection and arrange
ment, but also presents them in his own language and style.
Among the Epistles, different groups of authorial peculiarities
can be pointed out as characteristics that may fairly be claimed
for a particular author ; and where, as especially in the case of
Paul, enough works of one authorship exist for comparative
study, the changes and progress of the literary style of the
author may also be pointed out. A somewhat wide range of
purity or impurity is plainly indicated, from the quite purely
Greek prologue of Luke's Gospel to the thick-set Hebraisms of
the Apocalypse. Of pre-eminent importance and value for the
diction of the New Testament, and therefore for the expression
of Christian ideas and experience to the end of time, are the
inspked personalities of John and Paul. The characteristic
nomenclature of the former, with its vocabulary of words like
Aoyos, <^(i)S, dXi^Oeia, ^wrrj, b dpros r^S ^wrjs, KOdp-os, o-dpt, and Other WOrds,
each in the Johannean sense, and his marked forms of arranging
the sentence, as, e.g., his frequent epideixis, or pointing-out of
his subject by the pronoun ovtos (see i. 19, 30, iii. 19 ; vi. 29,
39,50, xvu. 3; 1 John ii. 25, iu. 23, v. 3, 6, 14), are perma
nent forms of Christian speech. And as for the Apostle Paul,
who shaU describe him in any other manner so well as by de
scribing the marked peculiarities of his language and style?
and who shall estimate his service to Christianity and to the
world without taking into account the new import which he
gave to many ancient forms of technical religious speech ? It
is significant of a mighty and new divine progeny of thoughts
which are entering the world, when we see this inspired fol
lower of Jesus Christ travaUing in the Spirit to make known to
others what is divinely made known to him. Nor is it strange
if a whole group of words from the one root Bikt], — Stratdco, St/cat-
owfei, JiKatos, BiKaiws, SiKaiwp.a, SiKaiwa-is, BiKaioa-vvij, — bearing theso

624 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
new divine thoughts, presently appear. Nor wUl any one who
notices sympathetically the linguistic peculiarities of this apostle
— his effort to bring the larger members of his sentences into
an organic movement, his frequent failures even thus to make
them truly periodic, his rush of words forward and the sudden
intervening turns, his slipping-in of new thoughts, his inter-
jectional questions and remarks, his starting off at a word of
his own, his piling-up of compounds as though he could not
even thus secure sufficient utterance, his frequent antitheses,
his readiness ever to fall back upon the language of experience,
his mighty tentative struggles to put into a firm form his mova
ble thought and feeling — be slow to grant his claim that he
teaches the truth of the gospel in words taught him of the
Holy Ghost. The language is such as the Divine Spirit may
use when it gives form to the new divine ideas of Christianity
through a personality Uke that of the Apostle Paul.
In the present chapter we have considered the last one of
those special classes of phenomena into which for convenience
we divided this part of the entire theme. In the preceding
chapters the claims and the phenomena suggested conclusions
which had reference chiefly to the substance and ideal contents
of biblical truth : in the following chapters we shaU consider
the Bible rather as a whole. But in the present chapter the
consideration and conclusions have reference chiefly to the
form assumed by the ideal contents : the form in which the bib
lical revelation comes to us is, of course, the form of written
language. In the phenomena which have reference to form, we
discover a sign and proof of the most valid claims which the
writings of the Old and New Testaments make to the title of
Sacred Scripture.
We reach, then, the following conclusions concerning the
relations that exist between the linguistic form of the books
of the Old and New Testaments and the general claim which
they make to the title of Sacred Scripture. These conclusions
may be given in the following three statements : —
The linguistic form of the Bible evinces a providential prep
aration of two kinds of human speech to become in turn the
fitting vehicles for the ideas and spirit of revelation. One
Semitic language, namely the Hebrew ; and one Indo-European
language, namely that kind of Greek which may be known as
the Hellenistic, koivi^, — constitute the linguistic form of the Bible.
Each of these languages has certain definite peculiarities which

DIVINE PREPARATION OF THE LANGUAGE. 625
difference it from the most nearly allied forms of human speech ;
and some, at least, of these peculiarities can be seen to stand
in definite relations to the work of revelation which was to be
accomplished through them. The ancient Hebrew, it may
be affirmed, was providentiaUy selected and prepared to be the
idiomatic medium of Old-Testament revelation ; the Hellenistic
Greek, of New-Testament revelation. In the case of the He
brew we can only for the most part infer what was the special
character and course of this providential preparation, since the
actual history of it is for the most part lost ; but in the case
of the New-Testament Greek we can more clearly trace the
course of its actual history. In both cases the phenomena
warrant the same conclusion : the Spirit of God as the Spirit of
Providence has wrought upon the structure and secured the
use of these languages. Moreover, we find abundant reasons
for concluding that this Spirit has not been unmindful of fit
times and seasons. It is doubtful whether Old-Testament reve
lation could have been given and secured so well through the
Greek, or through any other of the Indo-European languages,
as through that form of the Semitic known as the Hebrew.
It is certain, on the other hand, that Hebrew could not have
been the language of Christianity, and that no other form of
speech than the koivt) could have served this purpose. Inas
much, furthermore, as the New-Testament ideas were deeply
rooted in the Old Testament, the wisdom of God is seen in
this, that a more definite shape in the Greek had already been
given to these ideas by the LXX., and by the religious writ
ings and speech of Greek-speaking Jews. By the slow pro
cesses and wonderful correlations which we know or infer to
have existed, the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek
of the New were prepared, and adjusted to thek offices, in the
work of divine self-revelation. This adjustment, together with
aU the correlations of forces which the processes display, is a
divine work ; it is the work in history of the same Divine Spirit
who reveals and inspires.
And should it be said that so much of divine work is true
of the language of every great classic literature, the answer
may fearlessly be made, " Yes, a certain divine work is involved
in the preparation of all such forms of speech." But the special
nature of the preparatory work in the case of the Hebrew and
Greek Scriptures is furthermore to be judged by the purpose
held m view, and by the result achieved. The purpose held in
VOL. I. 2 R

626 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
view has been to prepare two forms of language which shall
be especially fitted in the exact seasons and manner of their
use, to the work of an historic revelation of ethico-religious facts
and ideas. The result has been the attainment of that purpose
in the forms actually employed for this use. And by as much
as we exalt in thought the necessity and magnitude and grace
of the purpose, and at the same time consider the perfection of
the result with reference to this purpose, by so much shall we
increase our estimate of the general argument. To him who
is at once a beUever in revelation, and also a student of com
parative language, there is no reason for hesitation in affirming
the providential impress upon the diction of Sacred Scripture.
But our second conclusion from the consideration of the
phenomena of biblical language reaches much farther than
the foregoing. Some of the linguistic form of the Bible evinces a
direct and powerful influence from the ideas of revelation. The
phenomena reveal nothing else more clearly than that the entire
language is under the influence of a peculiar class of ideas :
these ideas are ethico-religious ideas; they are, furthermore,
such religious ideas as are peculiar to biblical revelation. The
ideas are, then, those that have themselves been given in the
process of revelation, and have been lodged in the language
which they have also so largely moulded to fit themselves. We
are thus introduced to the thought of a reciprocal influence
between form and contents, word and idea. The nature of this
influence, so far as it is a matter for dogmatic and speculative
treatment, will occupy our attention elsewhere. But the most
superficial consideration of the history of the biblical language
serves to make the fact of tins influence clear. In insisting
upon the fact, we need not rehearse again the phenomena of
the language : we are warranted in afBrming the fact as a con
clusion from the phenomena.
We must, however, make again a distinction in the character
of this influence, according as it is more direct or more indkect.
The larger and yet larger import of the words, and the chan
ging forms of grammatical structure and style, depend upon the
progress in the revelation of the ideas. Much of the language
used by any individual author must have, of course, the tra
ditional import ; he must use the same words, with substantially
the same import, as his predecessors. But every author, or at
least every great and most truly inspired author, wkl himself
also contribute something to a new and enlarged import of the

INFLUENCE OF THE IDEAS OF REVELATION. 627
words; and he may even contribute new words for the new
and enlarged import. Every author wUl also, be likely to
introduce original figures of speech, which may in their turn
become traditional, and influential over the language of suc
ceeding authors. It would be difficult to estimate the influence
of that author who fk-st wrote of God as El-Shaddai or Jeho
vah, or who first called Jehovah by any one of the great titles
derived from his moral attributes or activities. All through
the Bible, therefore, we may trace the influence, direct or indi
rect, which the ideas of revelation have had upon its language.
This influence might be measured, in the case of the Old Tes
tament, k we could compare the bibUcal Hebrew in all its
characteristics with some other equally extended and diversi
fied literature written in the ancient language, but without
this influence. It may be measured, in the case of the New
Testament, by considering in detaU how its language and style
differ from the other literary productions of the Koivrj.
We conclude, then, that the influence which the language
of the Bible receives from the ideas of revelation is such as to
compel us to speak of its books as given in the idiomatic form
of Sacred Scripture. The language is the form of the ideas ,
the ideas are ideas of revelation: the language is therefore,
so far as it is the language of these ideas, a sign and proof of
the work of the Holy Spirit.
In making our thkd and last conclusion from the phenomena
of language and style, we must recur to the distinction made
above. The influence of the ideas and spkit of revelation upon
the language and style of each author of Sacred Scripture is
for the most part to be considered as indirect : each author
receives from the past the lexical and grammatical elements
¦ abeady prepared for his use, and as a free personality combines
them in the construction .of his style. But the possibility,
and even the necessity, of a more dkect influence, is involved
in the very process of revelation itself. New import is to be
given to old words, newly compounded words are to be intro
duced : a new language and style is gradually to be formed by
the contributions of individuals inspired to know and promul
gate revealed truth. It may well he, then, that a more imme
diate influence of the Divine Spirit upon the forms of expression
which the individual writers employ be recognized as taking
place. The suggestio verborum of the old theology is by no
means unphUosophical if the conception be rightly limited and

628 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
understood. A new ray of spiritual influence penetrated the
speech of humanity when the Apostle John wrote of the pre-
existent Christ as the Logos, or when Paul defined the terms
of salvation by giving new meanings to the words St/caiooTjVi;,
xdpts, m'o-Tis, and the different conceptions of o v6p.os. Who that
does not know all the subtke workings of human thought and
choice shall venture to affirm the impossibility of a direct divine
influence, fitting the form of language to the idea to be revealed ?
In such influence, and that in large measure, we may fully
believe ; for, although from the very nature of the case we have
here to deal with the presence of a force which does not mani
fest itself directly to sense, the nature and the history of the
biblical language sufficiently justffy our belief. This direct
inspiration of words by suggestion and guidance has doubtless
been an important factor in the formation of Old-Testament
Hebrew and New-Testament Greek. It is not, however, to be
compared to the influence which the dictator of words to be
written has over the mind of him to whom he dictates. It cer
tainly has not secured a language which is lexically or gram
matically faultless, or peerless in literary style. It has been no
security against the use of such words as have committed to
record manifold mistakes of various kinds. But it has secured
what the Apostle Paul claimed for the influence, a form of words
in telling the truths of religion which is adapted to those truths
themselves. And in the contributions to this total result which
have come through the different authors of Scripture, we can
see proofs of direct divine communications, as well as of more
indirect influences from the same great spiritual Source.

CHAPTER IX.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE AS EELATED TO THE
HISTOEY OP THE CANON.
The mtimacy of that relation which exists between histori
cal researches into the growth of the Canon, and a true concep
tion of the Bible as a whole, is too obvious to need argument.
It is the special work of Biblical Introduction to make us
acquainted "with the origin and characteristics — historical,
antiquarian, linguistic, etc. — which belong to the separate
books of the Old and New Testaments. We are thus pre
pared for that subsequent work of exegesis which deals with
the meaning of each part regarded as complete in itself, and
of each passage in each part. But even this work of exegesis
cannot in the case of any of the more important of those sep
arate books now bound together into one, and called "the
Bible" (or the Book), be confined within the particular writing
whose meaning we are most desirous to evoke ; for in some
cases several compositions present themselves to us under the
claim to a common authorship. It cannot fail, then, to aid us
in the understanding of each writing of a given author, to know
how he has expressed himself in the rest. Especially if the
author be one of those great religious teachers whom God has
selected and inspired to be the media of his revelation, — an
apostle or a prophet, — we have in this fact an inducement to
form a coUection of his writings, and to study them in their
mutual relations. It is but a step farther to the forming of an
mdefinite number of such collections.
But, furthermore, it is pre-eminently true of the biblical
revelation that it claims to be an historic process ; and this pro
cess began in a remote antiquity, and came through the various
stages of Mosaism and Prophetism to its culmination in Jesus,
and the founding of the Christian Church. Should writings
be produced, and, however modified subsequently, remain ex
tant, which gave to the community of believers the means of
629

630 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tracing and appreciating the stages of this process, such writings
would surely be set apart as sacred in their sight. Indeed, in
the case of a revelation which is an historic process, we can
scarcely conceive of it as securing a community of believers
without a record of its progress. But only God himself, the
Author and Inspirer of the historic process, could fully foresee
the future needs of this community: he alone could also as
Providence make sure that these needs should be satisfactorily
met. We are right, then, in assuming as the indispensable
necessity of an historic process of revelation a certain provi
dential care over the records of the process.
That the collection of books to which we have given the
title of a Bible has at least a loose correspondence of parts, and
that it is so far a unity as in some sense to demand Providence
for its author, the theist and Christian critic will not wish to
deny. We have no hesitation in declaring with Westcott,^
" That annals and prophecies and letters thus (apparently)
casual in their origin should combine into a whole marveUously
complete and symmetrical in its spiritual teaching, is, indeed, a
clear intimation of the presence of a controlling power, both in
their composition and in their preservation." In what sense we
can understand the words " a whole marveUously complete and
symmetrical," and yet remain true to the facts of critical inquiry,
we shall consider in another place. One result of such consid
eration will be to make intelligible the intimate and organic
connections in thought and history which unite together the
different books of Scripture. From the first verse in Genesis
to the last in Revelation, there is not a verse which does not
suggest considerations lying outside of the particular writing
in which it occurs, and within some other of the biblical writ
ings. Moreover, an examination of the various orders of phe
nomena which belong to the Bible as a whole has suggested
a certain unity of the various books. It has, indeed, demon
strated their great range and diversity. But it has also demon
strated that a certain similarity obtains throughout these various
books ; and this fact, if it do not prove them to have been all
brought together under the impulse of a definite set of ideas, at
least suggests something like a " canon," or rule, to measure
and control the limits of the collection. The miraculous con
tents are, so to speak, spread throughout the principal separate
writings of the Canon : these contents have a marked resem-
1 Bible in the Church, p. 9.

QUESTION OF THE CANON HISTORICAL. 631
blance to an ideal norm with respect to the conception and final
purpose of the miracles they narrate. The history of the Bible,
although by different authors, and much of it having come to
us at second-hand and after various redactions, has a certain
unity of subject and historical point of view. It also conforms
for the most part, if not wholly, to an ideal norm, in that it is
the history of the kingdom of God as planted in Israel and as
reaching perfection in the Christian dispensation. This history
is regarded by all its writers with more or less of manifest sym
pathy, insight, and affection. The predictive contents of Sacred
Scripture are by their very nature likely to stimulate both an
organic view and an organic construction of the different parts
of the Bible. This is made evident especially by the fact that
Christianity itself had much influence in developing the idea of
a distinctive unity as applied to the Old Testament. This influ
ence it exerted in part through its representation that all the
Hebrew prophecies were fulfilled in Christ : it thus confirmed
and expanded the idea of a fixed collection of prophetic utter
ances by imparting somewhat of its own unity to the ancient
predictive writings (compare 2 Cor. iii. 14). If, then, there is to
remain in the world such an historic revelation as Christianity,
it would seem indispensable that it should have something like
such a coUection of sacred writings as the Bible. That the
record of such a revelation, if it exist at all, wkl contain many
and varied works by different authors, we may surely expect ;
for the expectation lies in the very nature of the case. But
what limits have been set to the number of such writings?
What law or idea has defined the exclusions which have been
made from so-called canonical Scripture? The only possible
answer to this question is the one derived from historical criti
cism. Or rather, the form and meaning of the question must
be changed: we must rather inquire, Under what historical
conditions did the present Canon actually grow up ?
Yet we cannot answer even this latter inquiry without taking
into account the present facts of Christian judgment and feeling.
Let it be granted, that neither the judgment of Jewish rabbis
nor that of the early Christian authors is competent absolutely
to control the judgment of modern Christendom : the fact still
remains, that the modern judgment, even after being enlightened
by criticism, substantially confirms the more ancient. It is true,
that, considering Christendom in its full extent, certain impor
tant questions concerning the Canon are stUl unanswered.

632 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Among such questions are those as to the place of the apoc
ryphal books of the Old Testament, and as to the propriety of
renewing the ancient distinction between the Homologoumena
and the AntUegomena of the New Testament. To the latter
question it is no fitting reply to aver, as did Westcott,^ that
the statement of Augustine, who favored this distinction, rests
upon " no logical basis." For such an averment seems to imply
the dogma, that the Canon of Sacred Scripture must be con
structed on what the critic may deem to be a "logical basis:"
in order, that is, that it may as a whole best correspond to the
post-Reformation notion of a regula fidei. It seems also to in
volve tlie reversal of the true principle which the same author
has himself pointed out : " History must deliver its full testi
mony before internal criticism can find its proper use." For the
priority of history as compared with internal criticism, certainly
extends also to dogma. Nevertheless, history did not come to
an end with Origen, Jerome, and Augustine. And whatever
may have been the dates at which the canons of the Old and
New Testaments were respectively closed, the inquiry whether
they are not now closed can never be without interest or impor
tance. Should this inquiry be raised, it can scarcely be an
swered otherwise than in the affirmative. The judgment and
consciousness of the Church has somehow come to regard a
certain number of books as constituting its collection of Sacred
Scriptures. It has by some process, however obscure, formed a
canon called the Bible. The same fact to which the first col
lective title (Bibliotheca divina) used by Jerome bore witness is
further affirmed in that common collective title (ySiySAta), which
by a solecism (whether " happy " or unhappy) came in the thir
teenth century to be regarded as a femkiine singular. As to
the limits of this collection, there is still in dispute only the
section accepted by the Roman-Catholic Church, but rejected by
Protestants. That the present limits will ever be extended so
as to receive other works now lying outside their farthest com
pass, there is no room even to conjecture. That they will ever
be contracted so as to exclude any important works now lying
within their narrowest compass, there is no reason to suppose.
It can, then, be neither the aim nor the result of a critical study
of the Canon, to get a practical reversal of the judgment of past
and present time. The demand to attempt this reversal is not
included in the claim to the fullest historical investigation.
1 Canon of the New Testament, ed. 1866, p. 306, note.

COMPLEX NATURE OF THE QUESTION. 633
Critical and historical study of the Canon does not aim at a
reconstruction of it as at present constituted. As even Hilgen
feld expressly declares,^ our iaqiury does not concern the dis
turbance or destruction of the present Canon, but it concerns
the construction of an historical conception of the Canon.
The question of the Canon, as one of historical criticism, is,
however, compUcated with other questions of a like criticism ;
it is in a large measure dependent for its decision upon the
decision reached in regard to these other questions. This state
ment is especially true of two subjects which come in some
detail before us in other portions of this work. The author
ship and composition of the books of the Bible, and the history
of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture, are the two subjects most
closely aUied to the question of the Canon.
It is at once obvious, that the current opinions concerning
the nature of its separate writings must have had much influ
ence in determining the limits of the Bible. In general, how
ever, the more precise definition of the idea follows, rather than
precedes, the actual formation of that collection of writings to
which the idea corresponds. Nor is it true that canonical
scriptures, and sacred or inspked writings, are precisely one
and the same in idea or extent. In the case of the Old Testa
ment, nevertheless, almost all the information which we derive
from the Apocryphal and Talmudic writings, relates to the con
ception of Sacred Scripture, rather than to the conception and
historical process of an Old-Testament Canon. To a certain
degree, a similar truth must be observed in the ease of the New
Testament. Inasmuch, then, as we are to give several chapters
to a more detaUed examination of the history of the doctrine
of Sacred Scripture, we may in this chapter assume certain
conclusions which wiU subsequently receive a more thorough
examination. Even thus we shall be obUged to repeat some
references, whke leaving a detaUed statement of facts to such
works as treat especiaUy of the Canon .^
It is also obvious, that the history of the Canon must to a
1 Der Kanon und die Kritik des Neuen Testaments, etc., Halle, 1863, p. 2.
2 Most of the authorities consulted and chiefly relied upon in the preparation
of this chapter will be cited in their appropriate places. It is a mistake to sup
pose that au acquaintance with all the more voluminous works ou the Canon is
indispensable in order that the general reader may form a tolerably correct and
complete view. For such a view of the New-Testament Canon the following two
taoks will suffice: Canonicity, by A. H. Charteris, Edinburgh and London, 1880
(for the text of early testimonies); and Eeuss, Geschichte der heiligen Schriften
N. T., Xl. pp. 3-86 (for a fair and compendious statement of the main truths).

634 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
large extent be made up of inquiries as to the authorship, date,
and simple or composite structure of the separate books ; as to
alleged revisions and redactions of these books ; and even as to
the purity of the transmission of the text. The extent of this
dependence in the case of the Old Testament is largely increased
by the great deficiency, amounting to an almost total lack, of
direct information concerning the origin of its Canon. Within
the canonical writings themselves, a few uncertain and obscure
references to earlier works which were collected, preserved, and
deemed in some sense important and sacred, constitute aU our
testimony at first hand. This fact leaves each critic free to
understand the references in accordance with his own views
(otherwise obtamed) as to the origin of the separate books;
indeed, the references themselves he may perhaps suspect to be
interpolations. We should prefer (were it possible) not to
make our argument from the Canon of the Bible to the origin
and nature of Sacred Scripture dependent upon those conserva
tive views as to the origin of the separate books which we have
previously presented. This dependence, however, belongs to
the very nature of the case. May not, then, a tenable concep
tion of the Canon be made to consist with a sufliciently large
allowance for the alleged results of criticism? We believe that
it may. Let it be assumed that a part of the Old-Testament
Canon is of late origin ; that many of the earUer writings have
been revised, and to a considerable extent made over, by later
hands ; that during all the period of the second temple, and for
a century afterward, there was free judgment among the Jews
concerning each writing produced with a claim to reception as
inspired and sacred ; that the decision concerning certain writ
ings — viz., Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezekiel, and Solomon's Song
— remained long in dispute : must we, then, reject the present
Canon ? Must we not rather recognize it as exhibiting essen
tially the same mixed phenomena which everywhere compel a
recognition of two sets of considerations ? ^ There is everywhere
the evidence of power from the Spirit of revelation, now wax
ing, now waning ; but there are also abundant evidences of
human imperfections and errors.
With regard to the New-Testament Canon, the entire ques
tion is much more serious. The authorship and date of its
writings are made by hostile criticism almost a matter of life-
1 Compare an interesting passage in Geiger, Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der
Bibel, p. 73 i.

THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF A CANON. 635
and-death interest to Christianity itself. The real power of
Christianity does not lie, indeed, in the critical decision as to
when and by whom any of its sacred writings were composed.
But this critical decision is often so presented as to carry with
it the whole question of the historical verity and moral integrity
of Jesus Christ. Nor can we whoUy disentangle this serious
question of the Canon from certain other critical inquiries
which in themselves are comparatively trivial. Our view of
the Canon of the New Testament is, then, somewhat intimately
dependent upon our previous conclusions as to the genuineness
and authenticity of its books ; and these conclusions we must
tacitly assume in the present chapter.
We have before us now the comparatively simple task of an
swering briefly the following specific inquiries: (1) What is
the true conception of a Canon of Sacred Scripture ? (2) By
what process did the Christian Church arrive at the Canon
which it now regards as fixed and closed ? (3) What light do
this conception and the study of this process throw upon the
question as to the origin and nature of Sacred Scripture ?
In the first place, then. What is the true conception of a
Canon of Sacred Scripture ? To this question also the answer
must be largely, but not wholly, derived from the early history.
For a true conception of the Canon cannot be reached without
understanding the process by which the present collection of
sacred writings was really secured. But, on the other hand, it
does not foUow that our conception of the Canon, in order to
be true, must correspond in all respects with that of early
times. A critical study of the historical process shows that
elements of dogma have invariably had much to do with shap
ing the process. The conception of the Canon of the Old
Testament which grew up among the Jews was an historical de
velopment, and depended upon the history of the Canon in its
actual formation rather than gave shape to that history. Yet
this conception was itseK in part the result of the prevalent
dogma as to revelation and inspiration ; it was, that is to say,
in part the effect of theological opinion, rather than of a purely
historical process. The same truth holds good as to the Canon
of the New Testament in the early Christian Church. More
over, the purely theological and unhistorical conception which
the Reformation introduced and fostered is itself now a matter
of history ; it is one item in the general account ; it is sure to
leave its impress upon aU subsequent discussion, although in

636 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
its earUer form it has already yielded to the assaults of criti
cism.^ The true conception of the Canon of Sacred Scripture
must, then, take into account both the historical and the theo
logical considerations ; it must both investigate the process by
which the present collection was formed, and also determine
the nature of the separate books which enter into the collection,
and of the relations which they sustain to one another. It is
only as the result of a careful study of the claims and phe
nomena of the Bible, and as well of a candid investigation into
the history of its rise, and of the opinions held by the Church
concerning its nature, that we can say what is the true concep
tion of the Canon. The complete answer can be given in no
other way than by a description of the Bible as a whole.
We may, however, at once define this conception somewhat
more clearly by stripping it of certain accretions which it re
ceived especially from post-Reformation theology. The history
of the growth of opinion upon this subject in the early Church
furnishes us with means for doing this. But it also discredits
that utterly unhistorical and undefined view, which, in the
name of criticism, would separate our idea of the Bible as a
whole from all Christian truths as to divine revelation, and as
to the work of the Holy Spirit.
The history of the title " Canon," as applied to the writings
of the Old and New Testaments, is a noteworthy item in the
general history of the Canon.^ From the original and literal
meaning of the word Kavwv, — that which, being itself straight,
serves to measure or keep straight somewhat else, — the transi
tion to the metaphorical meaning — that which furnishes a
norm, rule, or model of proportion or excellence — would seem
to be easy and natural. According to Credner, this word is
not from a Greek root, but is Oriental, and came into Greek
usage through the Phoenicians (compare the Hebrew ^^\l).^
It is used in two passages of the New Testament (Gal. vi. 16,
and 2 Cor. x. 13-16) ; in the former passage, of a regula vivendi,
agendi (Grimm), and in the latter with a significant transition
1 Compare Eeuss, Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., II. p. 79 f.
2 Compare Credner, Zur Geschichte des Kanons, pp. 3-68 ; Westcott, Ibid.,
Appendix A ; Hilgenfeld, Ibid., pp. 63-77. " So AUgemein auch die katholische
Kirche, und mit ihr alle die spater allmiilig aus derselben hervorgegangen
Kirchen, das Wort Kaviiv . , . von der Sammlung ihrer heiligen Schriften ge-
brauchen ; so dunkel und verworren ist doch die Entstehung dieses Sprach-
gebrauches " (Credner, p. 3).
s Ibid., p. 6 f .

HISTORY OF THE WORD "CANON." 637
in the meaning from the active sense to the passive.^ The
metaphorical use became common with the later Christian
writers. HUgenfeld would introduce it into the conjectural
Greek translation for the Latin text toward the close of the
Muratorian Fragment (lines 62 and 63), by rendering the
words in ordinatione ecclesiasticae disciplinae into rfj toC iKKXrj-
ffuurriKov kovovos rd^ei. The words " canonized " and " canonical,"
as appUed to the Scriptures, are repeatedly found in the Latin
translation of the writings of Origen.^ According to Euse
bius,^ Hegisippus spoke of those who tried to corrupt "the
sound rule (tov vyiij Kavova) of the saving proclamation." From
the time of Irenaeus onward, such phrases as " the Rule of the
Church," the " Rule of Truth," the " Rule of Fakh," occur in
the Church Fathers, especially in their controversy with here
tics; and both the objective and the subjective uses of these
phrases appear.* The earliest known use of the word " canoni
cal," in opposition to uncanonical or apocryphal, occurs in the
Festal Epistle of Athanasius (365 A.D.), the genuineness of
which, however, has been called in question by Baur, and is
pronounced by Hilgenfeld to be not altogether beyond doubt.
The Catalogue of the Scriptures ascribed to Amphilochius
(c. 380 ?) has an undoubted appUcation of the word to the total
of sacred writings : ovtos axj/evBea-raros Kaywv av ei-rj rwv OeoTrveva-rwv
ypa<j)u>v, are the words which occur at the close of this enumera
tion of books, and which indicate both a collection deemed
complete, and also the influence of theological considerations
in fixing the limits of the collection. Isidore of Pelusium
(t c. 440) speaks of the " canon of the truth " (rbv Kavova rrjs
aXrjSaas), by which he says he means to designate the divine
Scriptures (tus ^etas (t>rip,l ypacfids). And at this point we reach
the more strictly dogmatic conception of the Bible as consti
tuting a measure of Christian truth ; a conception which the
post-Reformation theology hardened into that of a perfect and
inflexible regula fidei, every part of which is of equivalent value
and equally and infallibly inspired.
But that this post-Reformation conception of the Bible, as
' See Westcott, and compare Grimm's interpretation, —descr?p(wm ac deflnitum
mtium. ^ Quae in his Scripturls quas canonicas habemus, Comm. in Matt., 117, and
sompare 28; for other references, see the notes of Hilgenfeld and Westcott.
^ See Hist. Eccl., III. 32, and II. 22; compare Credner, Ibid., p. 15 1.
* '0 Kavtav TO? eKKAijcria!, ClcmS. AlcX. Strom. VII. 16; 'O Kavwv t^5 aAi)9eias, Ibid. J
'0 sovBi. Tis Trio-Tews, repeatedly in Tertullian ; see the notes in Westcott.

638 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
such a canon in the active sense of the word, finds no adequate
warrant in the usage of the early Church, is beyond doubt. In
this early usage, the words " canon," " canonical," and " canon
ized," as applied to Scripture, are almost if not quite unkormly
employed in the passive sense. The canonical vrritings are not
those which give law to the teaching of the Churchj but those
which have themselves been ratified by the tradition of the
Church. We cannot, indeed, accept the argument of Semler
and Baur,^ from the use made of the word kovwv in the spurious
Synopsis of Athanasius, that it means simply a catalogue or
list of books. The rather might the origin of the ecclesiastical
usage be referred to that of the Alexandrine grammarians, who
designated by the term Kavwv such of the classic authors as they
judged to be models of excellence.^ But neither dkect testi
mony (which is wanting), nor the history of this usage (which
can be only imperfectly traced), could be urged in confirmation
of even the latter view. Whatever may have been the induce
ment to use the word at all, which came from its prevalence
among grammarians of the classics, the early and most genuine
custom of the Church seems to confirm the meaning given
above. Canonical Scripture is that which the judgment of the
Church has measured and decided to be referable, either directly
or indirectly, to accredited sources. The Canon is the coUection
of writings canonized by the decision of the Church.
This conception of the Canon is, indeed, rather immature ;
but it may be carried toward completion by contrasting it with
the early conception of apocryphal writings. For the two con
ceptions necessarUy had thek development in company. It is
helpful, also, to refer to the distinction by which the early
Church classed certain books of the New Testament somewhat
by themselves as the so-called Antilegomena.
The term Apocrypha (dTroKpv^os), when applied to writings,
designates either such as contain something ludden in their
contents, or those whose origin is hidden. Thus might that
naturally have come about which Hilgenfeld ^ maintains actu
ally happened in the usage of the Jews. The public use of
certain writings was forbidden, either because they were not
highly enough esteemed, or because their contents were too
sacred on account of their esoteric character. In the Apoc-
1 In the Zeitschrift fiir wissensch. Theologie, 1858, p. 141 f.
2 See Hilgenfeld, Der Kanon, etc., p. 66 f.
a Ibid., p. 7 f.

MEANING OF THE TERM "APOCRYPHA." 639
alypse of Ezra (xiv. 44 f.) we find mentioned, together with
the twenty-four books of the Old Testament, seventy other
secret writings which are adapted to be a source of wisdom for
the wise. It was the attempt to dress over the thoughts of the
Old Testament in the language and philosophy of Greece, which
gave rise to the apocryphal literature of the Alexandrine Jews : ^
this attempt even made itself apparent in the translation of the
LXX.^ The use of the word "Apocrypha " to designate writ
ings whose origm is hidden, and which are therefore judged to
be spurious, is found in Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., I. 20, ¦ttXtjOos
azoKpv<t)wv Kal voOwv ypacfiwv) : it is explained in the words of Au
gustine,^ " Apocryphae nuncupantur eo quod earum occulta
origo non claruit patribus." This term was not, however, cus
tomarUy employed in the ancient Church for the extra books
of the LXX. ; and, according to Schiirer,* Jerome is entirely
alone in his utterance, when, after enumerating the writings of
the Hebrew Canon, he declares, " Whatever is outside of these
must be placed among the apocrypha." ^ The very limited use
of these writings which is made in the New Testament has
already received sufficient consideration. How general was
their use in the early Cliristian Church, and how near some
of them came to being placed perfectly upon a level with the
works of the Jewish Canon, — Clement of Rome making men
tion of "the blessed Judith," in company with Esther, as an
example of a female hero, and Clement of Alexandria habitually
citing them as ^ ypa<f>-ri, or ^ Oela. ypa<f>T^, etc., — we shall elsewhere
consider. But in the case even of these writings, and in some
respects especially in thek case, we are led to notice the distinc
tion, somewhat fitfuUy and indefinitely made by the early
writers, between inspked writings and canonical scripture.
When, then, it came to the definite question of fixing theoreti
cally a Canon of Sacred Scripture, we find many in the ancient
Church who were incUned to adhere to the more clearly marked
limits of the Palestinian collection, rather than adopt the weaker
and more vacillating circuit of the Alexandrine version. We
have from the fourth century a number of lists of canonical
1 See Siegfried, Philo, etc., p. 7.
2 So Frankel shows in his works. Ueber den Einfluss der palastinischen Exegese
auf die alexandrinische Hermeneutik, Leipzig, 1851 ; and Vorstudien zu der Sep
tuaginta, Leipzig, 1841.
' De Civ. Dei, XV. 23.
* See article in Herzog and Plitt, Apokryphen des A. T.
^ Prologxis galeatus to the Books of Samuel.

640 THE DOCTRINE OP SACRED SCRIPTURE.
writings, which either omit the Apocrypha altogether, or else
distinctly relegate them to an inferior rank. Athanasius in his
Festal Epistle 39, after enumerating the canonical books of
both Testaments, adds the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther,
Judith, Tobit, the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd,
as not canonical, but fit to be read to catechumens.^ But they
are not alluded to by CyrU, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Am-
philochius.2 These deliberate judgments lost much of their
force, however, from the fact that the usage of many of these
same writers seemed to place the apocryphal and canonical
writings precisely upon the same level. Augustine's influence
was the chief factor in leading the synods of Hippo (393 A.D.)
and Carthage (397) to class the two together : this he himself
expressly does in his writings.^ Even Jerome does not hesitate
to cite Sirach as scriptura sancta.
This twofold view as to the limits and meaning of canonical
writings, in contrast with the so-called apocryphal, wUl be fui-
thef presented in the subsequent historical chapters. It is here
described in its relations to that conception of a Canon of Sa
cred Scripture which was held by the early Christian Church.
This conception, so far as it is thus fixed, corresponds with
that already derived from the early use of the word " canon."
Canonical writings are not primarily those which themselves
constitute a canon, or rule of faith ; they do not comprise all
such as are thought to be sacred or inspired, and therefore wor
thy to be quoted as ^ 7pa<^iy, or by similar customary formulae.
They comprise rather such as the tradition of the Church has
passed judgment upon, and has either admitted within or rele
gated without the prescribed limits. As to the grounds of the
early tradition, we find little to guide us outside of the tradition
itself. In the case of the Old Testament, the Christian Church
inherited a divided tradition : one canon of its writiugs was
favored by connections with Hebrew sources and with the Pal
estinian Jews, another by the freer usage of the Alexandrine
Jews and the common use of the version of the LXX. In the
case of the New Testament, the appeal was made to the same
principle of tradition. This appeal, in its earliest form, was
taken to the custom of the apostolic churches; it was afterwards
^ *0u KavovL^op-eva p.ev TeniTTtopiiva Sk jrapd roiv TraTeptiiv ovayil/wtTKeirflat ToIs dpTi irpatre-
}iop.ivOL^. 2 See Charteris, pp. 18 ff . ; Schiirer, Herzog and Plitt, Ibid. ; De Wette-Schrader,
Einl. in das A. T., p. 54 f . ; Keil, Einl. in das A. T., p. 652 f.
8 De Doct. Christ., II. 8.

THE DOUBT AS TO THE ANTILEGOMENA. 641
submitted to the declaration of the bishops, as possessors of the
true Christian consciousness; stUl later it was made to the
decision of councils.^ The result of all these appeals was not,
however, to estabUsh a perfect unkormity of judgment, either
as to the limits of the Canon as a whole, or as to the valid and
useful distinctions amongst the separate books. The West
and the East reached somewhat divergent points of view ; the
former, largely through the influence of Augustine, obtaining a
synodal recognition of all the books read in the churches, the
Canon in the wider sense; the latter rather excluding those
now called apocryphal, although Jerome and Athanasius stood
upon middle ground. The result of the appeal was also to
establish a distinction of classes amongst the admitted books ;
some were regarded as more especialty available for proving
doctrine, others for buUding up the Christian life.
The conception of a Canon of Sacred Scripture as held by
the early Cliristian Church may, then, be somewhat loosely
defined in the following way : The Canon is that collection of
writings (presumably inspired and authentic) which believers
in past time have judged to be useful for teaching Christian
doctrine and for buUding up the Christian life.
That the formation of this conception concerns the pres
ent writings of the New Testament, there is abundant proof.
The doubt as to the seven so-called AntUegomena is prima
rily a doubt as to the tradition belonging to them ; but it is also
a doubt which involves the above-mentioned distinction in the
use to be made of them. We cannot, then, wholly approve of
the method which Westcott adopted in treating the claims to
canonicity put forth by these books. What we know about
them is not to the effect that they were accepted as fast and far
as they were known ; but rather, that they were known to be
doubted, and accepted to be placed upon a lower grade than
the other New-Testament writings. "It involves," said this
author,^ "a manifest confusion of ideas, to compensate for a
deficiency of historic proof by a lower standard of canonicity."
But the deficiency of historic proof is as unavoidable for us as
it was for the Church when it began to consider the case of
certain alleged apostolic writings. It is no confusion of ideas
to hold that we may use for building up the Christian life a
^ Compare the discussion of Diestel, Geschichte des A. T. in der christlichen
Kirche, pp. 68 S.
^ History of the Canon, 1866, p. 306.
VOL. I. 2 S

642 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
writing to which, on account of our unavoidable doubt con
cerning its apostolic authorship, we can never appeal as though
it had such authorship. This, as we understand it, was the
position to which the early Church was forced ; and that not
through a confusion of ideas so much as through a confusion
of traditions, and through a fortunate absence of the purely
theological idea of the Canon. To claim that the undoubt
edly authentic Epistle to the Romans is received on the same
"standard of canonicity" as the very doubtful Second Epistle of
Peter, is — it seems to us — to fall, in logical precision even, far
below the standard of the early Church. If, for example, we
admit the passage in Rufinus' version of the Homily on Joshua^
to be really an expression of Origen, in which he speaks of
Peter as " sounding loudly on the twofold trumpet of his Epis
tles," and of Paul as " thundering on his fourteen trumpets of
Epistles ; " we nevertheless know that Origen is here speaking
popularly for exhortation, and not as a scholarly exegete prov
ing doctrine by the teaching of an apostle.
The further answer to the first of our three questions is
involved in the answer to the second ; that is to say, we must
derive other elements of a true conception of the Canon from a
study of the historic process by which it was actuaUy formed.
The detailed description of this process can be found, as has
already been intimated, only in those special works, which, whke
they have necessarily left much stUl to be accomplished, have,
nevertheless, minutely described the most important period in
the history ; viz., that from the close of the fkst to the close of
the fourth century after Christ. We confine ourselves to a very
brief sketch of some of its principal features.
The difficulty of giving a precise history of the Canon of the
Old Testament is so great, on account both of the meagreness
of information and of the impossibility of seeming an agreement
of different investigators upon the principal critical questions
which underlie the description of this history, that we may safely
declare, with Wellhausen,^ it wiU never be done. Two methods
of attempting this history present themselves to the investigator
from the very beginning of his undertaking ; the one of which
relies much upon tradition, and the other more entirely upon
internal criticism. Neither of these methods alone, nor both of
them combined, can show a satisfactory result. Of the two,
1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI. 25 f.
3 Bleek, Einl. in das A. T., p. 2.

MEN OF THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE A MYTH. 643
however, the latter must in this case have the decided prefer
ence : the former, indeed, is not regarded as valid by any mod
ern critic except Keil.^ The tradition of the Jews as to the
formation of the collection of Hebrew writings is undoubtedly
made up of untrustworthy stories and myths. The statement
that Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue constituted the
Canon is an hypothesis found in Elias Levita^ (f 1549), whicli is
therefore of late origin, rests on a misunderstanding of certain
passages from earlier rabbinical writings, and is now without
hesitation rejected by critical inquiry. The narrative (4 Ezra
xiv.) which tells us how 'Ezra was inspired to restore the sacred
wiitings that had perished at the burning of the temple by the
Chaldeans, although implicitly accepted by some of the Church
Fathers, is of interest only as a legend. The men of the Great
Synagogue have fitly been called " an exegetical myth : " the
only historical foundation for their existence, and for the tradi
tion which connects them with the Old-Testament Canon, must
be found outside of the tradition itself. The opinion of KeU,^
that the legend of Ezra has an 'historical foundation in the fact
that he collected and revised the twenty-four books of the writ
ings which were already regarded by the nation as canonical,
can by no means be maintained. If we should admit the explana
tion given by Keil for the lack of all positive testimony to a
completed canon from the time of Nehemiah to that of Jesus
Sirach, we could not ev^n thus Teconcile his opinion with the
' witness of Skach.
The grounds of that view which denies even the substantial
veracity of the later Jewish tradition as to the origin of the Old-
Testament Canon are, indeed, composed of fragments of evi
dence, gathered by doubtful research from different sources:
they do not serve to lay the basis of an assured historical ac
count. But the fragments can be joined into an hypothetical
whole which is, if not 'precise and complete, at least much more
trustworthy than tlie traditidn.
Through scattered indications in the Old Testament itself,
as interpreted in the Ught of' catefuUy formed opinions upon the
date and authorship of the separate books, we may arrive at
the foUowing tentative conclusions. The historic fact of a
divine covenant which was understood to be made between
1 Einl. in das A. T.vpp--494^523.
2 Praef. 3 to the Masoreth ham-Masoreth.
3 Ibid., p. 499.

644 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Jehovah and Israel is the point of starting for the formation of
a Canon of Scripture. The preservation of the record of this
covenant is the first act toward constituting a body of sacred
writings. The beginning of this body was referred back, then,
to the work of Moses, inasmuch as the laws contained in the
so-called Book of the Covenant were attributed to him as their
author. To hinn were also attributed certain other portions of
the Pentateuch of uncertain extent, the writing-down of certain
of its laws, and perhaps the composition of some of its historical
parts.^ The relation of the main portion of the Book of Deut
eronomy to the entire Mosaic Torah, to Moses as the author to
whom it refers itself, and to the other writings of the Penta
teuch, has already been discussed. That this small number of
writings was preserved, and enlarged by the occasional addition
of other bits of sacred literature, we may readily enough suppose.
In accordance with a custom which KeU,^ foUowing Havernick,
asserts to have belonged to aU the peoples of antiquity, the
Hebrews are represented as laying up their sacred writings in
their temple. The very nature of the writings would in the
first instance give them admission to this sacred place, and their
sacredness in the estimate of later generations would be en
hanced by the fact that they had been preserved in such sacred
connections. As writings laid away before Jehovah,^ we find
mentioned the Book of the Covenant (Deut. xxxi. 9, 26 , com
pare xvii. 18), the narrative written by Joshua of the renewal
of the covenant at Shechem (Josh. xxiv. 25, 26), and the writ
ing by Samuel containing the fundamental law of the kingdom
(1 Sam. X. 25) ; the two latter of which may be regarded as
written into or added to the former.
We do not, however, reach the fuU recognition of any writing
by the people Israel as a canonical scripture until the institu
tion of Deuteronomy in that relation according to the narrative
of 2 Kings xxii., xxiii. This event took place in the eighteenth
year of Josiah, 621 B.C. The codified Torah contained in this
writing has fitly been called " the decisive step by which scrip
ture came into the place of oral tradition, and the people of the
word becaine a people of the book."*
1 Compare the description of the development of Hebrew literature in De
Wette-Schrader, Einl. in das A. T., p, 18 f.
2 Ibid., p. 494.
3 According to 1 Kings viii. 9 (compare Josephus, Ant., III. 1, 7; V. 1, 17), not
ia the ark; the Elohist, however, has the law placed in the ark (Exod. xxv. 16,
xl. 20).
^ See Wellhausen in Bleek, Einl, in das A. T., p 537.

CANONIZATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 645
The Pentateuch itself bears witness to the fact that other
writings, besides those already referred to, had been esteemed
and preserved before its own canonization ; for some of these
writings have entered into the composition of the so-called
Books of Moses. Among such writings are the Book of Ori
gins, the Book of the Wars of Jehovah (see Num. xxi. 14), and
the Book of Jasher (Josh. x. 13) ; and doubtless also many
fragments as well as those fundamental documents, the proba
ble existence of which can be detected by criticism. Beyond
the Umits of the Pentateuch we find notices of ancient works,
like this same Book of Jasher again referred to 2 Sam. i. 18,
and the works of the royal historiographers ; among the latter
are the Book of the History of Solomon (1 Kings xi. 41), and
the Book of the Kings of Judah, and of the Kings of Israel
(1 Kings xiv. 29, xv. 31; compare 1 Chron. xxvii. 24). But
we cannot at the earUest speak of tlie Pentateuch as canonized
Scripture until it is made a sacred book Kar' i^ox^v for public
religious reading (having, according to Ezra vii. 6, 10 f., been first
brought to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longi-
manus, 458 B.C.), by the action recorded in Neh. viii.-x. The
writings of Mosaism were thus formally adopted as the sacred
and ¦ authoritative source of the national law. As we have
already seen, the Book of Deuteronomy had been earlier canon
ized. This event of Neh. viU.-x. had reference, we believe, to
the Pentateuch, which then existed as a whole in substantially
its present form. The nature of the event is such as to prevent
the suppositions, either that the Pentateuch had not for some
time previous been in existence, or that, having been in exist
ence, it had lain wholly latent. The former supposition can
scarcely be reconciled with the fact that the Pentateuch was
canonized at all ; while the previous activity of at least the
Deuteronomic law is shown by comparing passages like Ezra
iii. 1 f. and x. 3 with Deut. xii. 5 f. and vii. 2 f., and with Neh.
vii. 73 and vki. 1.
The actual formation of the Canon of Old-Testament Scrip
ture, and the doctrine of its nature, have their nucleus, there
fore, in the canonizing of the written Torah after the return
from the ExUe. That this event is the point of starting for all
that foUows, both in beUef and in fact, is made evident by the
nse of the term Torah to designate the entire collection of the
sacred writings of Israel.^ Before the Exile there doubtless
1 See 4 Ezra xiv. 21, and corapare 44-46.

646 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
existed a somewhat indefinite collection of prophetic writings.
The same value which belonged originally to his oral utterances,
was naturally attached to whatever was understood to have been
written by a true prophet of Israel in the judgment of those
who believed his testimony. The more precise estimate of these
writings as canonical arose, however, only after the ExUe ; this
estimate was derived from the canonized Law, and was, as it
were, spread over the Prophets from the Law as its central and
primary object.^ The conviction that the sufferings of the Exile
were due to national transgression of the law, and to the refusal '
of the nation to heed the voice of Jehovah through the proph
ets, doubtless added to the esteem in which these two classes
of writings were held, and to the assiduity with which they
were collected and canonized.^ The decay of Hebrew, and its
tendency to fall into the position of a sacred language, may
also have aided this process. The steps by which a canonical
collection of the Prophets was reached are, however, not dis
tinctly traceable by internal criticism ; and we are without
direct witness untU we reach the later time of the Greek writ
ers among the Jews. Ezekiel, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah were
acquainted with the Prophets and the Psalms. The plural of
Dan. ix. 2 (nnsM) seems to indicate a number of prophetic
books which were regarded as of divine origin and authority ;
although we are not warranted in regarding this language as
proving a definitely fixed canon of prophetic writings, and must
also remember the undoubtedly late authorship of Daniel itself.
The tradition of the Talmud ^ asserts, indeed, that the men of
the Great Synagogue wrote down (composed or put together?)
Ezekiel, the Twelve Prophets, Daniel, and Esther. The historic
basis for the Talmudic tradition reaches no farther, however,
than the fact that a period of great activity in composing, col
lecting, and canonizing the sacred Hebrew writings began with
Ezra and Nehemiah. But, as Hamburger* says, we cannot
conceive of this activity as though it reached its close in the
time of Ezra: on the contrary, it continued through several
centuries. The frequent occurrence of the term "the Law and the
Prophets," to designate the entire Old-Testament Scriptures,
1 WeUhausen in Bleek, Ibid., p. 555. 2 Keil, Einl. in das A. T., p. 497.
3 Baba bathra, f. 14 b, 15 a. This passage, which will be referred to elsewhere,
seems to teach that the prophecies were thus committed to writing by men Infal
libly inspired for that purpose.
^ See article Bibel, in his Keal-Encyklopadie fiir Bibel und Talmud.

CANONIZATION OF THE HAGIOGRAPHA. 647
bears witness to the late origin of the canon of the Hagiographa ;
and the usage of the apocryphal writings in reference to the
Old Testament confirms this witness. Of the thkd division of
the Canon, the Psalms constituted the earliest and most firmly
fixed portion. The use of the Book of Psalms as divided into
five parts seems to be indicated by 1 Chron. xvi. 36, wliere the
closing doxology of the fourth division — viz., that of Ps. evi.
48 — is represented as used by the people in worship. A
Canon of the Psalms may have been in existence before the
Canon of the entire Old Testament, considered as a whole in
three parts, was even begun. But this Canon of the Psalms
was not definitely closed until much later: it was perhaps
opened repeatedly, as even DeUtzsch ^ admits, as late as during
the Maccabean era, to receive new Psalms of recent composi
tion. Besides this one book, which the Talmudic tradition
ascribes to "David through ten venerable men,"^ the other
writings of the Hagiographa were for the most part not simply
canonized, but also composed, after the Exile. The causes which
stimulated the post-ExUian writings of Judaism were largely
the same as those which made them inferior in spirit, originality,
and power, to the earlier writings of the Old Testament. The
learned and pious men of the nation found themselves again
in thek native land, with the possession of a certain amount of
conceded freedom, and with the literature and language of their
national antiquity. The impulse to review and revise this
national literature was inevitable, and also the impulse to add
to its treasures by the production of new works. But these
new works could not escape the influence of the captivity upon
their language and their thought ; nor could they fail to show
signs of the subservient condition of the national life. The
influence of the Greeks must also be taken into the account ;
although chiefly manifest in the Alexandrine version, it is by
no means wholly lacking in the Hebrew writings of the Pales
tinian Jews. That the Jewish view of Sacred Scripture dis
tinctly recognized the inferiority of the Hagiographa with
respect to inspiration, we shall show more in detail in another
connection. The very fact of the threefold classification, as it
was originally made,^ was an admission of this fact of inferi-
1 Commentary on the Psalms, I. p. 13.
= Baba bathra, f. 15: "David scripsit lihrum Psalmorum, per decem vener-
abiles senes."
' Compare Geiger, Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, p. 38 f.

648 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ority. The Books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and
Ruth, belong by nature with the historical books like Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, and Kings, — the so-called " former Prophets ; "
and Daniel belongs with Ezekiel as one of the Prophets in the
more special sense of the word.
The Jewish Canon consists, then, of three divisions, or strata
as Wellhausen i has not unaptly denominated them ; and of
these three the third is, according to the direct and indirect
testimony of those whose judgment formed the entire collection,
the latest, the most indefinite in contents, and the one inferior
in its claims to canonical recognition. The third and last step
in forming the completed Canon of sacred Hebrew writings
consisted in selecting from a much larger number of similar
works — poetic, prophetic, historical, didactic — certain ones
such as are now comprised in the Hagiographa. Their very
name, " the writings " (D'ains) shows the originally indefinite
and manifold nature of their contents.
Besides these three divisions of the Canon, — the reasons for
which are certainly objective and historical,^ whether or not
they also include subjective grounds,^ — we must also recognize
different epochs in which especially " redactionary revisions "
of the writings have taken place. Of such epochs Hamburger *
distinguishes the following four : (1) The first epoch followed
the destruction of the Syrian rule and the establishment of the
Maccabean dynasty. The so-called Asmonean College, which
flourished from 165 to 107 B.C. under Judas, Jonathan, Simon,
and Jolin Hyrcanus, undertook a redaction of the Bible. The
Book of Esther was then revised, and seven chapters now found
in the LXX. were excluded from the Hebrew. (2) In the sec
ond period, from 44 B.C. to 30 A.D., a struggle took place be
tween the Sadducean tendency and the intruding Alexandrine
philosophy. The Books of Ezekiel, Koheleth, Solomon's Song,
Job, and Proverbs, were then revised. In this period a strong
divergence of view prevailed as to the canonizing of certain
of the Hagiographa. The indefinite language of Josephus, —
the Law, the Prophets, and the other books, — and of Philo,
who designates the third division of the Bible as " Praises to
God (Psalms), and other writings," is a witness to this fact.
1 In Bleek's Einl. in das A. T., p. 547.
2 See Schrader in De Wette, Einl. in das A. T., p. 28.
' As is maintained by Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, Keil, and Bleek.
* Art. Bibel in Eeal-Encyklopadie fiir Bibel und Talmud.

LBHTS OF THE OLD-TESTAMENT CANONS. 649
(3) After the destruction of the temple, and under the patri
archate of Rabbi Gamaliel IL, the study of profane authors and
the encroachments upon Judaism of the Alexandrine philosophy
and of Judaizing Christianity becaine the occasion for another
redaction. At this time there was dispute particularly over
the canonizing of Esther, the Song of Solomon, and Koheleth.
(4) At the end of the second and in the beginning of the third
century, the strife over Koheleth was still unsettled; some
teachers rejecting the book as profane, and others questioning
its canonical position.^ Certain teachers of the third century
wished to exclude Esther from the Canon. The influence of
thek decision made itself felt upon the Christian Church ; for
Athanasius denies the canonicity of Esther, and Melito of Sardis
does not enumerate it among the books deemed canonical.
In view, then, of all the facts, and in spite of the apparent
bearing of the testimony of Josephus, it must be conceded that
the limits of even the Palestinian Canon of the Old Testament
were not perfectly fixed until some time after the Christian
era;^ this indefiniteness was, however, confined to a few mem
bers of the Apocrypha as debated by the learned. With re
spect to the Alexandrine version, it is a matter of doubt whether
we can speak of a Canon, in any strict and intelligible sense of
the word. This first work of hermeneutics in the domain of
general Uterature had, indeed, a great influence upon the Jews,
not only of Alexandria but also of Palestine itself. The Pales
tinian writings show a knowledge of the inaccuracies of the
Septuagint ; but they do not hesitate at times also to praise it
as a work of divine characteristics.^ So far as any thing like a
fixed text is necessary to the construction of a canon of sacred
writings, according to Frankel,* we cannot claim it even for the
Pentateuch of the LXX. ; the translation of which was, in the
opmion of the same author, completed not later than the third
century B.C.^ Upon the whole matter of the origin of this
1 It is said of the school of Shammai, that they refused to put the hook on a
level for sacredness with the other Scriptures, because " it defileth not the hands "'
(Edajoth, 5, 3). Others spoke of Solomon's Song in the same way (Jadaim, 3, 5).
Upon the dispute whether these two books defile the hands, —i.e., are sacred
wiitings, — see Gfrorer, Jahrbiicher des Hells, I. p. 238 f.
' See Diestel, Geschichte des A. T., p. 19 f.
' See Babyl. Talmud, Megilla f. 9; Jems. Talmud, Megilla f. 9: " Eingebuns,
wenn auch nicht Inspiration im Sinne der Kirchenvater gemeint ist," Frankel,
Vorstudien zu der Septuaginta, p. 25 i.
« Ibid., p. 43.
' Ueber den Einfluss der palastinischen Exegese auf die alexandrinische Her
meneutik, p. 2 f.

650 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
version, and of its relations to the Hebrew Canon, there is stiU,
however, much obscurity; upon several important points, no
opinion can be held with any confidence. The early practice
of the Christian Church shows a vacillation between the practi
cal canonizing of the entke Greek version, Apocrypha included,
and a theoretical tendency to restrict the limits to the Pales
tinian tradition, with its firmer historical basis.
We must, then, look upon the Canon of the Old Testament as
the result of an historic process ; and not only this, but we must
also consider the process as such that the Jewish Church came
to the self-conscious knowledge of the meaning of its decision
after the decision had already been reached. And if we search
for a definite reason in each case why one book was preserved
and received into the Canon, while another was rejected or lost,
no such reason can be found. Various conflicting or concurring
considerations united with external circumstances to produce
the general result. We are not warranted in maintaining ^ that
the Hebrew Old Testament contains all the relics of Hebrew-
Chaldaic literature up to a certain point of time. There is more
likelihood in the supposition that the nation, on its return from
exile, gathered and preserved aU the monuments of its sacred
antiquity which had escaped the national ruin.^ According to
a view which has some appearances in its favor, no work could
find its way into the Palestinian Canon of which there was not
in existence an original Hebrew text : the Apocrjrpha were ex
cluded, therefore, because either they had not been written in
Hebrew, or, as in the case of Sirach and First Maccabees, the He
brew text had perished. The temporary canonical estimate of
Baruch grew, then, out of its being appended to Jeremiah.^ If
we assert that dogmatic and purely subjective considerations
turned the scale in the last decision as to the reception or rejec
tion of a writing, it is difficult to see why Sirach, after struggle
and debate, should have been rejected and Ecclesiastes received ;
or why Daniel should have attained what was denied to Baruch,
Esther what was denied to First Maccabees. That nearness
of relation to the antiquities and religion of Israel had much
weight, and that the Jewish notions of revelation and inspira
tion were intimately connected with the process of forming the
Canon, will be shown elsewhere with more of detaU. The
1 So De Wette-Schrader, Einl. in das A. T., p. 13.
' Compare Wellhausen in Bleek, Ibid., p. 658.
" See Kneucker, Das Buch Baruch, Geschichte und Kritik, Leipzig, 1879, p. 89.

WITNESS OF SIRACH TO THE CANON. 651
nature of the contents of the separate writings was one chief
determining reason for their relation to the Canon : the writings
were received and declared as coming within the limits of Sacred
Scripture, on account of the fact that they bear in them the
supernatural elements of the divine revelation to Israel. At
this point, then, does the doctrine of the Canon, as that doctrine
was unconsciously acted upon by the Jewish Church, meet and
unite with the claims of the writings admitted to the Canon.
The writings must have a certain normative or law-giving power,
because they have brought to the nation that law upon which,
and that history in which, Jehovah had dealt with them. Doubt
less, also, certain books were admitted either because they bore
the name of men who were, in the estimate of the nation, ven
erable and inspired messengers of Jehovah, or because they
were understood to have been written by such men, as, e. g.,
David, Job, Daniel, and even Solomon.
In other words, the Canon of the Old Testament was not de
cided and declared at any one time, or by any man or number
of men, or upon any well-defined gr&unds of judgment. It was
reached as the result of a long process of living experience, and
its most formal declaration was accomplished by successive
steps and through varied influences. The almost complete lack
of critical judgment which characterizes the entire process is
seen in the efforts made by the Jews, as well as by the early
Christian writers, to make the number of the Old-Testament
books correspond to the number of letters in the Hebrew al
phabet. The foregoing view of that historic process which resulted in
the formation of the Old-Testament Canon is not contradicted,
but rather confirmed, by the more direct testimony of the few
avaUable witnesses. Of these witnesses, the earliest for the
threefold division is the Prologue of the Greek translation of
Skach, whose author came about the year 132 B. C. to Egypt,
and there some time later translated the work of his grand
father. The witness of Jesus Sirach cannot be interpreted, how
ever, so as to prove that the writings to which he refers then
existed as a collection of canonical Scriptures "in its three
parts long ago definitely fixed." ^ The Book of Sirach itself
makes pretensions to prophetic and canonical significance (see
xxiv. 30-34) ; it cannot, therefore, be said to regard the Canon
as definitely fixed. The author is represented by his translator
1 So Keil, Einl. in das A. T., p. 500 f.

652 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
as aspiring to accomplish the same ethical purpose to which he
understands the more ancient writings to be directed (eis -TraiBeiav
Kal a-ocj>iav) ; he prepares himself for his composition by a long
and ardent study of these models ; ^ he does not hesitate to place
the ancient and the recent writings by the side of each other
for the moral training of his oountrymen. The position of the
Hagiographa at that time is indicated by the more indefinite
and even less respectful titles which he applies to them (rwv
aXXwv TrarpLwv jSifiXiwv and rSv Kar' avrovs ¦^koXovOtjkotwv) .
The author of 2 Macc. ii. 13, after stating that fire had de
scended from heaven in response to the prayers of Moses and
Solomon, adds the following words : " These things are narrated
both in the registers and in the memorials of Nehemiah (Kara
rbv 'Neepiav), and how he founded a library and collected the
writings of the kings and prophets (ra irepl tSi/ /Saa-iXewv Kal irpo-
(fi-TjTwv), and those of David, and letters of kings concerning
votive offerings " (koi i-TrivroXas ^amjiXewv -Trepl dvaOep.drwv) , It is
manifest that these words do not describe a canon of Sacred
Scriptures " in its three parts long ago definitely fixed." The be
ginnings of the tradition which developed into the later Talmudic
view concerning the fixing of the Canon by Ezra may perhaps
be traced to this statement of Second Maccabees, as Bretschnei
der ^ supposed. According to the very probable view of this
same writer and of others, the letters of the Persian kings, in
which they permit the building of the temple and assure the
Jews of support and of presents, are here referred to. They are,
then, as containing important records of the theocratic history
of Israel, regarded in the same light with the works of David
and the Prophets.
More clear and unequivocal as to the main question, how
ever, is the still later testimony of Josephus, in that most
important passage, Contra Apionem, Book I. chap, viii.^ This
testimony cannot be considered as a mere private judgment ;
and yet it certainly would not have commanded the consent of
all of the learned in Palestine, much less of the Alexandrine
Jews. It is evident that Josephus did not regard the added
books of the LXX. as canonical, although he uses the apoc
ryphal Ezra in Ant., XI. 1-5, and the additions to Esther in
^ 'EttI TrXeiov iavTov Sou? ei? Te ttji/ tou vopiov xaX riav Ttpoij)ijTuiV Kai Twe dWtav irarprnv jSt^Xt'uf
ivdyvtaffiv. 2 Systematiscbe Darstellung der Dogmatik und Moral der apoc. Sehrift., p. 59.
8 See J. G. Miiller, Des F. Josephus Sehrift gegen den Apion, pp. 99-106.

THE CANON OF JOSEPHUS. 653
Ant., XI. 6, G. His claim that the Canon was dennuely closed
in the time of Artaxerxes is undoubtedly false. He gives the
number of books at twenty-two, according to the letters of the
Hebrew alphabet; and this method, which was followed by
Origen and MeUto,i is to be regarded as earlier than the divis
ion into twenty-four books. He also adopts the threefold
division as found in Sirach, the LXX., the Talmud, and Philo.
But as to his manner of arranging these two methods of
division, a difference of view is possible. The five of Moses
are fixed. But Josephus makes the Prophets thirteen, and the
Hagiographa four; while the Talmud gives the Prophets at
eight, and the Hagiographa or Ketubim at eleven. We are left
in doubt, then, whether the four of the third class of Josephus
are, (1) Psalms, (2) Proverbs, (3) Solomon's Song, (4) Ecclesi
astes (Prideaux, De Wette, Bleek, Stahelin, and others); or,
(1) Psalms, (2) Job, (3) Proverbs and Solomon's Song, (4) Ec
clesiastes (Havercamp).
In turning from the Old Testament to the New, the historical
process by which the collection of canonical writings was made
admits of a different method of investigation : many of the more
important doctrinal conclusions from the study of this process
remain, however, substantially the same. We are no longer
compelled to prefer the uncertain results of internal criticism
to a much more uncertain tradition, — a tradition, indeed,
which grew up centuries after the facts, and is manifestly for
the most part composed of myth and legend. And yet the
first century or more of this historical process has, even in the
case of the New Testament, little direct testimony to present.
We first behold the Canon as within certain limits already
formed, but we cannot study in detail the process of its form
ing. The course by which the early Church came to a decision,
or rather to a consciousness of having already made a decision,
regarding the circuit of its sacred writings, lay neither through
acts of councUs, nor through independent criticism of individual
scholars. The former had nothing to do with the earlier de
cisive eras: the opinions of individuals, although numerous
and freely enough given, were not independent results of criti
cal judgment so much as declarations of results reached through
the uncritical moral and religious instinct of the churches at
large. The influence of the central churches was from the
first, no doubt, considerable : later on, the influence of tha
1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., IV. 26, 6, and VI. 25.

654 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
bishops availed much ; ^ but wider and more permanent Chris
tian considerations are the chief elements of the account.
" Private judgments," says Reuss ^ truly, " are only our witnesses
to the condition of opinions in a quite limited sphere." A divine
leading pf the Church is manifest ; and yet " we must not for
get that antiquity itself never made the formation of the Canon
in any one conception, considered apart from its history, the
subject of a dogma."
Three tolerably well-marked steps in this historical process
need to be distinguished, and three periods during which the
Church was advancing by these steps. Of these periods the
first comes to a close soon after the middle of the second cen
tury. During the preceding time the idea that Christian be
lievers had a body of writings from apostolic sources which
might be considered sacred, and in some sort placed upon a
level for public instruction with the ¦sacred Hebrew writings,
was in process of formation. At the close of this period, and
at the beginning of the next, this idea was by common consent
of the churches unhesitatingly applied to all but seven of the
New-Testament writings. The important questions for all
the earlier portion of this "period are not those of canonicity
at all, but rather those of the genuineness and authenticity of
the separate writings. The second period extends from toward
the close of the second until toward the close of the fourth
century. The conflicts of the Church w^ith heretics made it
necessary that the limits of those Scriptures to which an appeal
could be taken as authoritative should be more definitely
fixed : at the same 'tilne the firm position of a Church CathoUc
over against the sects made the work of fixing these Umits
possible. The question of the Canon was practicaUy deter
mined by the recejition of all the books of the present New
Testament. It was understood, however, that the so-called
Antilegomena Were not to be received as being in the same
rank with the other writings, and were not to be used as
authoritative sources of apostolic doctrine. To this distinction
amongst the New-Testament writings, the very authorities on
whom we rely for all our proof are almost unanimous in testi
fying, whatever minor differences of opinion are shown by
Athanasius, Jerome, Rufinus, Augustine, Eusebius, CyrU, and
Sozomen. To this class of books thus placed in the second
1 See Hilgenfeld, Der Kanon, etc., p. 33 f.
2 Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., II. p. 27.

EARLY USE OF NEW-TESTAMENT WRITINGS. 655
rank belong Second Peter, Second John, Third John, James,
Jude, and, with less unanimity of testimony, Hebrews and the
Apocalypse. From the close of the fourth century and the be
ginning of the third period onward, no change as to the limits
of the New-Testament Canon appears ; but the distinction of
its books into two classes becomes in large degree practically
lost. The chief interest of the churches being in the use of
its sacred books for public instruction, a distinction which
by its very nature demands some acquaintance with ancient
tradition was destined to be laid aside.
From the nature of the case, we can scarcely expect to find
much which resembles a distinct recognition of the canonical
authority of the New-Testament writings in the earliest of the
three periods mentioned above. A large amount of recogni
tion, as given to individual Writings for their sacred origin and
contents, necessarily precedes the establishment of a canon of
such writings. The proofs that such recognition was actually
accorded to the New-Testament writings by the early Chris
tians wkl be given more in detail in another place. The con
sciousness of a vital connection with the apostles, in respect to
instruction and practice, for a considerable time satisfied the
Christian mind and heart ; and there is much reason to believe,
although the definite proof is scanty, that the Christian congre
gations transferred the reading of the Old Testament from the
Jewish synagogues to their own assemblies (see 1 Tim. iv. 13).
The epistles were, doubtless, at first read publicly by the
churches to whom they were addressed ; but this reading was
probably not at all regular, nor was it placed on a level with
that of the Hebrew ScriptuTes. They were received as they
were intended by -their authors, as affectionate teaching and
exhortation from those whom the Lord had deemed worthy of
this work.^ The consideration naturally given to apostles, the
encycUcal character of some of their epistles, and the conse-
sequent multiplication of copies, help us to conjecture the
process by which these writings won their way to canonical
regard. In the mean time certain other writings, credited with
either direct or indirect apostolic origin, were slowly spread
ing themselves abroad according to the customary methods of
the time.
^ Note the manner in which Clement of Rome and the Ignatian Epistles speak
of these apostolic letters: vp.lv eypa^ev (Clemens Kom. ad Cor., xlvii. 1); jii-Tijiofeiiei
'(«>¦ (Ignatius ad Eph., 12), and the manner of citing Corinthians, Galatians, and
1 John (Magn., 10; Philad., 1; Smyrn., 6).

653 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Scattered traces of the existence and regardful use of a
number of the New-Testament writings precede the middle of
the second century. Thus early these writings appear as vested
with the characteristics of sacred and authentic records of
Christianity, or as inspired wordg' of teaching and exhortation
from the apostles. But it i.s not until some time after this, that
even the idea of a definite canon of Christian scriptures appears.
That these writings are quoted as ^ ypatji-rj, and publicly read in
the churches, does not prove the existence of such an idea. We
have already seen more than once, that inspired writing is not
necessarily canonical Scripture. The Shepherd of Hermas was
used somewhat widely for public reading in the churches, and
was thus endued for a time with a g'M^si-canonical authority .^
It is never, however, — declares the author of the Muratorian
Canon, — to be placed on a level with Propliets and Apostles.
This book was, according to Eusebius, contested by some, on
whose account it was not placed among the Homologoumena ;
but he also bears witness to the fact that it was read in gome
churches.2 Sozomen mentions that it was read once a year
in some churches in Palestine.^ The Epistle of Clement is
declared to have been read of old in most of the churches.*
Dionysius of Corinth is made to report that the Epistle of Soter
was read by the Corinthians on the holy Lord's Day, as they
had read the earlier epistle written to them by Clement. Both
these epistles were used in the public services for admonition
and instruction in righteousness.^ The same distinction was
in some places given to the Apocalypse of Peter. ^ We can,
then, neither rely upon the citation of these writings as Sacred
Scripture, nor upon thek public reading in the churches, to prove
the existence of the definite idea or fact of a canon of the New
Testament. But, on the other hand, we need not admit that the really
important question for the validity of the historical process is a
matter of great doubt. The question, it has already been said,
is simply that of the existence of these writings. For if we find
1 So, it would seem, we must interpret the words of the Muratorian Fragment:
et ideo legi eum quidem oportet. There is doubt, indeed, as to whether "legi"
should be understood of public reading. But see the long note in Pat. Apost.
Opera, ed. Gebhardt, Harnack and Zahn, Prolegomena, p. xlvii.
2 Hist. Eccl., III. 3. 8 Ibid., VII. 19. * Ibid., III. 16. « Ibid., IV. 23.
8 "When the author of the Muratorian Canon declares that " certain ones of
us are unwilling to have it read in the public service," he certainly implies the
existence of the custom of its public use.

THE SILENCE OF EARLY AVRITERS. 657
them existing, and esteemed by the Church as authentic records
and sacred testimonies to truth, we may expect the definite
fixing of canonical limits to take place in due time. As to this
reaUy important question, we present some items of the proof
concerning the first of our three periods. And, as has been
declared by an author ^ who has much misused his own valuable
advice, "the sUence of early writers should receive as much
attention as any supposed allusions to the Gospels." This
attention should, however, be so directed as to avoid unwar
ranted and hasty conjectures from any alleged silence; espe
ciaUy in cases where the writings extant are very meagre in
quantity, or where the design of the writings — it being, per
haps, to controvert those who could not be influenced by
quotations from Christian sources — would naturally result in
silence. The cases of Papias and of Eusebius are worthy of
especial note, because their " sUence " cannot be explained by
apologetic reasons, and has been much used to throw discredit
upon the genuineness of some of the New-Testament books.
But as to the former, untU his lost five books are brought to
light, we can scarcely affirm any thing confidently beyond the
fact, that his testimony seems to favor certain conclusions as to
the origin of Matthew and Mark. We certainly cannot con-
elude with the author of Supernatural Religion,^ " It is manifest
from the evidence adduced, however, that Papias did not know
our Gospels." On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that
Papias could have recognized all our present Gospels as having
the sacredness or divine authority of apostolic writings.^ Nor
are we sure how far the writings which he, as a " weU-inten-
tioned caterer of tradition," regarded as inferior to oral sources
of information, were corrupt Gnostic versions of the life of
Jesus. The conclusion of Hilgenfeld,* that Papias held the
other written Gospels in low esteem as compared with oral tra
dition and with the writings of Matthew and of Peter through
Mark, has at first the appearance of truth. We should not
expect, however, that one who used testimonies from the First
Epistle of John would depreciate the kindred Gospel in case it
' Supernatural Eeligion, I. p. 212. 2 j p 485.
* As John Delitzsch seems to think possible, De Inspiratione S. S., p. 69.
* Der Kanon, etc., p. 15 f. Hilgenfeld finds in the language of Papias proof of
an intention to oppose the claims of Luke. Semler said of Papias (see Praef.
adillnst. orig. cath. ecclesiae): " Ceterum nee Lucae evangelium amasse videtnr
qui Pauli comes fuerat; nee illud Johannis, quod satis alienum erat a judiaco
charactere." VOL. I. 2 T

658 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
were known to him. But the sUence of Papias concerning John
is, until we have his own lost writings, very largely due to the
silence of Eusebius ; and the sUence of the latter would indeed
be remarkable and important, if we could trust the statement
of Supernatural Religion,^ that Eusebius " never faUs to enu
merate the works of the New Testament to which the Fathers
refer." How untrustworthy, however, this statement is, has
been made apparent by many of the researches of criticism, and
especially by the detailed examination given to it at the hands
of Lightfoot.^ It appears clear, that the design of the Church
historian as respects the Canon of Scripture led him only to
notice the use made by any ancient writer of the books still
disputed in his own time, and to record any anecdotes about ,
the canonical books. Too much attention can, indeed, scarcely
be bestowed upon the " sUence " of the earliest Christian writ
ers, if only this attention preserve us from filling up the gap
produced by the silence with assumption and conjecture.
Scarcely less important is it that we should allow sufficient
consideration for the inaccurate and free manner of quotation
which prevailed amongst the Church Fathers. To conclude
that verbal changes — even when so great as under other con
siderations to be conclusive — disprove the acquaintance of an
ancient Christian writer with our present Gospels and Epistles,
and also prove the existence of various other supposititious
and apocryphal writings from which the changed words must
have been taken, is, of all methods of reasoning, the worst sub
stitute for sound criticism. The very process by whicli the
Synoptic Gospels grew into being, and the early variations of
text, make us uncertain as to the precise words which must
have lain before the ancient writer in any MS. from which he
might be quoting. The habit of quoting at least the shorter
passages from memory is a sufficient general account of many
variations. Only in the case, then, of the longer and more un
familiar quotations (which are at the same time least likely to
be made at all) should we expect the writer to consult his MS.
roll and to transcribe accurately its text. Nor can we teU even
in these cases what was the text of the particular MS. employed.
Out of flfty-seven quotations made by Clement of Rome from
the Old Testament, only seventeen are exact : ^ " some of the
1 I. p. 483.
2 See article on the Silence of Eusebius, Contemporary Eeview, 1873.
8 Sanday, Gospels in the Sec. Cent., p. 2G; Charteris, Canonicity, p. xii. I.

LACK OF PRECISION IN QUOTATION. 659
others are so widely variant as to make it doubtful whether
even a treacherous memory could be the cause of the diver
gence." Yet we do not need to announce the absurd conjecture
that Clement in most of his quotations used spurious and apoc
ryphal editions of the Old-Testament writings. Nor do we need
to resort to similar conjecture when we find the same Church
Father giving (xUi.) a brief account of some of Christ's sayings
upon the Mount, which may very well be a kind of fusion and
compound of Matt. v. 7, vi. 14, vU. 1, 2, and Luke vi. 31, 37.^
So also in the case of Justin Martyr, we have a sufficient gen
eral reason for his alleged silence, in the apologetic nature of
his work ; and for the deviations of his language from the text
of our four Gospels, in the universal habit of his age.^
Bearing in mind the above-mentioned and other similar cau
tions, we may claim a tolerably complete proof that all the
principal New-Testament writings were in existence, and held
worthy of a certain peculiar regard, previous to the middle of
the second century.
1 The author of Supernatural Eeligion (I. p. 223 f .), after quoting from Clement
the words following his introductory oiiTus yip elnev, adds with characteristic calm
ness in assumption, " It must be evident to any oUe who carefully examines the
parallel passages, that ' the words of the Lord Jesus ' in the Epistle cannot have
been derived from our Gospels.'' But nothing of the kind is evident: in fact, we
may say, that from this passage alone nothing' of any kind is especially CDiden(.
We have, however, to consider the fact, that this same Clement (xxix. 4) intro
duces with words of citation, as from the Old Testament, what seems to be a
similar compression and combination of three passages: viz.. Num. xviii. 27;
Deut. iv. 34; 2 Chron. xxxi. 14. Moreover, Polycarp quotes the Sermon on the
Mount with as many (but not the same) variations as those of Clement. And, if
the different elements of this compressed compound are not from our Gospels, no
one can tell whence they came.
^ The bearing of these facts upon the quotations in Justin Martyr has been pre
sented by Dr. Ezra Abbot (The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Boston, 1880)
with admirable clearness ' and thoroughness. His note A is an overwhelming
refutation of the claim of Supernatural Eeligion (I. pp. 401^12), that the quotation
of Justin (Dial. c. Tryph., c. lOO) could not have been taken from Matt. xi. 27
(compare Luke x. 22). Such variations as TrapaSiSorai for TrapeSdBri, the omission of
MOV and of Ti? iirtyiv(iiTKei,,'etc., ave shown to be trivial in the estimate of the time,
and are actually found in. places where the present Gospel of Matthew was un
doubtedly quoted. Indeed, the flrst substitution is found in Luke x. 22, iu MSS.
K and n, and in several cursives. Of the two omissions mentioned above, one is
fonnd in Cursive 71 and even in the Sinaitic MS. ; and the other or its equivalent
ia found in numerous early writings. Even the transposition of clauses which
Justin here adopts is found in one MS. of Matthew, in an Armenian version of the
Diatessaron of Tatian, and in a full score of the writings of the Church Fathers.
The differences between the language of Justin and the Gospel of John iii, 3-5 (see
Apol I., c. 61) do not show that he was nnacquainted with our present Gospel,
but rather the reverse. Dr. Abbot points' out -tbaX Jeremy Taylor, " who is not
generally supposed to have used many apocryphal Gospels," in quoting this same
passage nine times presents all the peculiarities of variation which are shown by
Justin.

660 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
The spurious Epistle of Barnabas, which was probably,
however, written previous to the founding of .^lia Capitolina,
A.D. 119, gives as clear evidence as could be expected of an ac
quaintance with Matthew ; especially by citing its words in two
places (c. iv. 14, compare Matt. xxii. 14 ; and c. v. 9, compare
Matt. ix. 13 ; in the former passage, with the use of the formula
<Ls yeypa-Trrai), and by several other probable references.^ Cer
tain relations of thought and language suggest, but do not
distinctly prove, an acquaintance also with the Gospel and
First Epistle of John. The writer regards the incarnation of
Christ in the same way as does the apostle,^ and deals in cer
tain phrases which have a Johannean cast.^
The First Epistle of Clement of Rome, which itseK attained
the dignity of liturgical use and even of a place in certain MSS.
of the canonical writings,* and which must have been written
previous to A.D. 100, contains both direct and indirect testi
mony to several writiugs of the New Testament. Its resem
blance to the thought and language of Hebrews is so marked
as to have led to the theory that Clement was the author of
the canonical Epistle. We have already seen that he ascribes
Corinthians to Paul by name ('AvaXd^ere rrjV i-!naroXr)v rov piaKapiov
IlavXov rov aTroo-roXov, xlvii. 1) ; he also makes other indubitable
references to this work of this apostle, especially when quoting
(xlix. 1) at considerable length from 1 Cor. xUi. His acquaint
ance with Romans seems also to be proved by several quota
tions and indirect references. The use of First Timothy and
First Peter seems clear ; that of Second Timothy and Titus,
probable, but more doubtful; echoes apparently from other
Pauline epistles resound within our ears as we read Clement.
The seeming references to the Synoptic Gospels are such as
serve neither, on the one hand, to vindicate his acquaintance
with them, nor on the other, to give ground for assuming the
existence of apocryphal writings as his source. The words
o aXrjOrjvbs Kai p.6vos seem to allude to the Gospel of John.^
1 Compare iv. 3 with Matt. xxiv. 6, 22, v. 12 with Matt. xxvi. 31, vii. 11 with
Matt. xvi. 24, xii. 11 with Matt. xxii. 45, and xix. 11 with Matt. v. 42; and see
Charteris, Canonicity, p. 102 f.
2 See Keim, Geschichte Jesu, I., pp. 141-143.
3 Such are conspicuously the phrase, iv o-opici t^avepouaBai, vi. 7 and 9; and fleo-
Si'SaKToi, xxi. 6, compare John vi. 45.
^ The Codex Alexandrinus has it as an appendix to the books of the New
Testament; but the Syriac MS. found in Paris in 1876 inserts it in the middle after
the Catholic Epistles.
'' See Clement, c. xliii. : other apparent allusions to John are to be found, xxxi.
2, xlix. 1, 0.

EARLY TESTIMONIES TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. C61
The author of that homily which has gone under the name
ofthe Second Epistle of Clement (written about 150 A.D. [?]),
quotes (c. U. 4) from Matt. ix. 13 as ypa<f>T^, using the same word
which he uses (c. vi. 14) for the Old Testament. " Thus saith
the Lord," is a formula repeatedly used by him for the New
Testament : in one place (c. xiv.) he aUudes to both Testaments
under the title to ^ifiXia koI ol aTroaroXoi ; 1 he cites the words of
Christ from the written record " as God saith " (c. xiii.) ; and
refers to the substance of this record as Adyio rov ®eov. But, on
the other hand, he quotes words which are not found in our
Gospels, with the formula, " the Lord saith," and reports a dia
logue of Jesus which Clement of Alexandria ascribed to the
" Gospel according to the Egjrptians." While, then, the testi
mony of this author does not establish the canonical position
(in his age) of any of our present writings, his references seem
to show an acquaintance with all the Gospels,^ and with Ro
mans, Corinthians, Ephesians, First Timothy, First Peter, and
James. The testimony of Justin Martyr falls within the first period,
and, considering the nature of his writings, must be regarded
as quite clear and tolerably complete. This author quotes
frequently ^ from certain writings which he styles memoirs, —
airopvqpovevpara, with Or without the adjunct TWV d7roo-ToA.a)V, —
and even Gospels (evayyeXia).* He also recites the custom of
the time as being this : " On the day called Sunday, there
occurs an assembly in the same place of all those who dwell in
cities or in the country, and the Memoks of the Apostles or the
Writings of the Prophets are read, as long as time permits." ^
He is thus the first to give us clear information of the liturgical
use of any part of the New Testament.^ That the " Memoirs "
1 The reading here is, however, doubtful: see Charteris, Ibid., p. xx. f.
2 Note, as to the Fourth Gospel, the iyevero adpl of c. ix. 5 ; and compare the
entire passage with John i. 14.
s According to John Delitzsch (De Inspiratione S. S., p. 70), the flrst title is
used by Justin fifteen times, twice in the First Apology and thirteen in the Dia
logue; and the second title four times, all in the Dialogue. According to the more
exact statement of Ezra Abbot (The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, p. 20),
they are called "Memoirs of the Apostles" eight times, the "Memoirs" simply
four times, and at several other times by more descriptive expansions of the title.
* The author of Supernatural Eeligion (I. p, 294) claims that the phrase a
KtAelrai evayyiXia (Apol., I. 66) is a manifest interpolation. Against this claim some
of his own suspicion as to the unworthy motives of other critics might well
be utilized. " Perhaps," says Otto (I. p. 182, note), " there are some who would
boldly expunge these words, and congratulate themselves on their emendation;
but vmim nihil muto."
5 Apol., I. 67. I ° See Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 16.

662 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of Justin included our present canonical Gospels, there can be
no reasonable doubt. His acquaintance with Matthew is evi
dent from the correspondence of his narratives with those of
this Gospel, from numerous quotations, and especially from the
long section in the Apology L, 15-17, which closely foUows
Matthew's version of the Sermon on the Mount. In certain
quotations, from the- Old Testament he has followed this Gospel,
while departing from both the Hebrew and the LXX.^ Per
haps the most decisive passage' to show Justin's acquaintance
with Mark is his reference in the Dialogue (106) to the naming
of Zebedee's sons as Boanerges.^ The view which Justin takes
of the life and teaching of Jesus, his diction, and his frequent
minute verbal agreements, prove his acquaintance with Luke.
His reference (Dial, cum Tryph., 103) to the sweat of Jesus
in the garden points to the narrative of Luke xxU. 44. The
evidence that Justin had read the Gospel of John may be re
garded as cumulative, and as having attained a high degree
of probabUity. The complete answer which can be made to
objections derived from Justin's minute verbal changes in the
case of John iii. 3-5 and the First Apology, c. 61, has already
been alluded to. The probabUity is increased by the apparent
use of the First Epistle of John (iU. 1 in Dialogue, c. 123).^
Nearly a score of other simUar references stUl further heighten
the degree of probability. Justin is the first to give us an ex
plicit quotation from the Apocalypse,* which he ascribes to the
Apostle John. In the opinion that he nowhere aUudes to Paul
or his writings, Hilgenfeld^ is ready to conclude that these
writings were not recognized by Justin as belonging among
the primeval apostolic group, although he may have been ac
quainted vrith them. That he was acquainted with them seems
involved, however, in the very fact of his controversy with
Marcion,^ and especially in the remarkable coincidence between
his quotations from the Old Testament and those of Paul.
Westcott "> asserts of Justin, in contradiction of an opinion Uke
that of Hilgenfeld, that "the Apostle of the Gentiles had
1 See Kirchhofer, Quellensammlung, p. 89 fE. ; and Charteris, Ibid., p. 120,
note. 2 If the auToO in this passage be retained, we have an ascription of this Gospel
to the Apostle Peter; Otto (I., ii. p. 380, note) shows considerable reason for
emending the reading to avjUiv. Compare Mark iii. 7.
s See Ezra Abbot, Ibid., p. 51; especially the additional koX iap.ev in both Justin
and John.
'- Dial, cum Tryph., c. 81. 6 Der Kanon, p. 27 f.
6 See Charteris, Ibid., p. Ixii. i Canon of the N. T,, 1866.

EARLY TESTIMONIES TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. 663
helped to mould both his faith and his language." The Epistles
from which such traces of influence can be most distinctly seen
are Colossians, Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and
Second Thessalonians.
If the researches of M. Waddington may be said to have
fixed the death of Polycarp at February, 155 A.D., this Church
Father also can be regarded as standing at the close of the first
period in the formation of the Canon. Polycarp certainly
quotes Fkst Peter, First John, and all the Epistles of Paul ex
cept Philemon, Second Timothy, Titus, and Colossians.^ Among
the Gospels, he seems to have made use at least of Matthew.^
In one passage (i. 2) he appears to quote the words of Acts
ii.24. Of other more obscure and contestable traces of the New-
Testament writings in this first period, it is not neCessary that
we should at present take detailed account. In the Shepherd
of Hermas, only one tolerably plain allusion appears ; viz., that
to Matt. X. 33, in Visio II. 2. We pass over to the next period,
then, carrying with us these precious fragments of evidence
from the earUest age. When arranged and viewed in one light,
they show us that the principal writings of our present New
Testament were known and recognized separately as of worth
for their authentic record of the life of Christ, or for their
apostolic instruction and exhortation. They had attained a
certain liturgical standing in the use of the churches, and were
sometimes quoted as Sacred Scripture ; but they were not yet
known as a coUection with an aitthority which belongs to the
idea of a sole and completed canon.
On taking our stand somewhat within the second period, we
are at once made aware of a decided advance toward definite
ness in the usage of its writers. Beyond dispute, at the close
of the second century the present four Gospels were received
as the genuine and sole canonical Gospels : their public reading
was firmly and widely established ; and many copies were in
existence throughout the entire Christian world. They were
continually quoted and appealed to as authoritative scripture.
Of the Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul, one of Peter, one of John,
and the Apocalypse, the judgment of the churches was concord-
^ See Charteris, Ibid., p. xxxix. f.
2 The passage from the Epistle ad Phil., ii. 3, seems to he made up from both
Matthew and Luke. As we have already seen, the relation of the quotation of
Polycarp to that of Clement and to the canonical writings excludes the hypothesis
of one lost source for both. See Sanday, Ibid., p. 85.

664 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ant : they, too, were regarded as canonical. And if we inquire for
the reasons of this more rapid advance, we shall find them not
only in the nature of the case, but also in the force of ecclesi
astical changes, and in the conflicts with heretics to which the
Church Catholic was compelled. From this point onward, we are
able to consider the undisputed books of the New Testament
as constituting one Bible with the canonical Hebrew Scriptures.
The unsatisfactory nature of oral tracUtion, and the need of
written sources, could not fail to become more apparent with
the lapse of time ; aud especially in the face of those dangers
from heretical sects which threatened the early churches. The
number of spurious and apocryphal writings made some agree
ment necessary as to the more definite limits of acknowledged
Christian Scripture. It is a noteworthy fact, that some of the
earlier attempts to form an acknowledged and selected body of
writings for their followers were made by the leading heretics.
Marcion, a pupil of Cerdo, and the head of an anti-Jewish
Gnostic sect, selected, on dogmatic rather than critical grounds,
the Gospel of Luke ^ and ten of the Epistles of Paul as repre
senting the true teachings of Christianity. It does not appear,
however, that he denied the genuineness of those Gospels and
Epistles which he rejected.^ He is, therefore, a valuable direct
witness to the existence and genuineness of the writings which
he received ; and he may also be considered as indirectly bear
ing testimony to those which he rejected. We may, perhaps,
admit the truth of the statement of Reuss,^ that the heretics
of the second century recognized, cited, and commented upon
the writings of the apostles before the Church Catholic had
come to an agreement upon the precise limits of the Canon.
We may even use this fact, both to prove the genuineness of
the writings, and also to show the reason why the Canon was
now in its principal elements so speedily shaped. For when
Irenaeus * accuses the Gnostics of acknowledging the Scriptures,
and yet perverting their interpretation ; and TertulUan ^ oom-
1 The priority of the canonical Gospel of Luke to Marcion may be regarded
as deflnitely settled; the linguistic argument of Sanday (Gospels in the Second
Century) having convinced the author of Supernatural Eeligion, who had resisted
the previous conclusive arguments of Volkmar and Hilgenfeld. Compare Char
teris, Ibid., 393 f., note.
" See Kirchhofer, Ibid., p. 357, note.
8 Geschichte der heil. Schriften A. T., II. p. 13.
* Adv. Haer., III. 12 : " Scripturas quidem confitentur interpretationes vero
convertunt." ' Praescr., c. 17 and 38.

THE CANON AND THE CHURCH CATHOLIC. 665
plains of Valentinus, that he does not receive them in their
entirety ; and Hippolytus ^ charges Apelles with choosing only
those things from the Gospels or Apostles which suited him, —
we must beUeve that the idea and fact of a New-Testament
Canon had already for some time existed.
The key to a true knowledge of that historical process by
wliich the Canon of the New Testament was formed is, accord
ing to HUgenfeld,^ to be found in this fact: "It is referable
to the overcoming, by the Church Catholic, of an original oppo
sition between Jewish Christianity and Paulinism." This truth
Semler saw, although only somewhat dimly. In the view of
Credner, the origin of the New Testament as a collection
of acknowledged sacred writings is contemporaneous with the
triumph ofthe Church Catholic over Jewish Christianity. But
Credner here reverses the order of dependence, and ascribes
the triumph of cathoUcity to the unity attained by the churches
in the matter of the Canon. His theory, however, although
often overwrought and so forced as to become a caricature of
the facts, especiaUy by the so-called Tiibingen School, contains
indubitable and important elements of truth. And some of
these elements are duly taken into the account, even by critics
as cautious as Westcott. The uniting of the two principal
tendencies, which had earlier run somewhat separate, — viz., the
Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian, — into one force'
of a Christian Church Catholic, made it then possible to estab
lish a Canon of Sacred Scripture. To the view of the Bible
which underlay this Canon, each of these tendencies contributed
some influence. The Jewish-Christian tendency had so far
prevailed as to soften the sharp contrast which Paul had made
between the spirit and the letter: hence the writers of this
period give more emphasis to the perfect and enduring charac
ter of the Old-Testament revelation. On the other hand, the
opposition to the more distinctively Gentile form of Christian
ity had itself so far softened as to permit the writings of Paul
to be considered upon a level with those of the Old Testament.
This recognition of one Bible with two classes of books, those
of the Old Covenant and those of the New, and both to be
placed in a like position of authority, was consummated in idea
and in fact toward the close of the second century .^ The
' PhiloS., p. 259, TojK evayyeXiiov ^ tov imtTToXov Ta dpiiTKOvTa airCt a'lpelrai.
^ Der Kanon, p. 112; compare pp. 1 ff.
' See Eeuss, Geschichte, etc., II. p. 18 f., for a brief but candid presentation of

666 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
increase of influence and of ecclesiastical authority in the
hands of the bishops doubtless aided the work which was now
consummated by the Church, — united, as it was, in the faith
and in common opposition to those whom it deemed heretical.
It is needless to prove in detail, that the Christian churches
and teachers of this period recognized the Old Testament
(excepting the Apocrypha) and the New Testament (excepting
the seven so-called AntUegomena) as constituting one Bible
or collection of canonical and authoritative Scriptures. The
proof, if needed, would be abundant and conclusive. We con
fine our consideration to a few important features.
The more formal co-ordinating of the writings of Apostles
and Evangelists with those of the Hebrew Bible led to the
common application of the title, " the Scripture" or " the Scrip
tures," to both classes. To distinguish the two, a term was
taken from themselves : they were called respectively the scrip
tures of the Old and the New Covenant. This term being
afterwards mistranslated, abbreviated, and applied to the books
themselves, they became respectively the Old Testament and
the New Testament.^ How far the use of the distinctive terms,
the " Gospel " and the " Apostolicon," which is found ki Ire
naeus,^ Clement, and Tertullian,^ and which disappears in the
next century, points to two separate collections of writings,
the one including the Four Evangelists, and the other including
the Acts and a shifting unregulated number of Epistles, it is
not easy to determine. The term "Catholic" to distinguish
this tmth. Of the Ebionites, Irenaeus says (Adv. Haer., I, 26): "Solo autem eo,
quod est secundum Matthaeum, evangelio utuntur et apostolum Paulum recusant,
apostatam eum legis dicentes." Compare Origen, Con. Cels., V. 65; Eusebius,
Hist. Eccl., 111.27,4; and frequent references to the same fact in Epiphanius.
Semler, who in so many of his conclusions both anticipated and impelled the
statements of later criticism, even asserts that Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin, and
other writers of the second and third centuries, failed to know any thing aright
about the origin of the Gospels and Epistles, because they neglected istud discri-
men Evangelii duplicis which Paul as diligently as bravely pointed ont (see Praef.
ad illust., etc.). Compare Credner, Geschichte des Kanons, p. 23 f.; Hilgenfeld,
Ibid., pp. 35 ff. ; Westcott, Ibid., p. 292 f.
1 The earlier terms were, the Law and the Gospel, or the Prophets and the
Apostles; or, the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel. Compare 2 Cor. iii. 14, im
Tjl dvayvtit<r€L t>}s TraXatas BLaB-rJKri^ ', SO Ta ^i^Xia T^9 iraKald^ (jcaiv^s) StafliiKjjs became J) iraAaia
{Kaivri) SiaBriKv The Vulgato translates Matt. xxvi. 28 with testamentum. (See
Cremer, art. Siafl^Kij, Worterbuch.) Novum Testamentum is first found in Tertul
lian, Adv. Prax., c. 15. The Greek terms used by Origen in his liepl dpxS>v, IV. 1,
are wanting in the translation of Eufinus. Scriptura omnis in duo testamenta
divisa est, says Lactantius, Instit. , IV. 20.
2 Ta eiayyeXiKa Kai Ta airocTToAiKo, IrenaeUS, Adv. Haer., I. 3.
8 In Evangeliis et in Apostolis, so Tertullian.

EARLY UNITY OF VIEW. 667
one class of Epistles seems originally to have indicated a rec
ognition of the wider circle of readers who were addressed by
some of the epistolary writings. According to Reuss,i this
term was at first appUed to the First Epistle of John and to
the Epistle of Barnabas : it was afterwards used to designate all
the non-Pauline letters, because the Epistles of Paul were in
general more definitely addressed than those which came later
into the Canon.
The order of books in the Canon was determined differently
by different writers and by the influence of various considera
tions. The supposed order of origin, the rank of the supposed
authors, the assumed rank of the congregations and persons to
whom the writings were originally addressed, seem all to have
been variously taken into the account. The Catholic Epistles
ordinarUy stand before the other Epistles, and in the earlier
MSS. are connected with Acts. " The Epistle to the Plebrews,"
says Reuss,^ " like an intruder, wanders from place to place."
The unity of view which was attained early in this period by
individual teachers and churches in widely separated regions
and under differing circumstances^ is the most convincing proof
of the substantial vaUdity of the Canon and of the genuineness
of its uncontested books. For such unity of view the names of
Irenaeus, TertulUan, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen stand
as sufScient witnesses : each of them speaks for a large circuit
of churches and a wide compass of time. They clearly show an
inteUigent concordance of view — although differing in details
of opinion concerning the Antilegomena — as to the assured,
and also as to the yet doubtful, Umits of the Canon. Irenaeus
(t c. 200 A. D.), on account of his birth in, Asia Minor (probably
the cradle in which grew the infant Canon of New-Testament
Scripture ^), testifies to some extent for eastern Europe, Greece,
and Palestine. In the front rank he places the Gospels,* of
which he speaks in such manner as to emphasize the harmon-
istic view : the canonical number of four he regards as due to
an interior necessity on the part of a church which has spread
itself to the four quarters of the earth. The one tetraform
Gospel is held together and pervaded by one spirit.^ Among
the AntUegomena he cites tiie Apocalypse and Second John,
the latter of which appears as an integral part of the First
' Geschichte der heU. Schriften N. T., II. p. 22. = Ibid., IL p. 24.
' Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 20. * Adv. Haer., m. 1, 1.
' Ibid., III. 11, 8 ; eSioKev vplv Terpap.op^ov evayye\iov, evi Se ir^cvVaTi trvvexopevov.

668 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Epistle ; ^ he perhaps also made use of Hebrews, but not as a
writing of Paul.^ Of James, Jude, Second Peter, and Third
John, no undeniable traces appear. Tertullian (f c. 220) shows
from his writings that he regards the Old and New Testaments
as together constituting the generically Sacred Scripture, but
his method seems to confine the canonical writings of the New
Testament to those of undoubtedly apostolic origin. In one
passage he confines himself to the Gospels, Apocalypse, Acts,
and Pauline Epistles ; ^ in another he adds the Fkst Epistle of
John, but places it with the Apocalypse at the end : * of James,
Third John, and Second Peter, he makes no recognition, and
probably none of Second John. His single reference to Jude
does not fully serve to class it vnth feanonical Scripture.^ He
brews he does not regard as canonical, but as much more worthy
than the apocryphal Shepherd of Hei:mas.^ Clement of Alex
andria (t after 211) co-ordinates the Law and the Prophets
with the Gospel, as, in the name of Christ, leading to one form
of knowledge,' and as constituting tine body of Scriptures : his
frequent and formal citations from the Epistles permit no doubt
that he included them also in this category. But his manner of
using Scripture indicates Ul-defined and vaeUlating notions as to
the nature and limits of the Canon. That he was acquainted
with James, Second Peter, and Thkd John, his extant writings
show no trace of evidence ; but if we may trust the declaration
of Eusebius * concerning the scope of his lost work, the " Hypo-
typoses " (or " Outlines " ), he gaVe iri it concise explanations
of all the disputed books of the New Testahieat, — as weU as of
the Epistle of Barnabas and the Apocalypse of Peter, — and
asserted that Hebrews was written by Paul in the Hebrew dia
lect, and translated into Greek by Luke. To substitute a more
precise view of the Canon for this vacillating one, was the aim
and effort of Origen (f 254). For the execution of this effort
he relied upon the principle of tradition ; but in its execution,
even when confined to a domain comparatively so narrow, he
found many difficulties. His influence upon the view to be
1 Ibid.,nL16, 5; LIG, 3.
^ See Hilgenfeld, p. 36, note. Stephen Gobarus sayS of Irenaeu.'s and Hippoly
tus : TTji* irpbs 'E^pdLovi eiri(rTo\i}v IlavAov ovk eKetvov elvai ^aaiv,
3 De resurr. camis, c. 33 f. * De pudic, c. 6 f.
* De hab. muliebri, v. 3: " Enoch apud Judam Apostolum testimonium pos-
sidet." 8 De pudic, c. 20: " receptior apud ecclesias epistola Barnabae illo apocrypho
pastore moechorum."
7 Strom. III., IV., V. 8 Eist. Eccl., VI. 14, 1.

THE CANON OF ORIGEN. 669
taken regarding the Old Testament was in favor of confining
its Canon to the limits of the Hebrew version ; and this influ
ence was widely prevalent in spite of the customary use of the
Alexandrine version.^ Of the apocryphal books of the Old
Testament, he expressly introduces into tJie Canon only the
Epistle of Jeremiah. To this effort of Origen we must refer the
significant distkiction of the New-Testament writings into the
oiioXoyoijpeva and ap.<jiil3aXX6peva. Concerning the Gospels he found
universal agreement ; ^ yet in one passage of his writings he
uses somewhat doubtful language as to the position of the
Gospel according to the Hebrews.^ In the Epistle to the He
brews he found a matter of strife : " If any church, therefore,
holds this Epistle to be Paul's, let it not be found fault with
on that account ; for the ancients have not handed it down as
Paul's without a show of reason." * The relation of Origen to
the Catholic Epistles cannot be determined with certainty.'^
Fkst Peter, Fkst John, and the Apocalypse he received as
canonical; Second Peter, Second and Third John, he looked
upon as disputed ; it is doubtful how he regarded James and
Jude, unless a distinction is made between Origen the scholar
and Origen speaking popularly. On the other hand, it must
he remembered that he was scarcely less loath to exclude from
the Canon certain undoubtedly spurious books. He not only
regarded the Shepherd of Hermas as useful and inspired Scrip
ture, but speaks of it as though he himself could see no reason
for not receiving it among tlie canonical writings ; and, while
excluding in one place the Preaching of Peter, in another he
refuses to decide whether it be genuine, spurious, or mixed.^ It
is not without good grounds, then, that Hilgenfeld makes the
disputed writings as given in Origen include Hebrews, five
Catholic Epistles, and the Shepherd of Hermas.
In substantial accord with this personal testimony stands
that of contemporaneous collections of canonical writings. Of
these, the ancient Canon of the Syrian translation, the Peshito,
1 See Diestel, Geschichte des A. T., p. 71 f.
2 Tom. I. in Matt., Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI. 25, 4 f.
^ Tom. II. in Joan: idv Se npoaUral ns TO KaB' 'E|3paiov! eiiayyiXiov, compare Hom. in
Jer., XV. 4; Tom. in Matt., XV., 14. It may be used at pleasure, non ad auctorita
tem, sed ad manifestationem propositae quaestionis.
* Eusebius, Ibid., VI. 25, 13.
* See Hilgenfeld, Der Kanon, p. 49, note; and compare Canonicity, p. Ixxxiv.
' Of Hermas, Origen says, " Quae scriptura valde mihi utilis videtnr et ut puto
divinitus inspirata" (Ad Eom., x. 31; compare De Princ, I. 3, 3; II. 1, 5). On the
Preaching of Peter, compare De Princ. praef., VIII., and In Joan., tom. XIII. 17.

670 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
is in the East the earliest witness. Its list of books is lacking
in respect only of the Apocalypse, Jude, Second Peter, and
Second and Third John. The earliest form of the old Latin
version, which had been some time current before TertulUan,
was, with the exception of Hebrews, Second Peter, and probably
James, the same as our own. The evidence of the Canon of
Muratori, on account of some manifest eccentricity of judgment
in its author and of the imperfections in the text, cannot be
considered wholly satisfactory : its list, as made up and com
pared with the present, would probably exclude Hebrews,
James, the Epistles of Peter, and the Third of John; while
perhaps including a Book of Wisdom and an Apocalypse of
Peter.i Of the third and last step by which the Church reached its
more permanent conclusion as to the nature and limits of the
Canon, still fewer detaUs need be presented.
During the third century the books hitherto disputed, with
the exception of the Apocalypse, continually won their way
into favor : especially was this true of Hebrews in the Eastern
Church. The exception of the Apocalypse was not due, how
ever, to an increase of doubt upon purely critical grounds, but
rather to its supposed chUiastic tendencies. In the West the
case of Hebrews and the Apocalypse was rather the reverse.
Caius, presbyter at Rome early in the third century, did not
accept Hebrews as a Pauline writing ; ^ and Hippolytus, bishop
in the same vicinity somewhat later, rejected it altogether.^
We are told by Eusebius that some of the Romans, and by Je
rome * that the Romans in general, down to their times denied
its authorship by Paul. Cyprian (f 258), whose arrangement
of the canonical vnitings seems, however, to be controlled by
the mysticism of numbers, does not cite any of the contested
Epistles. The Apostolic Constitutions commend the Gospels,
Acts, and PauUne Epistles for liturgical uses, but do not men
tion the other books of the New Testament : they contain,
moreover, a warning against false and interpolated writings.^
I See Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 29 f., for an excellent summary of the facts and points
in discussion. For the text, see Tregelles, Can. Mur., whose remark (p. 10) is to be
kept constantly in mind: " Its evidence is not the less trustworthy from its being
a blundering and illiterate transcript of a rough and rustic translation of a Greek
original." 2 Compare Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI. 20.
8 Stephen Gobarus ap. Phot., cod. 232.
^ De viris illustr., o. 5 f. ; and Ep. ad Dardan.
6 See II. 57, VI. 16. It is probable, however, that this spurious writing belongs

THE CANON OF EUSEBIUS. 671
Even Eusebius (f 340) does not show a settled view as to the
limits of the Canon, but with respect to the disputed writings
holds somewhat the same equivocal position which we found in
the case of Origen. In his principal passage upon the Canon ^
he classes among the books generally recognized and genuine,
(ofLoXoyovpeva or dvavripprp-a) , the holy quaternion of the Gospels,
the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul, First Peter, First
John, and doubtfully (eiye (fiavei-r]) the Apocalypse. The doubt
ful and contested writings he subdivides (?),^ and in the first
subordinate class places the Antilegomena, James, Jude, Second
Peter, Second and Third John ; but among the spurious and
plainly uncanonical (vo'^a) he mentions the Acts of Paul, the
Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of
Barnabas, the Apostolic Constitutions, and doubtfully (tt ^aveirj,
^ nvES, ws e<l>Tjv, dOerovcriv, erepoi Be iyKpivova-i tois bpoXoyovp,evois) the
Apocalypse of John. Elsewhere (VI. 13, 6) Eusebius classes
Hebrews with the Epistles of Barnabas, Clement, and Jude, as
belonging to the AntUegomena ; although his own testimony is
that Paul is its author.^ James and Jude, also, he in one place *
caUs by the title " spurious." In all this we see no signs of ad
vanced opimon concerning the seven disputed books as compared
with the position of a full century earlier.
And yet a firmer condition of these doubtful limits seems to
begin from about this time ; and, if we are to trust the opinion
of Credner and others,^ it was largely due to the action of Euse
bius himself. This Church Father, on being commissioned by
Constantine (331 or 332) to prepare for the use of the church
in Constantinople fifty copies of the undisputed sacred writings
(rm Oeiwv BrqXaBn] ypa<j>wv), laid aside Ms critical doubts as to the
canonicity of some of the AntUegomena, and introduced into
these copies all the books of the New Testament except the
Apocalypse. This Canon is the one given somewhat later by
CyrU of Jerusalem as constituting the inspired Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments.® The class of the Antilegomena
as formerly held by Origen and Eusebius no longer appears ;
to the fourth rather than to the third century, where Eeuss places it. See Char
teris, Ibid., p. 25, note.
1 Hist. Eccl., III. 25; compare III. 3; 31; 39, and VI. 13.
2 ^ tothe nature and number of classes which Eusebius would make, there is
inevitable difference of view: see Charteris, Ibid., p. 10, note; Hilgenfeld, Der
Kanon, p. 53 f.; Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 36 f.
2 Through a translator: see Ibid., III. 37; and compare Strom, VI. 8.
' Ibid., IL 23 f. 5 See Hilgenfeld, Ibid., p. 56, noto.
. ' ecoirmiCTToi ypaijtai, Catech., IV. p. 30 f.

672 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
although Cyril alludes to certain writings of the second rank
which are to be read only for private instruction, and probably
placed the Apocalypse among this number.^ But Athanasius
places even this writing among the canonical, and thus seems
to recognize in our present New Testament what may be called
a closed and fixed Canon of Sacred Scripture : nevertheless
even he recognizes the "previous fluidity" of this Canon by
esteeming certain writings — as the Shepherd of Hermas and
the Teaching of the Apostles — worthy of being read for Chris
tian instruction.^ Sporadic doubts, however, still appear; as,
for instance, that of Theodore of Mopsuestia concerning the
Epistle of James. Rufinus (f 410) recogiUze^ certain books
which are not canonical, but which are called by many " eccle
siastical," because they are to be read in the churches; among
these, as in the New Testament, he mentions the Shepherd of
Hermas.^ In regard to the Old-Testament Apocrypha, reference has
already been made to the vacUlation of view which prevailed
at this time. The fact may be stUl further Ulustrated in the
name of Epiphanius (f 403). In one place he mentions twenty-
seven books of the Old Testament, enumerating* them as
twenty-two. Jeremiah appears as including Lamentations, the
Epistle, and the Book of Baruch. These writings he explains
to be those received by the Jews ; whUe others, Uke Sirach and
the Wisdom of Solomon, they held doubtful : stiU others were
to be regarded as apocryphal. In another passage,^ he places
the two Books of Wisdom at the conclusion of the New Testa- ,
ment ; and'regards them as useful, but ntft to be reckoned with
canonical writings. On the whole, then, the tendency in the
Eastern Church was toward the stricter view of the Old-Testa
ment Canon ; and even in the Latin Churph, some authors who
preceded Augustine appear to have adopted the same view.^
Thus HUary ^ (f 368), who does not mention the five contested
Catholic Epistles, follows Origen in his stricter construction of
the Old-Testament Canon, although with him including the
Epistle of Jeremiah with the Prophecy and Lamentations in
one book; and Rufinus, who received the entire New Testa-

1 See Charteris, Ibid., p. 19, note ; and Hilgenfeld, Ibid., p. 58, note.
2 Hilgenfeld, Ibid., p. 69, note; and compare Charteris, p. 13, note.
8 Expos, in Symb., o. 37 f. < In Haer., VIII. 6.
5 Ibid., LXXVI. 6 Diestel, Geschichte des A. T., p. 70 i
' Praef. ad Psalm.

THE CANONS OF JEROME AND AUGUSTINE. 673
ment, expressly says of Judith, Tobit, Maccabees, Sirach, and
the Wisdom of Solomon, that they are non canonici sed ecclesi-
astici, and are therefore not to be brought forward in proof of
doctrine. And yet the list preceding the Codex Alexandrinus
includes the foregoing apocryphal writings, and First and Second
Ezra besides. The order of the apocryphal writings in the
Codex Vaticanus is such as to interject them at various points
between the canonical. These facts, and many others similar
which might be adduced, show a still unsettled doctrine and
practice regarding the Apocrypha of the Old Testament and
the AntUegomena of the New.
The two names which have most significance for the question
of the Canon in this and all the subsequent ages are, undoubt
edly, those of Jerome and Augustine. Of these two authorities
Reuss ^ declares with excessive sharpness, but not without good
grounds in truth : " To the critical examination of the Canon
the former brought no courage, the latter uo learning; and
both, neither critical principles nor independence." As to the
Old Testament, Jerome does not present us with a perfectly
consistent view. In one passage^ he utters a lively warning
against the Apocrypha ; but elsewhere ^ his judgment is milder,
and he seems to concede (without positively commending) the
reading of certain of these books, in deference to their wide
spread existence, and especially to the fact that he had found
some of them (First Maccabees and Sirach) in Hebrew. Nor
are his statements consistent as to the chief ones of the Anti
legomena. Concerning Hebrews he declares that it is placed by
many outside of the Pauline Epistles, its style being regarded
as unlike Paul, and even that the custom of the Latin churches
does not receive it as canonical , * concerning the Apocalypse,
that some of the churches of the Greeks take the same liberty
with it, — although we receive both.' A difference in style be
tween the two Epistles of Peter had also led some to reject the
Second.* He also affirms that James attained its position gradu
ally and with great difficulty, and that Jude was still rejected
by very many.^ He gives notice that Second and Third John
have been ascribed to the presbyter of that name whose tomb
was stiU seen at Ephesus.''
1 Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., II. p. 46. 2 Ep. 107 ad Lactam.
8 Prolog, galeat. ad lib. Eeg., and Praef. in lib. Salom.
* See De viris illustr., co. 1-9 ; Ep. ad Paulin.; Ep. ad Dardan.
' De viris illustr., c. 1. « De viris illustr., c. 4. ' Ibid., c. 9.
VOL. I. 2 U

674 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
It was largely Augustine by whose influence the questions
concerning the Canon were — we cannot say settled, but form
ally put to rest. His influence must be declared on the whole
unsatisfactory and even pernicious. Tradition was the avowed
principle of authority upon which this Church Father would
have determined the precise limits of the Canon ; but tradition
itself was not uniform, and could not be made so to appear.
The necessities of a more strictly theological use of the Bible
operated, however, to induce in his mind a sense of the value
of some formal and authoritative pronunciamento. The custom
of the Church, then, must not only be evoked, but even made
binding upon the future by distinct acts of self-consciousness,
in order that the Bible might logically furnish the Church with
an authoritative regula fidei. It was the liturgical and practical
custom of the Christian congregations, rather than the critical
judgment of scholars as to the true traditions of canonicity in
the strictest sense, which triumphed at the present time : the
triumph was, therefore, fit to establish a future uniformity of
custom, rather than a true conception and historical definition
of the Canon. 1 In the opinion of Augustine, the two Books
of Wisdom deserved to be received as genuine prophetic and
authoritative writings , ^ of Maccabees he says, " This Scripture
is received by the Church, not without profit if it be read and
listened to with sobriety." ^ He enumerates forty-four books of
the Old Testament. The Synod of Hippo (393), where his
influence was strong, enumerates as canonical five Books of
Solomon, two of Maccabees, two of Ezra, and Tobit and Judith.
Among the canonical writings of the New Testament, Augus
tine enumerates /owrteew Epistles of Paul.
The authority of the more critical Jerome retarded, especially
in the East, the adoption of the views of Augustine ; and even
at Rome vacillations of view continued to manifest themselves.*
Cassiodorus places the two registers of Jerome and Augustine
side by side.* The Ethiopian Church appears to have had no
fixed conception or practice with regard to the Canon. Yet the
more formal view of Augustine and the African Church gained
ground on the whole, and the theological and practical concep
tion of the Canon prevailed over the attempts to estabUsh one
on historical and critical grounds.
1 See Diestel, Ibid., p. 75 f. t Jn auctoritatem reclpl merverunt.
3 Con. Gaudent., I. 31.
» See Credner, Ibid., pp. 151-290. 6 De instit. div. lit., c 11 f.

EARLY PSEUDONYMOUS WRITINGS. 675
It must not be forgotten, however, that neither now, nor at
any time previous, do we find any proof that the doubts which
were felt concerning the AntUegomena of the New Testament
originally covered a more extended spliere. We cannot follow
HUgenfeld,! then, in refusing to affirm that the Homologoumena
of Eusebius and Jerome were such from the first. The only
items of proof by which this author can justify his refusal con
cern the Gospel of John. This Gospel he mistakenly regards
as contested in Asia Minor down to the time of the fourth
century. At this point it is in place to add a word concerning the esti
mate of pseudepigraphy, and concerning the critical sense in
general, within the ancient Church. We cannot believe that
the Church Fathers were devoid of skill or conscience as to lit
erary forgeries. If it appears as a fact that a certain presbyter
of Asia in the second century, when he was caught in a forgery
put forth in the name of the Apostle Paul, affirmed that he had
done the deed amore Pauli, it is an important part of this fact
that he was caught in his forgery .^ When Dionysius of Corinth
complains that many of his epistles had been corrupted by his
own contemporaries, he indeed bears witness to the possibility
of a successful literary forgery; but he is scarcely a witness to
a universal lack of conscience about the matter, since he calls
these forgers " the apostles of the Devil," and pronounces a
woe upon them.^ The real critical question is not, however,
whether the scholars of the latter half of the second centurj'"
had the diplomatic skUl to select from a large number of MSS.
(some genuine, some spurious) those belonging to the century
previous : it is, rather, whether they were interested in the
question of apostolic authorship, andv^ere able to maintain on
this matter a sufficiently pure tradition for even a single cen
tury. As to the definiteness with which they proposed to them
selves the real question of genuineness, there can be no doubt.*
As Westcott has well said, their testimony is " an inheritance,
and not a deduction." The ability to xaise, and in some good
degree to answer, the question of genuineness, is involved in
the very distinction which they made ibetween the Homologou-
1 Ibid., p. 72 f.
-' And, moreover, was caught upon a critical point : see Tertullian, De baptis-
mo, c. 17.
' See Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., IV. 23.
^ Compare the perfectly conclusive passages from Tertullian, Adv. Marc, IV.
2 and 5.

676 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
mena and the Antilegomena, and in the fact that the term vnOa
came to mean both spurious and morally base or misleading.
On what ground, indeed, — if we grant for a moment the
assumptions made by the opponents of its genuineness, — did
those who refused to receive John's Gospel base their refusal ?
Was it not on the ground of its alleged ungenuineness ?
It is true that the process by which the formation of the
Canon took place was an essentially uncritical process. It is
true that the Church Fathers show many tokens of being with
out critical acumen. They in general accepted the myth as to
the origin of the Septuagint. Tertullian referred the Book of
Enoch to the patriarch of that name.^ Irenaeus admitted the
apocryphal saying of Christ concerning the enormous growth of
the grape in the Messianic time.^ Innumerable other proofs
might be given of the unworthiness of these worthies to sit
in the seats of critical judgment on a level with the modern
critics. And yet there are not a few noteworthy facts of an
opposite kind. Lardner was a penetrating and learned critic ;
although he might well enough have believed in witches, so far
as the time of his critical writing is concerned. In the case of
Hebrews, Origen certainly showed a penetrating critical judg
ment. And if the skill of his pupil Dionysius led him to
anticipate most of the modern objections to the Johannean
authorship of both the Gospel and the Apocalypse, we, on our
part, are not inclined to depreciate that skill because he did
not use it to decide the case in favor of the Apocalypse rather
than of the Gospel.
From the Council of Carthage onward, the Canon of both
Testaments — regarded as giving the authoritative rule (or
canon) of Christian teaching — was substantially a closed
question. Sporadic doubts and eccentricities of judgment,
however, still appear. The seven Catholic Epistles are more
uniformly included among the canonical writings in the stricter
sense , all except certain favored ones of the Apocrypha of the
Old Testament are more uniformly excluded. In the New
Testament, Hebrews and the Apocalypse meet with least uni
form favor. Esther is most apt to be excluded from the Old.
The verse of Amphilochius (written about 380 [?]) declares:
" They do not speak well who say the Epistle to the Hebrews
is spurious, for its grace is genuine ; " but of the Apocalypse
he asserts that most call it spurious. Gregory of Nazianzum
1 De cultu fern., I. 3. 2 Adv. Haer., V. 33, 3 f.

TKALtrilUJNAL \ IKW Uh' THE CANON. 677
omits Esther and Revelation from his catalogue ; but PhUas-
trius (t 387) in one passage denounces as heretics those who
reject the Pauline authorship of Hebrews and the Johannean
authorship of the Apocalypse. Later, EuthaUus revived, in
order to controvert, the ancient grounds of doubt regarding
both these writings ; but Cosmas ^ (about 535) confidently ap
pealed to antiquity for justification in rejecting all the Catholic
Epistles. Junilius ^ (about 560) proposes a unique division of
the scriptural writkigs into three classes ; viz., books of perfect,
of medium, and of no authority (perfectae — mediae — nullius,
auctoritatis) : among those of the first class he places Sirach ;
among those of the second, the books of Job and Esther ; while
Canticles appears to be relegated to the last division of all.^
As to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, we find Pope
Gregory Fkst excusing himself for citing a passage from First
Maccabees, and disclaiming its canonical authority ; and Isidore
of SevUle placing them at the end of the other books. Both
Leontius and the stichometry of Nicephorus omit Esther from
the Old Testament : the latter omits the Apocalypse from the
New. Hrabanus Maurus * (f 856) gives a catalogue of seventy-
two books belonging to the Bible, but refers to the ancient
doubts as to the Antilegomena. Elsewhere ^ he says of the
Apocrypha, in allusion to Jerome, " In recent times the Church
numbers these among the Sacred Scriptures, and reads them as
she does the other canonical books."
But during these centuries an unhistorical and unscrupulous
spirit held almost unbroken sway. Even the theological truth
of the Bible was determined by appeal to the dogma of the
Church Fathers, rather than to its own authority. Biblical his
tory was freely mingled with all manner of traditions and myths.
The purpose of this perversion of doctrine and corruption of
history was alleged to be the edifying of the people. The pious
purpose to buUd up faith and religion justified the removal of
aU clearly defined Unes as to the classes of legitimate means for
accomplishing the purpose.
Yet the more critical view of Jerome was in the mean time
not altogether wanting in influence. Nearly all the writers of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries give tokens of a distinction
1 De Mundo, lib. VII. 2 De part. div. leg., I. c. 3 f.
3 It is in general true of the Song of Solomon, that it gained its place iu the
Canon only by the help of the allegorical interpretation.
* De instit. cler., II. 53 f.' ^ Prolog, ad Sap.

078 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
between the canonical books and the Old-Testament Apocry
pha ; and the sentiment that the latter are not to be used to
establish doctrine is often repeated. The general rule of the
time may be stated in the words of Hugo of St. Victor:
" The divine Scriptures are those, which, being published by the
teachers of the catholic faith, the universal authority of the
Church has received to be reckoned in the number of divine
books for the strengthening of the same faith, and has retained
to be read."! But Roger Bacon expresses his astonishment
that the writings of the Patriarchs have not been received
into the Canon, for they treat more expressly of " the articles
of faith " than do the canonical writings. Nicolas of Lyra,
while distinguishing the Apocrypha from the canonical books,
as uncertain in origin, asserts that there can be no doubt as to
their truth ; and Erasmus wishes to oppose no obstacle to their
reception, on the principle that nothing forbids the approval
of a book whose author is uncertain.
It was the indirect influence of the study of the classics
which in large measure revived the interest in questions of the
Canon, as in all other historical questions. In conjunction
with the motive of historical and critical interest, that of bibli
cal dogmatics came also into full play. The principle of the
Reformation was by its very nature fitted to stimulate new and
independent researches into the limits of those books which
it required that the Church should acknowledge as its sources
of faith. By the force of this motive the early Reformers were
for a time impelled toward the position of the Church Catholic
in the fourth century ; but, when over-driven by the same force
perverted, the post-Reformation theology surpassed even the
Roman Catholicism of the Middle Ages in its disregard of the
claims of history and of criticism.
The freedom of Luther's views is well known, as well as the
fact that his later views were more conservative than his ear
lier; although, according to Reuss,^ with regard to his posi
tion toward the Antilegomena he took no retrograde steps.
Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation he placed at the end of
1 See Diestel, Geschichte des A. T., p. 181. Hugo of St. Victor says of Sirach,
Judith, Tobit, and the Maccabees, that they are read indeed, but not enrolled
in the Canon (Erud. didac, TV. c. 1 f.).
2 Ibid., II. p. 65. With significant and pardonable bitterness does Eeuss say:
" Luther's Vorreden sind von solchen die keine altere echte Bibel zur Hand
haben, bei Walch . . . zu suchen, nicht in den cursirenden von frommen Gesell-
schafteu castrirten Special- Ausgaben."

THE CANON OF THE REFORMERS. 679
the New Testament, and spoke of these four as entitled to a
lower consideration than "the right genuine and chief books
of the New Testament." Of Hebrews he judged that it was
the work of a worthy and learned man who was a disciple of
the apostle : it has some wood, hay, and straw, but also much
gold and silver.^ Of James he spoke contemptuously, and
judged that its contradiction of Paul was such that it could
not have been written by an apostle.^ Jude he considered a
transcript of Peter's Epistle, and unnecessary for laying the
foundation of faith.^ The Apocalj-pse he did not consider to be
tlie work of an apostle, and placed it in the lowest rank of pro
phetic writing, on a par with dreams and other such means of
knowing the future.* Melanchthon's judgment was similar to
that of Luther, though more mildly expressed. Carlstadt^
attempted to fix the canonicity of the books of the New Tes
tament upon Protestant principles. He divided the writings
of the Bible into three grades: (1) those summae dignitatis,
viz., the Pentateuch (not, however, written by Moses) and
the Gospels; (2) those secundae dignitatis, viz., the Prophets
and the fifteen undisputed Epibtles ; (3) those tertiae et infimae
dignitatis, viz., the Jewish Hagiographa and the AntUegomena
of the New Testament. Oecolampadius and Bucer held that
the latter are to be received as canonical, but not as upon a par
with the other books. Calvin, however, does not recognize
grades in canonicity; although he cannot bring himself to
beUeve that Hebrews is Pauline, and ascribes Second Peter to a
disciple of the Apostle, while passing in silence the canonicity
of Second and Third John and the Apocalypse. The position of
the early Reformers toward the Old-Testament Apocrypha may
be expressed in the words of Oecolampadius:^ "We do not
contemn Judith, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the two last of
Ezra, the three of Maccabees, and the last two chapters of Dan
iel, but we do not give them the same divine authority with
the rest." That the Apocrypha are useful for edification, but
not authoritative in doctrine, is the position of the Helvetic,
Gallic, Anglican, and Belgic Confessions.
It is in respect only to the last-mentioned position that the
Reformation made any improvement upon the view of Roman
1 Works, edition of "Walch, XIV. p. 146.
2 Ibid., pp. 105, 148. 3 Ibid., p. 160. < Ibid. , p. 151 f .
5 In his De canonicis scripturis libellus: see Credner, Geschichte des Kanons,
pp. 291-412.
8 Ep. ad Valdenses, 1530.

680 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Catholicism concerning the Canon of Sacred Scripture. Per
haps we should rather say, that, while Protestantism stood for
a time in this position, — substantially where the Church had
stood in nearly all the past, — Roman Catholicism went on to
take a new and false position, from which it can hardly retreat,
and from which it cannot possibly advance. The Council of
Trent, not without opposition, and " in the spirit of the Synod
of Carthage," anathematized all who did not receive all the
books contained in the Latin translation, in the same form and
the same contents in which they existed therein. This action
of the Council relegates almost the entire Church Catholic
among the heretics, and stigmatizes the Church Father Jerome
as the archbishop of heretics. It has been claimed, indeed, by
writers both within and without the Roman-Catholic Church,
that this decree does not forbid the distinction of the biblical
books into ecclesiastical and deutero-canonical, or canonical
of the first and second rank. This very distinction has since
been advocated by certain Roman-Catholic writers like Sixtus
Senensis, Bellarmine, and others.^ That the express intention
was, however, to forbid any view which did not place the
Apocrypha on a par with the other books of the Bible, there
can be no reasonable doubt.^ Priestly influence gave to the
same loose construction of the Canon an easy triumph in the
Greek Church, where the people neither knew nor cared as to
the real limits and valid contents of the Sacred Scriptures.
In the post-Reformation time, the distinctions which Luther
and others had made in the books of the Canon, on the princi
ple of a greater or less degree of conformity to the central doc
trines of faith, were abandoned. The reign of tradition in its
worst form again controlled the whole question, but now the
tradition was divided. The Protestants agreed to disregard
all the ancient views of Christianity upon the subject, while
they attempted to level up all the books to the lofty demands
of dogmatic infallibility. The Roman Catholics had decreed
to level down all, that they might throw around them the forti
fications of churchly infallibility.
Chemnitz (f 1586), indeed, still maintained the distinction
between the canonical and the apocryphal (Antilegomena)
books of the New Testament. But Gerhard (f 1637) reduced
1 So Jahn asserts, Einl. in das A. T., 1802, 1, p. 140 f.
2 Compare Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 67 f.; and an article by Welte in tho Tiibingen
Quartalschrift, 1839, II. pp. 224 fc

CANON OF THE POST-REFORMATION ERA. 681
the distinction to one of merely historical importance; and
although Calixtus (f 1656) revived it as a matter of conse
quence in Christian dogma and Christian life, it was soon sub
stantiaUy lost out of account. The lack of historical studies,
the absorption of criticism in dogmatics, and the polemical
exigencies of the time, conspired to destroy the fruitage prom
ised by the utterances of the early Reformers. The complete
identification of Scripture and the Word of God effectually
prevented all inquiry into the true limits of the Canon ; the the
ologians generally rejected every attempt to discriminate classes
of writkigs in the Bible. Occasional advocates of another
view appear, however, in the sixteenth century: Wolder, for
example, in his Polyglot distinguished between canonical and
uncanonical writings, even in the New Testament, and placed
Revelation, Hebrews, James, and Jude among the latter.^
Schroder, Hafenreffer, and others regarded the disputed books
as unfit for the establishment of doctrine. But in the seven
teenth century so completely did the regard for history and
criticism disappear, that to distinguish grades in New-Testa
ment books became a deadly heresy ; and thus the customary
view of the early Church Fathers took refuge in the post-Ref
ormation era among heretical sects. We reach, finally, the
false and misleading statement of Quenstedt,^ that history
shows no dispute as to their equal authority, but only a differ
ence as to thek equal recognition among men. The crafty
inquky is plainly seen to underlie all other inquiries into
the Canon, whether it is worth while to injure the arguments
of theologians by reviving an old and useless distinction ; or
else the entke subject is passed over in disingenuous silence.^
Nor do the symbols of all this period offer any relief to the
mind which seriously raises the questions : What books consti
tute the sole divine and infallible regula fidei ? and, On what
grounds are precisely these books separated from other claim
ants to equal honors? To these questions the Belgic Confes
sion can only answer, " The canonical books are those to which
no opposition can be made ; " and as to the reason for its answer
it declares with a like uncertainty, "We receive only those
books for canonical . . . not so much because the Church re-
1 See Eeuss, Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., II. p. 71 f.
2 Theol. didac. poi., IV. quaes. 23.
' Grotius (t 1645) denied the genuineness of Second Peter, doubted that of
Second and Third John, and gave to Hebrews only mediate apostolic authorship.

682 THE DOCTRUiTE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ceives and approves them for the same, as especially because
the Holy Spirit witnesseth in our hearts that they came from
God, and that they have thek approbation in themselves."
According also to the Gallic Confession, it is not only from the
common consent of the Church, but even much more from
the testimony and intrinsic persuasion of the Holy Spkit, that
the canonical books are recognized. The stark conclusion that
each body of Christians may make its own Canon on purely
subjective grounds is thus enunciated in iU-considered proximity
with a mistaken appeal to a tradition whose facts were kept
covered from sight.^ To what lengths this identification of the
Bible (however published) with the Word of God may carry
its declarations, can be judged by the following sentence : " It
is enough (that is, in determining the canonical writings) to
take the Bible in the original languages, and run over the titles
of the books." 2
The sceptical spirit of the eighteenth century, although
essentially uncritical, did not hesitate to attack with bold asser
tions the orthodox view of the Canon. Spinoza's opinion, that
the Old Testament originated in the time of Ezra did not, how
ever, gain the credence of his own time. Diderot ^ and De la
Serre * rejected all authority whatsoever in the historical decis
ion as to the number of sacred writings ; Edelmann in coarser
language did the same. Some of the English Deists, Uke Tol-
and, regarded the entire Old Testament as ungenuine : others,
like Whiston,* were ready to enlarge the Canon.
It was Semler (f 1791) who made the first attempt to form
an historical and critical estimate of the origin and nature of
the Old and New Testament Canon. He strove to break the
bands of dogmatism, and inclined rather to the Latin principle
of a church-Canon than the Greek principle of a faith-Canon.^
He denied the complete identity of the inspired word of God
and the canonical collection of sacred writings ; he claimed as a
critic the same right which the ancient community of beUevers
had exercised, viz., the right of making true distinctions amongst
1 The strassburg Kirchenagende of 1596 avers an agreement with Dr. Martin
Luther as to the inferiority of Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse, and
states that they should not be used for the settlement of doctrine ; but tlie edition
of 1670 omits this.
2 Du Moulin, Bouclier de la foi, p. 38, ed. 1846, as quoted by Eeuss.
8 Pensees philos., 1746, especially § 60. « La vraie religion, 1767, p. 37. .
6 Whiston wished all the Apostolic Fathers, the Apostolic Constitutions, and
other writings to be canonized.
6 So Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 76.

THE CRITICAI. CONCEPTION OF THE CANON. 683
different portions of the whole. Others followed with the same
opinions ; among whom we may mention Michaelis and Herder
as being in substantial accord with the spirit of Semler. The
old bands of dogmatism being somewhat loosed and broken, the
newly freed critical deske showed that lack of moderation for
which it is always prepared by long and severe repression.
The criticism of the present century has much enlarged the
number of cognate interests and researches which enter into
any well-considered view of the Canon. By its complete return
to the original inquiry, When and by whom were the separate
books composed? and by the varied new means which it
has brought to light for the answer to its own inquiry, it has
greatly increased the dignity and importance of the ancient
history of the Church. The view which Baur and the so-called
Tiibingen School took of early Christianity has been of special
importance with reference to the history and concept of the
Canon. This view, in its extreme form, renders all inquiry
into the canonicity of most of the New-Testament books of
relatively little account to Christianity. By this view the
direct or indirect apostoUc origin of most of the books is made
impossible; and the alleged manner of their production dis
courages any earnest intent to recognize a particular divine
guidance in the complex origin of the Bible. But the facts to
which this view, in its modified form, has directed attention,
have been of great value in rendering a full and realistic
account of that process by which the Christian Church came
to have and to use its present coUection of sacred writings.
Much regarding the origin of the New Testament, both as a
whole and with respect to its separate parts, is still obscure ;
in the history of the Old-Testament Canon the light places are
few indeed. The important facts are, however, substantially
such as have been presented in the foregoing pages. The story
of criticism as to the origin and nature of Sacred Scripture, so
far as this may be determined by the history of the Canon, is
now before us. We are prepared, therefore, to answer summa
rily the third one of the questions proposed ; viz.. What doc
trine of Sacred Scripture accords with a true conception and
accurate history of the biblical Canon ?
1. The history of that process through which the Church has
obtained its present coUection of sacred writings authorizes us
to affirm that the result has been reached by guidance of the
Holy Spirit. With the proper limitation of the words, we do

684 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
not hesitate even to say : The Canon of the Old and New Tes
taments is inspired. That the separate parts should so unite in
liistory as to enclose a spiritual whole which closely resembles
a Uving organism, is a proof of a divine work. The character
of the total instrument of grace is to be ascribed to Providence ;
the indwelling of the Divine in that course of history by which
the result has been reached must be assumed in order to ex
plain the result itself. That the Canon of neither the Old Tes
tament nor the New was formed by any single act of individual
or collective judgment, is made evident by the history.^ Some
thing may be due, in the case of the Old Testament, to Ezra
and the men of his time, but we do not know that it is much :
without doubt the myth largely exaggerates their services.
The influence of Augustine by his writings and through the
Synods of Hippo and Carthage was considerable ; but no Church
Father or Synod either constructed or finally determined the
New-Testament Canon. Its final existence is the result of a
complex and a somewhat tardy and contested growth. The
author and director of the life which is manifest in this gro'wth
is spiritual and divine.
The doctrine of the providential origin of the Canon, how
ever, does not negative a single one of those secondary and his
torical causes to which attention has been called. It does not.
in itself guarantee the infaUibUity in details of the process of
selecting and combining the separate books. The secondary
causes are rather to be regarded as the means through which
the Spirit in providence and history has wrought ; the uncriti
cal character, the faults and strifes of the individual judges,
only serve to enhance the substantially noble and trustworthy
result. The process of forming the Canon of Sacred Scriptures
is in these respects precisely similar to that in which God has
obtained all the greatest results of moral and spiritual growth
through an historical process. The divinity of the Bible as a
whole is all the better assured because it can be so closely
correlated with what we know of the general nature of revela
tion. That the writings of the Old and New Testaments form,
in their totality, a perfectly unique body of canonical Scrip
tures, is simply a matter of fact. In the earlier sense of the
word, " canonical " Scripture is somewhat more than merely
sacred or inspired writing. A Canon of Scriptures is composed
i Canon non uno, quod dicunt, actu ab hominibus, sed paulatim a Deo, animo
rum temporumque rectore, productus est.

DISTINCTIONS EMBODIED IN THE CANON. 685
of such ones among the larger number of sacred and inspired
writings as the community of believers, guided by the Holy
Spirit, has selected and set apart for its various historical, litur
gical, educational, and doctrinal uses.
2. The foregoing statement brings to view another most im
portant conclusion as to the nature of Sacred Scripture when
considered in the light of the history of the Canon. A place in
the Canon does not, of itself, guarantee the relative nature or
value of any particular writing. All canonical Scripture is
not necessarUy the same in value, degree or kind of inspira
tion, doctrinal authority, degree or kind of usefulness, or even
in claims to the title of canonicity. In brief, the history of the
Canon not only permits, but imperatively demands, the making
of distinctions amongst the books of Scripture. The actual
process of forming a canon of sacred Hebrew writings was
largely based upon such distinctions. The Prophets were not
placed upon the same level with the Torah , the Hagiographa
were ranged below both. Certain books, moreover, such as
Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, found their way into the
coUection only at a late period and after much opposition.
WhUe even the Palestinian Canon was not perfectly fixed as to
the precise limits of the Hagiographa, that of the LXX. — if,
indeed, we can speak of a canon for the Alexandrine version —
was much more loose and indefinite. Traditional distinctions
were inherited from the Jewish Church by the Christian
Church, and were also modified by the latter. For several
centuries after the Christian era, the position of the Church
Fathers toward the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, and even
toward some of the canonical books (as, for example, Esther),
was more or less equivocal and shifting. The position involved
the fundamental postulate, that the privilege of making distinc
tions in Scripture belongs to the Christian Church. The same
postulate also underUes the formation of the Canon of the New
Testament. The seven Antilegomena — although the remark
does not apply with the same force to Hebrews and Revelation
— were neither originally received nor finally canonized as in
all respects upon a level with the other New-Testament writ
ings. And, although the distinction fell into disuse during the
period when Christianity made the least practical use of any
of its Scriptures, and was formally abolished during the post-
..Reformation period, nevertheless the facts upon which the dis
tinction is made can never be disregarded nor effaced.

686 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
It does not follow, however, that we must make precisely the
same distinctions amongst the different parts of the Canon with
which its history makes us familiar. The guaranty of sound
judgment in that history is, nevertheless, partially given in the
fact, that, on the whole, the distinctions of the past were well
taken. Such a declaration is much more widely applicable in
the case of the New-Testament Canon than in that of the Old.
Since we do not resort for the divine command in ethical mat
ters to the Mosaic Torah in precisely the same way in which
did the pious Jews of old time, we are likely to accord rela
tively more of authority and influence to some of the Hagio
grapha, — especially to many of the Psalms. Since, moreover,
we consider all things in the Hebrew Scriptures from the point
of view which He furnishes who is the fulfilment of this Torah,
we are inclined to esteem the religious teachings of the Proph
ets more highly than those of the Pentateuch, Nor can we,
from the nature of the case, rate so highly that '' 'Wisdom " in
which the ancient Hebrews delighted : the writings of the
Hokhmah of the Old Testament do not stand in the same
relations to the Christian consciousness in which they stood
to the religious consciousness of the ancient Jews.
In several important respects, however, the Christian con
sciousness, even when enlightened in its judgment by the results
of modern criticism, commends and enforces the ancient dis
tinctions. On the whole, we must judge, as did the Jewish
Church, that the later writings of the Hagiographa are inferior
to the older prophetic and historic writings. The books of
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Ruth, with respect to
their religious tone and historic trustworthiness, deserve on the
whole a rank much below the books of the Former Prophets.
And yet, by relegating them to a position of inferior authority,
we do not necessarily show a disposition to disregard their
valid claims : much less do we advocate their removal from the
Canon. In refusing to place Daniel upon a level, for prophetic
authority, with Isaiah, we do not forget that the former has
given us that vision of the coming " Son of man '' which Christ
appropriated to himself. The grounds, both objective and sub
jective, upon which the Jewish Church hesitated so long before
canonizing Esther, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes, were valid:
they remain in the main unchanged to the present day. In
'respect to Canticles, we even find the difficulties greatly in
creased, because the alleged authorship of Solomon does not

THE APOCRYPHA AND ANTILEGOMENA. 687
carry with us the weight which it had with the Jews, and the
aUegorical interpretation cannot be employed by us with the
same confidence which the early Christian Church possessed. In
rejecting the allegorical interpretation we might seem also war
ranted in excluding Canticles from the Canon.
And yet the result of making the above-mentioned distinc
tions is not, on the whole, that of encouraging changes in the
number of recognized books : it is rather that of accomplishing
a change in our conception of the Canon of the Old Testament.
In respect to the Canon of the New Testament, the character
and .grounds of the needed discriminations are much more clear.
Objective and subjective grounds combined — the history of the
process and the nature of the writings themselves — warrant us
in receiving the entire collection of Christian writings as it now
stands. With regard to all but the seven Antilegomena, the
case was determined from the first beyond a reasonable doubt.
Of the once disputed books, Hebrews and the Apocalypse, if
we waive the question of their apostolic authorship, and agree
to an inferior confldence in them for the establishment of doc
trine upon apostolic authority, may be held to have been placed
as inspired and canonical Scripture on incontestable grounds.
Nor need we consider, even in the case of Second Peter and
Jude, the expediency of retiring them from the New-Testament
Canon. We cannot, however, receive these two writings, or
indeed, any of the Antilegomena, to the same undoubted posi
tion for all the purposes of canonical Scripture which we accord
to the other writings of the New Testament. In forming both
the Canon of the New Testament and that of the Old, we must
admit all the facts and truths which go to make up the entire
case. There are various degrees of evidence, and there must
be varying degrees of certainty. The great body of the biblical
writings stands before us with sufficiently undisputed, and in
deed indisputable, claims ; but some writings in both Testaments
have gained their places as the result of a struggle, as the ter
mination of a difference of view. Such writings stand upon
somewhat nebulous places. On subjective grounds we might
afBrm that some of the Old-Testament canonical writings have
scarcely a better claim to canonicity than some of the Apocry
pha which Protestantism rejects : on objective grounds, how
ever, we can affirm the fact that the former have reached a surer
position than the latter. On subjective and objective grounds
combined we are perhaps justifled in fixing the line between the

688 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
canonical and uncanonical Hebrew writings, so as to exclude
the Apocrypha, and so as somewhat doubtfully to include Can
ticles, Esther, and Ecclesiastes. On neither ground, moreover,
have we the right to class Second Peter and Jude with the
Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Clement, or Revelation
with the Apocalypse of Peter.
ShaU we, then, definitely revive the ancient distinction be
tween writings of the first and second grade, between the more
strictly canonical and the so-caUed deutero-canonical Scriptures ?
The answer to this inquiry may be in part given in the foUow
ing considerations.
8. We are to recognize the varied uses of the different parts
of the Bible, and thek differing degrees of value in these uses.
This variety of uses, with its differing degrees of value, is a
proof of the divine nature and origin of the entke Bible. The
truth wiU be made more apparent by a subsequent consideration
of the Bible as furnishing the rule of faith and the instrument
of grace : at present it is enough to announce this truth. The
Church of God has a varied Ufe and many needs in its course of
historic development through the successive ages. No unity is
made up of parts which are each aUke useful for every pur
pose, or alike indispensable for any one useful purpose. We
have some light upon essential Christian truth, and more Ught
upon the early history of Christianity, through the Epistle to
the Hebrews ; even though we are obliged to acknowledge that
it deals largely with the argumentum ad hominem upon the basis
of an aUegorical interpretation of the Alexandrine version —
certain mistakes of the Greek translation mcluded. We are
not to follow Luther in calling James " a right strawy Epistle,"
even after admitting that the central truths of Christianity are
taught in a more advanced form by Romans and Galatians.
The Church of to-day has, however, the same right which has
always belonged to the community of believers ; viz., the right
of testing truth, and of making distinctions between truths and
half-truths, and between different forms, degrees, and values of
truth. The power to build, upon the foundation of the truth
as it is in Christ, a varied and symmetrical manhood, and to
serve the complex and changing uses of the Church of Christ —
this power it is which constitutes the chief claim of the Bible to
be divine.
4. The claim to a divine origin and nature belongs of neces
sity to the entire Bible, regarded as a coUection of sacred and

THE CANON IS CHRISTO-CENTRIC. 689
canonical scriptures, in a manner and measure beyond any claim
which can be made for its separate and isolated books. What
one member of an organism may not do, that another can ac
complish. The means for correcting such errors as may lie
within the Bible is also given in the Bible itself. And certainly,
much of the Bible which would raore justly be accused of great
imperfection if it were regarded apart from its normal connec
tions, may be excused when regarded in the light of the rest.
The foregoing statement may be applied even to the biblical
history as a whole. As history, the Synoptic Gospels, for ex
ample, supplement each other ; when taken all together, they
are supplemented by the Epistles and the Acts, and especially
by the Gospel of John. The same statement is pre-eminently
applicable to the ethical and religious contents of Sacred Scrip
ture. The morals of the Mosaic Torah are not perfect in
themselves ; the Prophets are but mistaken soothsayers unless
they be regarded as interpreted ideally in Jesus Clirist. We
are not called upon to deny any fact of criticism in the aflfirma
tion of such a truth. But the bistorical errors of the Bible
might be many times more manifold than they are, or its ethical
imperfection in the earlier portions much more perplexing, and
yet the truth regarding the Bible as a whole would remain the
same. 5. For we are led from this point in our general discussion
back to the point from which we set out, and to which we must
be perpetually returning from all the different ipoints of all our
course. The Canon of Sacred Scripture, like that scheme of
divine revelation of which it furnishes the authentic record, is
Cbristo-centric. Both objectively and subjectively considered,
the coUection of the biblical books is to be regarded as arranged
around the person of Jesus Christ. In maintaining this great
truth, we do not need to distort the facts of historic revelation,
or to pervert the rites and predictions of Judaism so as falsely to
make them into types and symbols of Christianity. That Christ
is the centre of New-Testament Scripture, as he is also of the
history of Christianity, there is no temptation to deny. That
he is also the One to whom the Old-Testament Scriptures point
forward, was the doctrine taught by his apostles and by himself.
This doctrine is not negatived, nor even disturbed, by those
other truths of history and criticism which point out more pre
cisely the way in which the New Testament lies within the Old,
and is at the same time perfected, corrected, supplemented, and
VOL. L 2 X

690 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
(in part) supplanted by it. In general it is true of the Hebrew
as well as of the Cliristian sacred writings, that the ones whose
teaching lies nearest to the very heart and mind of Christ are
also those which the Church has with most confidence canon
ized, and now with most confidence uses for the knowledge and
defence of truth.
Other elements which are needed to form a complete concep
tion of the Canon must be gained from a detailed study of the
separate books and of the individual truths of the Bible, both
in their internal connections and in their relations to truths
lying outside of the Bible. The question of the Canon thus
becomes merged in the general question of the origin and nature
of the Bible itself.

CHAPTER X.
THE DOCTEINE OF SACEED SCEIPTUEE AS EELATED TO THE
TEXT OF THE BIBLE.
It was a last and most desperate resort of the post-Reforma
tion dogma of Scripture, to assume the infallibility of the text
of the Bible. And yet such an assumption is a logical neces
sity, for that claim of a complete and general kifallibiUty which
it was designed to support. If we are to base our claims for
the divine origin and nature of Sacred Scripture upon our
assumptions as to what it must be, in order to give a perfect
guaranty to a particular system of theology, or to minister
without the objective possibiUty of error to the demands of the
reUgious life, then we cannot be too thorough-going in these
claims. The general infalUbUity of the Bible necessarily in
volves a perfect certainty as to its text. And this certainty
must attach itseK to the text as we have it in existing MSS. :
otherwise it does not satisfy the very assumptions of faith upon
the basis of which we feel obUged to claim any such certainty.
From its own point of view, then, the extremest form of the
post-Reformation dogma — even when it asserts an infallibUity
for the text of the Bible which extends to the minutiae of voca»
bles and punctuation — is most consistent and tenable.
But that we have no such infallible text of Sacred Scripture
in any existing MS. or MSS. of either the Old Testament or
the New, is as certain as innumerable facts can make it. And
after a sharp contest with textual criticism, the dogma just
referred to was obUged to reUnquish its former claims. The
dream of securing a diplomatic certainty by selecting or com
bining the existing forms of the biblical text has been closed
forever. The same general view as to the nature and origin of
Sacred Scripture has, however, devised a modified form of its
previous untenable assumptions ; this view still partially con
trols the judgment of persons who have no definite convictions
like those which underlay the post-Reformation dogma. The
691

692 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
doctrine of a verbal inspiration and infallibUity, or of some
other form of inspiration which shall serve as the guaranty of a
similar infallibility, can no longer hide itself in any thing con
crete : it has, therefore, taken refuge in the unknown and the
ideal. To be! sure, we cannot claim that the assumed verbal
inspkation and infallibility is evinced in any known or discov
erable text of Scripture : on the contrary, every such text con
tradicts the earliest developments of such a claim. But may
not — nay, must not — such inspiration and infallibility have be
longed to the text as it came from the mouths and hands of its
inspired authors ? To such an inquiry it is enough at present
to reply, that as a statement or suggestion of fact it is without
proof, and as an assumption of faith it is utterly valueless.
For, if we are examining the dogma of verbal inspiration and
infallibUity in the light of a careful induction, we are obUged
to declare that the facts are aU against it. That the authors
of Sacred Scripture neither make nor suggest such claims for
themselves or for one another, we have already established. It
has also been established upon the basis of a careful induction,
that no such infallibility as was claimed for the Bible by the
post-Reformation dogma is compatible with any of its chief
classes of contents. The most superficia,l examination of the
facts of textual criticism will convince us that biblical diplomat
ics also encourages no such claim. Shall we, then, when the
facts have already disproved such a claim, stUl insist upon it as
a necessary assumption of faith, that the Church should form
the ideal picture of an infalUble text, which at some remote and
perhaps indefinite period belonged to all the separate books
and individual passages of its Sacred Scriptures? If, however,
the Church needs such an unrealized picture in order to right
doctrinal and practical use of the Bible, does it not a fortiori
need its present realization in such textual infallibility as it can
really use ? Of what benefit is it to assume that perfect diplo
matic certainty and verbal inspiration and infallibUity did be
long to Scripture, when as yet all these qualities could be of
no service ; and that then, when, if ever, they were needed,
they had already for a long time been lost ?
Moreover, every thing which we can reasonably conjecture
concerning that period which lies beyond our inspection goes
to show that the texts and MSS. of the remoter antiquity were
in no respect more secure against suspicion of inaccuracy than
our own. We discover also, esnecially in respect to certain

NO INFALLIBLE TEXT OF THE BIBLE. 693
books of the Old Testament, that the very text itself is the
growth of hundreds of"^ years of composition and redaction at
many different hands. In order, then, to apply this assumption
of verbal inspiration and infallibility to such books as these, we
have not simply to claim that such a text as matches the as
sumption existed at one time : we must also assume that the
scores of authors, redactors, and scribes who contributed to that
text were, each one, gifted with the necessary verbal and infal
libly inspiration. But where shall we begin, and where end,
in such assumptions, when the existence of such variations as
preclude the assumption of verbal and infallible inspiration is
prior even to the completion of the text itself ?
But happUy we are under no obligation, growing out of
fideUty either to the doctrine, the facts, or the spirit of Sacred
Scripture, to defend any form whatsoever of the post-Reforma
tion dogma. We are interested rather to determine within
what Umits the actual corruptions and variations of the biblical
text have taken place, and what is the bearing of these facts
upon the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. And for the presenta
tion of the necessary facts, and the statement of the inferences
from them, only a moderate amount of research and a brief
space are needed.
As to the general fact that there are numerous variations and
corruptions in the text of the Bible ; and that, therefore. Sacred
Scripture has not been given to us in the form of diplomatic
certainty and infaUibUity, — there is no room for doubt. The
textual uncertainties of the New Testament, in view of the
many comparatively ancient MSS. which have preserved them,
and thus of the variety of means afforded for their study,
cannot be denied. But in the case of the Old Testament, the
MSS. which might have afforded both the proofs of uncertain
ties and the means of study are lacking. Has its text, therefore,
nnUke that of the New Testament, been preserved perfectly
pure by miraculous measures ? Or has it been kept relatively
faultless by superior providential care ? Neither of these ques
tions can be answered affirmatively. We are obliged to sup
pose, that, although we have relatively few means for correcting
the standard text of the Old Testament, it is itself relatively
farther from the words as they came at first-hand from the
authors, or even as they were left by the latest redaction, than
is the case with the best MS. text of the New. In the Greek
MSS. we have the record of that same process through which

694 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
the Hebrew MSS. went; but, in the case of the latter, the
record of the process has been lost. And furthermore, as we
have seen to be true on considering the composition and author
ship of some of the Hebrew books, — this process in the case of
the Hebrew text was much more complex, and its results much
more dubious and obscure.
A brief statement of some of the many indirect proofs of
the position just indicated must now be made. From the
nature of the discussion, this statement must be taken largely
from the proper authorities, must be confined within narrow
limits, and yet must admit no little of conjecture and merely
probable evidence.
The oldest MSS. of the Old Testament are, in part, Torah-
roUs, which were prepared upon parchment (and earlier stiU
upon leather), and which contain the Kethib, or standard text
of the Pentateuch, written without pointing ; and in part also,
codices in book-form, which contain either the whole or some
part of the Old Testament written with the Masoretic punc
tuation.^ The only certain means thus far discovered for deter
mining the age of these MSS. is by the subscriptions which
they bear , and although cases of falsification are very rare, —
if not absolutely confined to one or two instances, — the sub
scriptions are sometimes wanting. Of these MSS., the oldest
belong to the thirteenth and twelfth centuries after Christ. A
date as early as the ninth century has been claimed for some
copies, but the claim is difficult to estabUsh. Nor can even
the subscriptions always be relied upon.^ Indeed, as we shall
soon see, the age of the MS., unless we could get back of the
Talmudic fixing of the standard text, is a matter of compara
tively little account. In the Middle Ages certain copies served
as samples of a classic text, from which others could best be
corrected : such copies were the one which the Spanish Jews
used for this purpose in the time of Rabbi D. Kimchi ; that of
R. Moses ben David ben Naphthali, who lived in Babylon at
the beginning of the tenth century ; and that of Rabbi Aaron
ben Moses ben Ascher, who lived somewhat later in Palestine.
Of the various classifications of these MSS., that into Oriental
and Occidental (or Bab3donian and Palestinian) is perhaps the
1 See Wellhausen in Bleek, Einleitung in das A. T., p. 563.
2 The subscription o£ one MS. (Kenn., Ko. 89) was shown by Zunz to assign it
to 856 A.D.; yet Kennicott, Bruns, and De Eossi all pronounce against such a
claim to antiquity.

MASORA PARVA AND MAGNA. 695
best founded and most important. According to Wellhausen,
it seems to be established that the MSS. which contain the
Babylonian punctuation contain also the Oriental consonant-
text. Of much importance in understanding and correcting the
traditional form is the Masora, or "fixing of the right text
upon the necessary passages by memorial rules and specifica
tions." This Masora is preserved in two forms, — in remarks
upon the margins of the MSS., and in separate works con
taining collections of such specifications. The separate works
preceded the insertion in the margins of the remarks taken
from these works. The later Masora is of two kinds or orders:
viz., the Masora parva, which is placed beside or between the
columns of the text, and consists for the most part of brief
suggestions for learned readers ; and the Masora magna, which
is written beneath — or in rarer instances above — these col
umns, and is more expUcit and diluted in form. Tins " fixing
of the text," by written expression of oral tradition combined
with learned conjecture, began as a process after the completion
of the Talmud, and in the sixth century : the total result is
due to the continuous work of many hands and minds, but
pre-eminently of the so-called School of Tiberias. The con
tents of the Masora, as described in that unsurpassed monu
ment of human learning, the " Tiberias " of the elder Buxtorf,
comprise an enumeration of the verses, words, and letters of
every book ; a collection of verses which contain such or so
many consonants of the alphabet, and of words either defec
tively or redundantly written; observations upon vocables,
accents, dagesh, and mappiq ; remarks on exegetical and gram
matical peculiarities and difiiculties, etc. ; but especially a col
lection of Keris, the first rudiments of which meet us in the
Talmud.i . The text thus fixed by the process of recording oral tradi-
1 The first edition of Buxtorf 's great work appeared in Basle, 1620; the second
edition, by John Jacob Buxtorf, in 1665. The following citations touch some of
the main points of interest: " Masora est doctrina critica, a priscis Hebraeorum
Sapientibus, circa textum Hebraeum Sacrae Scripturae, ingeniose inventa, qua ver
sus, voces et literae ejus numeratae, omnisque ipsarum varietas notata, et suis locis
cum singulorum versuum recitatione indicata est, ut sic constans et genuina ejus
lectio conservetur, et ab omni mutatione aut corruptione aeturnum praeservetur
et valide praemuniatur (p. 6). Masora magna est, quae totam criticen comprehendit,
cum plena locorum Scripturae enumeratione, quam quaeque nota critica suo nu-
mejo designat (p. 199). Masora parva est, quae Uteris numeralibus, vocibus decur-
tatis et symbolicis ad latus textus breviter et succincte describitur " (202).

696 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
tion together with conjectural emendations is the standard text,
and, indeed, the only one which can be based upon an appeal to
MS. authority. All the researches for new MSS. of the Old
Testament, and all the collation of those already in possession,
show a universal conformity to the one type which is known
to us as the Masoretic, and which goes back at the earliest to
the second and subsequent centuries after Christ. But this
text is not itself wholly based upon the authority of MSS.
The punctuation and accentuation which it has adopted are
an integral part of itself. According to the necessities of
the post-Reformation dogma, the vowel-points and accents of the
Masoretic text were, like the consonants, inspired; for their
origin they go back to the authors of Scripture, if not to the
time of Adam. According to the statement of Elias Levita,
the originator of the discovery that the pointing of the Hebrew
arose centuries after the Christian era, the Masora was orally
transmitted from one learned rabbi to another untU the time of
Ezra and his helpers, and from them to the rabbis of the School
of Tiberias.^ The probable origin of the Hebrew system of
punctuation from the older Syrian has been treated by Ewald
on the basis of an examination of MSS. made in Paris in 1829.^
To the same opinion have Hupfeld and others been led by their
researches.^ In the Syrian writing, the points originaUy served
to distinguish words which differed in meaning while written
alike. The Arabian as well as the Hebrew system of punctua
tion seems to have taken its rise from the simpler Syrian form.
But the details of the development of the Hebrew system, and
the relation of their origin to both the older Syrian and the
later Arabian, cannot be accurately determined ; since we know
the Hebrew only in its most developed form, and the MS.
traces of its development have so largely been lost. Some of
these traces, however, remain, and afford an opportunity for
restoring the process, especially by comparing the ordinary
Occidental or Palestinian, with the Oriental or Babylonian,
forms. MSS. of the latter form are found, especially in the
libraries of London and St. Petersburg. The relative simpli-
1 In the third preface to his Masoreth ham-Masoreth, he ascribes the punctu
ation of the text to the wise^men of Tiberias in the time after the conclusion
of the Babylonian Gemara. See Wellhausen in Bleek, Einl. in das A. T., p. 612.
2 The treatise, written in this year, appeared flrst in 1832 in Gottingen; and
afterwards in enlarged form his conclusions were given in the Zeitschrift fiir die
Kunde des Morgenlandes, 1837 and 1839.
8 Hupfeld, Studien und Kritiken, 1830, pp. 785 ff.

ORIGIN OF HEBREW PUNCTUATION. 697
city of the Babylonian would seem to favor the conclusion that
the origin of both forms was in Eastern Syria; but which
of the two is the earlier, is not a settled point. The common
features of these systems are undoubtedly the oldest ones.^
We should be quite mistaken, however, should we conclude
from the relatively late origin of the written punctuation, the
slow growth of the system finally adopted, and the uncertain
ties of the tradition which must meantime be relied upon for
so much of the text as is involved, that either the proper
vocalization of the words, or the interpretation of the Hebrew
of the Old Testament as dependent upon this vocalization, were
altogether in doubt. The Keri — that is, the pronunciation of
the Hebrew text — was not fixed by the punctuation, but the
punctuation was rather fixed by it. It was in existence as a
matter of oral tradition for hundreds of years previous to its
becoming recorded in the text. It was both constituted and
preserved by the oral readings of the synagogue. This fact,
of which the Talmud itself appears conscious,^ gives greater
authority, other considerations being equal, to the Keri of those
portions of the Old Testament most used in the synagogue
' service ; and of them all, of course, pre-eminently to the Keri
of the Torah. The possibihties of which the merely conso
nantal writing of a Hebrew word admits, and of which the
Talmud not infrequently speaks, do not in most instances
imply any doubt as to the real meaning of the words. The
ambiguity which Jerome asserts as existent in his day was one
only to try the uninitiated : the Hebrew tradition itself knew
no doubt. And even Origen regards the deviations from this
tradition as un-Hebraic and impossible, rather than as contest
ing the ground with divers claims to probability. We may say
in brief of the Masoretic text, punctuation as well as conso
nants, as does Wellhausen,^ " As a type of speech, the punctua
tion is for us unalterable ; as a commentary, inasmuch as it
reproduces that construction of the sense of a given passage
which has prevailed since the Christian era, it is, although not
unchangeable, stUl at least incomparably the most valuable
help to the understanding."
We find, then, that our present complete written text of the
1 See De Wette-Schrader, Einl. in das A. T., p. 213 f.
2 Megilla 3'> and Nedarim 31^, where the pronunciation of the words, and the
division of the sentences and different members of the sentence, are referred to
Neh. viii. 8; compare Wellhausen, Ibid., p. 617.
s Ibid., p. 616.

698 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Old Testament consists of two elements, viz., the traditional
way of writing the consonants, and the traditional way of read
ing what was written ; that the written expression of the latter ,
of these two elements was a complex growth of several centu
ries, beginning after the close of the Talmudic era ; and that
the MS. authority for the written text, as combined from these
two elements, does not in general go back of the twelfth cen
tury A.D. We are thrown back, then, upon the trustworthi
ness of both the MSS. and the oral tradition of the Talmudic
era. On the whole, we can speak very highly of the care given
to the pure transmission of the text during the Talmudic era.
From the time of the Hexapla of Origen and the translations
of Jerome to the end of the fifteenth century, Christianity was
satisfied with the Vulgate and the LXX., and gave no attention.
to the original text ; but with the Jewish rabbis the case was
far otherwise. As early as the second century we find the
proofs of their sharp and eager searching into all the particu
lars of the Hebrew: "In brief," says Geiger,^ "the Masoretic.
studies penetrating to the smallest detaU had at that time not
merely begun, but had already secured a broad foundation."
The nature of these Masoretic studies has already been indi^
cated. The work of the rabbis, however, was not critical
work in the modern understanding of the science of criticism :
it consisted in part, indeed, in the i:epetition and perpetuation
of errors. Yet the elements of criticism and the germs of a
critical sense were ' by no means wholly Wanting to this work.
The Talmud ^ alludes to the comparison of MSS., and the num
bering of the versps and words, and even of the letters of the
text. Directions are given for its accurate transcription.^ Cer
tain critical improvements of the text, such as the ablatio scri-
barum which concerns the omission of ) in five passages,* and
the puncta extraordinaria in the case of several words,® were
-' Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, pi 3>
2 See Tr. Taanith, f. 68, c. 1; compare Trv Sopherim, VI. 4: "In uno (libro)
juvenerunt scriptum (Dent, xxxiii. 27) TJ^D, in duobus njl;?D, et approbantes
duos, rejecerunt unum." The same rule of adopting the testimony of two MSS.
against one is given for Exod. xxiv. 5 and Gen. xxxii. 23.
3 Tr. Gittin, f. 45, c. 2. Sumere possunt libros ab extraneis, ubicumque fue-
lint, si modo sint scripti ad normam. Tr. Schabb., f. 103, c. 2. Ita autem seriben
dum vobis est, ut sit scriptura perfecta, ue scribatur Aleph pro Ain, et vice versa;
Beth pro Caph, et v. v.; Gimel pro Zadeh, et v. v.; Daleth pro Eesch, et v. v.; etc.
* These passages are Gen. xviii. 6, xxiv. 55; Num. xii. 14; Ps. Ixviii. 26,
xxxvi. 7.
s Tr. Sopherim, VI. 3, enumerates six; the Masora, fifteen.

ACCURACY OF THE MASORETIC TEXT. 699
introduced in the early Talmudic writings. The Talmud
aUudes to different readings : ^ in seven places it provides for
readings which did not stand in the text, and in five for not
reading the text as it stood. It makes, that is, the critical dis
tinction between the Keri and the Kethib. The peculiar let
ters, which are alluded to even as early as the Talmud, seem
originaUy to have had a critical significance.^ The rabbis of
the Talmud are aware of the ambiguity which arises from the
fact that they have no way of giving expression in writing to
the vocal difference of words with like consonants. They can
only say, for instance, that oy^er, and not D';?3ty, is to be pro-
noimaed, and then leave it to the reader to conjecture, in the
light of this indefinite warning, whether they intend or not to
point out the difference between schebuaim and sehibHm.^
To attempt to vindicate the perfect accuracy of the text as
formed in the Talmudic era, and this after having discovered
that the Masoretic version must be accepted for lack of other
texts with which to compare it as the only MS. authority for
the earlier form, would be to go beyond the Talmudists them
selves. The Masoretic text is undoubtedly, within certain
very narrow Umits, precisely that upon which the Talmudic
authors from the second to the ninth centuries determined;
and the grounds of thek determination were undoubtedly only
in small measure critical. But when we inquire further, How
far is the text which was fixed during the Talmudic era that
which the books had, when after the ExUe they were through
several centuries undergoing the process of collection and can
onizing ? only the most general answer can be given with con
fidence. The substantial agreement of the standard text (so
far as we can speak of such a standard text) of the Talmudic
era with the post-Exilian may fairly be affirmed. As Wellhausen
asserts,* the translations of AquUa, Theodotion, and Symmachus,
the Peshito, the Targums, and the Vulgate, as well as the Mishna
and Gemara, presuppose the official text in a form simUar to the
Masoretic. The fact that the different orthography of different
scribes, and the different uses and forms of the divine name, as
1 Tr. Sota, V. 6, and Joma, f. 21, c. 2. Quid est, quod scriptum exstat (Hag.
1- 8) 133N1, et nos legimus rn33N1 ?
2 See De Wette-Schrader, Einl. in das A. T., p. 210.
8 Compare the words of Jerome on Isa. xxxviii. 10 f. : " Media vocalis litera
Vau si ponatur inter duas Samech, legitur sus et appellatur equus, si Jod, legitur
sis et hirundo dicitur " (15).
« In Bleek's Einl. in das A. T., p. 623.

700 THE DOCTRENE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
well as the variations of parallel passages, have been on the
whole so accurately preserved through so many centuries, is
further evidence of the same truth. This regular repetition of
the idiosyncrasies of authors and scribes is related to the gen
eral carefulness of those who prepared the way for the work of
the Talmudic era, somewhat in the same manner in which the
repetition of irregular spaces in the middle of a verse, or of
letters of extraordinary size or shape, stands related to the
general carefulness of those who prepared the Masoretic text.
But we can no more properly carry back this care and zeal
for the propagation of a pure text of Sacred Scripture from the
Talmudic era to the time of Ezra, than we can ascribe the fix
ing of the Canon to this ancient worthy and his contemporaries.^
Neither can we conclude from this care and zeal, that, if we had
more abundant material for comparison, we should find an in
creasing harmony of witnesses concerning the so-caUed original
text. If, by an original text of the Old Testament, we should
mean such a form of writing the consonants, and such a tradi
tion of vocalizing them as prevailed during the pre-Tahnudic
era, we have no means of reaching it for all passages, either
with much certainty or in considerable detaU. In general, the
farther back we go, the greater the uncertainty. The Masoretic
text is in itself very uniform, and doubtless represents with
much fidelity the text of the second century, — the beginning
of the Talmudic era. But we find aU the witnesses wbich we
have for this and the preceding time far from showing the
same uniformity. The oldest of them, viz., the LXX. and
the Samaritan Pentateuch, vary most from the Masoretic text ;
the three Greek translations of Aquila, Theodotion, and Sym
machus, are not concordant ; the Syriac, when independent of
the LXX., often seems to be the translation of another form
of the Hebrew ; the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan show
certain — for the most part unimportant — variations.
The testimony whicli the LXX. offer concerning the satis
factory condition of our Hebrew text is exceedingly important ,
but it is as multiform, disputable, and apparently diverse, as it is
important. The truth is, that the fundamental questions as to
the general relation of this Greek translation to the original
text are as yet in debate, and greatly need detaUed investiga-
i See Geiger, p. 97 : " Die spatere ausserordentliche Sorgfalt fiir die Eein-
haltung des Bibeltextes darf uns nicht zu einem Euckschlusse auf die fruheren
Zeiten verleiten."

THE TEXT OF THE SEPTUAGINT. 701
tion. In spite of the very circumstantial story which Aristeas
teUs of the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures mto Greek
by seventy-two venerable Jews, who were sent to Alexandria by
the high-priest Eleazer in response to the request of Ptolemy
Second,^ we know little of the origin of the LXX. The corre
spondence which this author gives" between these high contract
ing parties is a manifest falsification. The general facts, that this
translation began in Alexandria in the reign of this Ptolemy
(283-246 B.C.) ; and that it began, not as the result of religious
activity on the part of the Jews, nor of a desire to possess
accurate MSS. for the synagogue-service, but rather as a result
of literary activity on the part of a king that he might adorn
his Ubrary with distinguished books, — may be admitted. In
the opinion of Wellhausen,^ the oral translation into Greek of
the Hebrew text was the original and sufficient instrument for
the services of the synagogue in Egypt ; just as the same text
was read into Aramaic in the synagogues of Palestine. The
written translation was, theu, first naturalized, so to speak, for
private use, and afterward introduced into the public services.
Its Greek, which necessarUy seemed barbaric to men who used
the Uterary Greek of the day, suited better the Hellenizing
Jews. That several hands worked upon the translation of the Greek
Pentateuch, has been argued by Ewald from the very name,
Septuagint, which seems undoubtedly to have been in existence
and applied to this translation previous to the story of Aristeas.^
How far the present text evinces this difference, is a disputed
question, and one — like so many others concerning the LXX. —
needing further investigation. The translation of the other
portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, when they followed, seems
also to have been of the nature of a private literary enterprise.
Both the history and an inspection of the text — so far as the
latter can be conducted With confidence — convince us that the
Greek text of the different books is the work of a number of
translators. Certain " family similarities " are said, however,
to belong to the older "strata" of the Canon; as may be seen
by comparing Samuel and Kings with Chronicles, Isaiah and
Jeremiah with Daniel. Of the Hagiographa, Chronicles, Can
ticles, and Ecclesiastes have an aspect of anxious endeavor to
1 Compare Josephus, Ant. praef., § 3. ^ Ibid., p. 575.
' See Frankel, Ueber den Einfluss der palastinisehe Exegese auf die alexan
drinische Hermeneutik, p. 110 f.

702 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
reproduce the exact words of the original text ; but Ezra, Es
ther, and Daniel show a free handling of it, with numerous
additions. Whether, indeed, we have any true text of the
LXX. for Daniel, is a matter of debate. The translation of dk-
ferent parts of the Pentateuch seems to be unequal. On the
whole, however, the Pentateuch of the LXX. is marked by
literalness, lack of acquaintance with the original language of
Scripture, and a certain inability to distinguish between anthro
pomorphic figures of speech and exact definition.
It is difficult — and hitherto it has been impossible — to con
ceive with confidence how the different elements which might
produce the manifold variations between the LXX. and the
Hebrew text could have originated and been combined. The
only certain result is the conclusion that various elements,
the origin of which is obscure, have combkied in proportions
and ways which we cannot accurately describe. Something is
due, without doubt, to very considerable differences between the
present Hebrew text and the texts from which that of the LXX.
was constructed ; something to ignorance of the Hebrew, which
in some cases amounts to utter helplessness in the presence of
the task of real translation ; something to idiosyncrasies of de
sign and abUity in the different translators ; somethmg to the
adapting of the Greek text to suit Greek thought or individual
preference ; something to such subsequent changes of both the
Greek and Hebrew texts as have tended in some places to bring
the two together, and in others more widely to separate them ;
something, finally, to the influence of different theories of inter
pretation. The nature of the text which formed the basis for
this translation, and the relation of that text, as determinable
through an examination of the LXX., to our present Hebrew
text, are tbe questions of main importance to our subject. But
unfortunately they are questions which do not as yet admit of
a satisfactory answer. The opinion that the Pentateuch of the
LXX. is from a Chaldaic version goes back to Rabbi Azariah De
Rossi.^ According to Frankel,^ this author did not hold, as
Gesenius supposed, that the Alexandrine Jews, out of hate
toward the Palestinian, deliberately adopted the Samaritan
text ; nor that the Aramaic copy of the Pentateuch was con
structed independently of the Hebrew : but that the Septuagint
1 Berlin ed. of Kings, 1794.
2 See Ueber den Einfluss, etc.. pp. 33 ff.; and compare Geiger, Urschrift ud'I
Uebersetzungen der Bibel, pp. 15 ff.

THE TEXT OF THE SEPTUAGINT. 703
was from a Chaldaio translation which had been in use even
before the time of Ezra, was inaccurate, periphrastic, and full of
alterations; and that the Greek, although originally a good
translation, had been corrupted by the later Alexandrine Jews.
The supposition of an intermediate Chaldaic text between the
Hebrew and the LXX. is superfluous, and may be rejected.
The changes which must be accounted for were more likely to
occur in the Greek than in the Aramaic, which is more closely
alUed to the Hebrew. In some of the differences from the He
brew, the Samaritan test agrees with the LXX. ; and certain of
the very mistakes of the LXX. plainly spring from misunder
standing the Hebrew itself. It is calculated that in about
one thousand places the LXX. differ from the Hebrew, and
accord with the Samaritan Pentateuch ; that about the same
number of reverse cases occur ; while in certain other cases the
LXX. stand entkely alone. The relation of the Masoretic text
to that of the LXX. seems to be different in different books.
There are reasons, for instance, for supposing that a peculiar
recension must have been the basis of the text of Jeremiah;
whUe, in the judgment of Gesenius, the Masoretic text of Isaiah
explains that of the LXX.; and, according to Thenius, the
latter text of Samuel is much preferable to the former.^
Among the HeUenistic Jews in Christ's time, the Septuagint
had taken the place of the original text for both pubUc and
private reading : from it many of the New-Testament writers
quote for the most part, especiaUy Mark and Paul.^ The gen
eral enmity which the Jews both incurred and exhibited after
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and that particular
enmity toward Christianity which is referred to in the writings
of Justin and Irenaeus, operated to lessen their confidence in
the LXX. This enmity also operated to produce a re-action in
favor of a restricted Canon and a more careful protection and
promulgation of the Hebrew text. The translations of Aquila,
Theodotion, and Symmachus are witnesses to this re-action.
The date of the origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the
1 See his Kurzgef. exeg. Handbuch, XXVHI. f. Eobertson Smith presents in
clear and skilful manner several instances — for the most part taken from the
Books of Samuel — in which the text used by the LXX. was plainly preferable to
the Masoretic (see The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 88 f. and p. 125 f.).
It is perhaps to be regretted that the author has not called attention more clearly
to the peculiarities of these books in the LXX., and that he has not presented the
considerations on the other side which make his views on this subject so uncertain,
if they do not quite disprove them.
' See Kautzsch, De Veteris Testamenti locis, etc.

704 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
occasion of its reception are unknown. There seem, however,
to be sufficient grounds for assigning it to the time of the build
ing of the Samaritan temple and the establishment of the Sa
maritans as a separate religious sect. The objections to the
view that it reaches back to the separation of the kingdom are
insuperable. Modern investigation ^ of the character of the Sa
maritan Pentateuch has shown that its text is quite uncritical,
and that its variant readings arise almost whoUy from merely
grammatical corrections and conjectures, grammatical and his
torical glosses, changes and additions from parallel passages,
and from the peculiar speech and theological and hermeneutical
views of the Samaritans.
If we take the Aramaic versions also into the account, the
Peshito and the Targums, we receive additional indirect and
doubtful but corroborative evidence for the general conclusion,
made sufficiently sure by the Septuagint and the Samaritan
Pentateuch. A process of change, not wholly checked by the
Talmudic care which belongs to the centuries after Christ, went
on during the centuries preceding. The early treatment of the
text was not so scrupulous ; the limits of change cannot be
so nearly defined. Even by a comparison of all the different
translations with the Masoretic text and by free but cautious
conjecture, we have no means of reaching a conclusion as to
what in details was the standard text of the time following that
of Ezra. We cannot, indeed, trust the individual conjectures
of Geiger ^ and other similar critics ; but we can scarcely main
tain a general opinion different from theirs. When the transla
tions of the LXX. and the Samaritan Pentateuch were made,
the Hebrew text was unfixed, and differed rather widely from
the present Masoretic text. And yet these very translations
prove the substantial accord of the latter with the former. A
long course of perpetual growth and re-adaptation has had its
effect upon both the Hebrew text and the work of translation.
This is true, even if we regard the original text in each instance
as that which the book had reached during what we may call
the post-ExUian era.
But if we go back of the Masoretic, the Talmudic, and the
post-Exilian eras, and inquire, in the case of those books whose
1 De Pentateuch! Samaritani origine, etc., Gesenius, Halle, 1815; Kohn, De
Pentat. Samaritano, etc., Leipe. and Vratasl., 1865; De Wette-Schrader, Einl. in
dis A. T., p. 202 f.
a Ibid., p. 99 f.

EARLIEST FORM OF THE HEBRKW TEXTi 705
origin speedily follows or even antedates the time of Ezra, what
was the condition of their text, we have no means but the inter
nal criticism of these writings themselves for answering this
question. The question, indeed, soon becomes a question of
opinion as to the composition and authorship of the books. We
have already seen how complex and long-continued a growth
was the composition of some of these books. Their text, there
fore, changed with the additions, emendations, and redactions
to which they were themselves subject. But enough has al
ready been said for our purpose upon the question of construc
tion ; and, indeed, until a writing is in some real sense regarded
and treated as a substantially finished product, we cannot prop
erly speak of its text.
We should be warranted iu assuming from what we know
of all ancient writings, that many changes of orthography and
transcription both preceded and accompanied the formation
of the traditional Plebrew text. In detecting and illustrating
these changes, we are obliged from lack of other evidence to
resort much to analogy and conjecture. In the comparisons
necessary to such conjecture, the oldest of all the available in
scriptions — viz., that of the Moabite king Mesha in the ninth
century B.C. — is of great value. It appears that the Hebrews
used the same ancient Semitic alphabet which was, with slight
differences, in use among surrounding nations from the Tigris
to the Nile, and which had its historical centre, if not its origin,
in Syria. Its oldest form most resembles the Greek alpha
bet. From the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. downward, it
underwent an Aramaic development, which could no more be
escaped by the Jews in the case of their writing than in that
of thek speech. These changes began to be felt after the Exile,
and are not to be regarded as improvised by Ezra and his con
temporaries ; since the Samaritans seem to have received their
Pentateuch (400 B.C. [?]) ki the unchanged older character.^
The formation of the Kethib, or official written text so far as
the consonants are concerned, implies a process of change : the
growth of the Keri, or traditional way of pronouncing these
words, implies the same. But especially must we admit the
fact that the differences between the Kethib and the Keri can
not be explained wholly by simple variations in the way of
•pronouncing which grew up after the Kethib was fixed, but
1 So Wellhausen in Bleek, Einl., pp. 626-613, where flnd an account of the liter
ature on Semitic Paleography. Compare De Wette-Schrader, pp. 184r-240.
VOL. L 2 Y

706 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
must rather be due to more original differences both in Kethib
and in the traditional oral Keri.
A few words as to the different sources and classes of errors
in the Hebrew text will suffice. The sources of error are all
such as are now well known to the science of paleography. They
include errors of sight, extending to single letters (where one
letter is mistaken for another, as -i for i, or 3 for 3, or 1 for < ;
or where two letters are transposed, as when the 'bnty — Sham-
lai in margin — of Ezra ii. 46 is written -Dbt? — Salmai — Neh.
vii. 48), or to entire words transposed (as seems to be the case
in Neh. vii. 73 and Ezra ii. 70), or to entire sentences trans
posed (as the case may be argued from a comparison of 1 Chron.
xvi. 30-32, and Ps. xcvi. 9-11), or to letters, words, and sen
tences omitted through confusion. Errors of memory are sup
posable, as in the instance of Isa. Ixiii. 16. It is scarcely neces
sary to allude to the probabUity of marginal notes, which are
themselves often misunderstandings, creeping into the text. In
certain places the " senselessness " or inapprppriateness of the
authorized text indicates undoubted errors of transcription.
In such cases we are invited to resort to cautious conjectural
emendation ; for instance, in Exod. xvii. 16, where the 03 of
the Masoretic text is conjecturally a corruption for Dj (banner)
instead of an archaic form of nb3 (throne) ; and 2 Sam. xxiU. 8,
where n3^a 22?' (translated in our version "that sat in the
gate ") is corrupted from the proper name given (1 Chron. xxvii.
2) usjnmi by the scribe being turned aside from the transcrip
tion of this name to repeat the last two letters of a word in the
preceding verse.
More important still are the so-called " tendency " changes.
Certain euphemisms appear in the Keri to take the place of
offensive or objectionable expressions.^ Among such euphem
isms Vatke pointed out the correction of the name Baal (lord),
which was anciently applied to Jehovah, as we learn from Hos.
ii. 16 f., and from many proper names. Thus the Jerubbaal of
Judg. vi. 32 is interpreted to mean, " Let Baal contend ; " and
the name is changed, 2 Sam. xi. 21, into Jerubbesheth. A
similar change through dislike of the name Baal has been
made in the case of the names Ish-bosheth and Mephi-bosheth.
Thus the Meri-baal of 1 Chron. ix. 40 is the conjectural source
of Mephi-baal, which is changed into Mephi-bosheth. By a
1 These have been pointed out in detail by Geiger, who, however, has greatly
overworked the application of the principle.

SCRIBAL EMENDATIONS OF THE TEXT. 707
reverse process the name of David's son, which is written
Beel-jada (1 Chron. xiv. 7), is given as El-jada (2 Sam. v. 16).
Now, the fact that the earlier form is sometimes found in the
later books, and in the LXX., while the euphemisms appear in
the earlier books, shows that these alterations of scribes are
not older than the tlurd century B.C. Similar influences
worked upon the mind of the scribe who changed the name
Bethel to Bethaven, — house of nothingness or idols, instead
of house of God.^ Other instances of an effect upon the text
from the dislike of idols and their surroundings "may be seen
in the change by the later Jews of the word nasn, — sacred
stone-images which served also as altars, but which were re
garded as objectionable, although they appear in Genesis as
used by the patriarchs, and were often consecrated to the ser
vice of Jehovah, 2 — into nam, or altar. Among these "tend
ency" changes of the text, those which concern the divine
names are especially interesting, and are discussed by Geiger^
at great length, and with a great amount of learning.
On the basis of those traditional accounts from the Talmud,
to which reference has already been made, the same author*
thinks himself able to detect other variations of text which
must have existed in the Palestinian MSS. In Gen. xxii. 13,
for instance, the original text must, according to Geiger, have
read, "Then he lifted up his eyes and saw, and there was
another ram" (rnxj nnx Vk) ; but this indirect designation of
Isaac as a sacrificial lamb was offensive, and nnx was changed
to ins (one ram), as the Samaritan text and the LXX. (els)
must have read it ; ^ then again the t was changed back to -i,
and, the word being differently punctuated, tho reading became
"he looked behind him."
The dkect proofs that the treatment of the text was espe
ciaUy free in the case of those books which were most worked
over before the closing of the Canon and the accumulation of
reverence in the minds of the scribes for the exact wording
of the sacred writings, are not altogether wanting. When the
^ Compare Hos. iv. 15, and Amos v. 5.
2 See Dent. xvi. 21 f., and Hos. iii. i. That the former is the original reading
in 1 Kings xvi. 32, seems evident from 2 Kings iii. 2, and from the fact that Op.^J,
"he set up," does not well apply to an altar. See also Gen. xxxiii. 20. In simi
lar manner the substitution of riDtyK, " the sin," of Samaria, for mtys, the A.shera
(or wooden pillars which were set up in the grove near where the idol was wor
shipped), may be conjectured to have taken place (Amos viii. 14).
3 See Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, p. 261 f. ^ Ibid., p. 244 f.
5 So also the Targums, Peshito, and a number of Hebrew MSS.

708 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
writing copied was very ancient, and existed without the name
of an author attached, the copyist or collector might allow
himself considerable liberty in improving it to suit his own
ideas, and might even introduce material from other sources.
The results reached by such free handling may be estimated
by comparing Ps. xiv. and liii., xl. 14 f. and Ixx., cviii. and
IvU. 7-11 ; Ps. xviii., and 2 Sam. xxii. ; Ps. cv., and 1 Chron.
xvi. 8-22 ; Ps. xcvi., and 1 Chron. xvi. 23-33 ; Isa. xxxvii. and
xxxviii. with 2 Kings xviU. and xix.
When, however, we turn our attention from the Old Testa
ment to the New, and consider the general conclusions to be
derived from the condition of the text respecting the origin
and nature of Sacred Scripture, we find much more abundant
means in MS. authority for confirming the position already
taken. The phenomena of variation in the MSS. of the New
Testament are so well known, that they need only the briefest
discussion in this connection. Respecting the condition of its
text as early as the fourth century, we can decide aU important
principles by inspection, and have little need to resort to con
jecture. Preceding this time, the analogies and indirect tes
timonies are so clear as to guide us to a tolerable degree of
certainty. The autograph copies of the New-Testament writings had
apparently perished without remnant or trace before the indi
vidual books had come to be received as of canonical value.
The earliest defenders of the faith against heretics make no
appeal to any text at first hand which could be used in the
settlement of disputed passages.^ Through use and transcrip
tion the first MSS. were doubtless soon destroyed; for it is
probable, that, in the very congregations which were the posses
sors of these priceless treasures, no considerable value was placed
upon the autograph copy, and a new and clean transcript might
readily be accepted in its place. Nor are we to suppose that
their first readers regarded them with any such critical curi
osity, scrutiny, and care, as we should be inclined to bestow.^
And, furthermore, if we had copies at first hand of these origi
nals, or even the originals themselves, we should probably not
then be assured of perfect diplomatic certainty. For even an
apostle, or his amanuensis, might make a mistake in writing :
1 The meaning of the Autlienticae Literae of Tertullian, De praes. haeret., o.
36, is doubtful.
2 See Eeuss, Geschichte der heiligen Schriften N. T., II. p. 87 f.

EARLY NEW-TESTAMENT MSS. 709
the very first copy would be Uable to any one of aU the forms
of error which belong to the construction of ancient transcripts.
It is certain that variations meet us as soon as we have any
opportunity to compare scripture in MS. with scripture cited, or
two citations of the same passage by different authors. Indeed,
the corruptions of text appear to have been in full bloom a cen
tury or two before the oldest extant MSS.^
Concerning the purity of the text as transmitted to us, the
nature of its corruptions, and the fixing of that conjectural
original, to find which is the utmost limit of our effort, —
three classes of witnesses may be sought ; viz., the MSS., the
ancient translations, and the citations of the earlier Church
Fathers. Of these three, the MSS. are, of course, the chief
reliance. The adjustment of the different classes of evidence,
it is the work of a special and subtile science to decide. It is
by no means the case, that, with all the recent pains-taking and
critical exploration of the text of the New Testament in its
various sources, little remains to be done. The critical consider
ation of the citations in the Church Fathers is still largely to
be accomplished ; the text of the ancient translations is in an
unsatisfactory condition; many Greek MSS. of more or less
value are not as yet carefuUy collated. Still "enough is al
ready known," say Westcott and Hort,^ " to enable us to judge
with reasonable certainty as to the proportional amount of val
uable evidence likely to be buried in copies (cursive) as yet
uncoUated." The very nature of the early MSS. of the Scriptures is such
as to rebuke undue attachment to the outward and perishable.
In the time of the New Testament their substance was occasion
ally of parchment (see 2 Tim. iv. 13, ra ^i^Xia pdXio-ra ras p-ep.-
fipdvas), but usually of the cheaper material made from the
papyrus of Egypt (xdpr-qs, see 2 John 12, and compare Tob. vii.
13). From the fourth century onward there was an increas
ing use of parchment. The first traces of the use of paper
made from cotton are said to be found in the ninth century :
in the thirteenth, linen paper came into use. Of the earliest
papyrus copies of New-Testament writings, not one is known
to exist. The earliest MSS. extant are all Avritten on parch
ment, and consist of four, five, six, or eight leaves, laid within
1 See previous chapter for proofs as to the freedom with which the early text
of the New Testament was treated in citation and in transcript.
2 Vol. ii. p. 77.

710 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
one another, or fastened together in foUo, quarto, or smaUei
form. As to the perishableness of ancient books, Jerome ^ tells
us that the library of Pamphilus of Caesarea was within a
single century fallen so into decay that the work of copying
it upon skins was undertaken.^ The eternal Word was com
mitted to the world as faultUy written with poor ink upon
decaying papyrus : the Scripture which this Word made sacred,
began at once a process of corruption, such as forever to
prevent us from identifying the certainty of the truth itself
with the diplomatically uncertain words in which we have
received it.
As in the case of the Old Testament, so in that of the
New, the text, as dependent upon divisions and punctuation, is
especially uncertain. The letters called " uncial " ^ were alone
in use until into the ninth century : the cursive letters came into
customary use in the tenth. Although marks of punctuation
are mentioned among the Greeks as early as Aristotle, and
traces of them among the Romans are found in Cicero, we are
not to suppose that they were habitually used by the authors
of the New Testament. These authors did not punctuate or
divide the words. Some of the oldest MSS. of the New Testa
ment, as, e. g., the Codex Vaticanus, have scarcely any of these
means for determining the sense. Accordingly we find disputes
among the early Church Fathers as to the right reading when
it is dependent upon punctuation ; and no means are at hand in
the form of MS. authority to settle such disputes. Thus Irenae
us, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, connect the o yeyovcv
of John i. 3 with the following clause, and read, " What has
been made was in him life ; " or, " What has been made in him
was life." And tlUs division of clauses was subsequentlj' re
jected, not on the ground of external authority, but because
the Macedonians had used the passage to prove that the Holy
Ghost was a creation of the Son.* That the need of fixing
certain divisions between words was early felt, and in a measure
1 See De viris illustr., cc. 3 and 113.
2 The great work of Bernard de Montfaucon — Palaeographia Graeca, Paris,
1708 — still remains the best authority on the subject of Greek MSS. : see Scrivener.
Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, pp. 21 ff. ; and Bleek, Einl. in
das N. T., pp. 803-826. More recent, Gardthausen, Griech. Palaeographie, 1879.
3 A term as old, indeed, as Jerome, but used then to designate especially large
letters in the flner MSS., and not to distinguish a style of writing: see Praef. in
Job, " uncialibus, ut vulgo aiunt, litteris;" but Scrivener (p. 28, note) favors the
conjectural emendation " initialibus,"
* Por other examples, see Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 108.

PUNCTUATION IN NEW-TESTAMENT MSS. 711
met, we may illustrate by the way in which certain codices
(Alex, and Cantabr.) place a point after the ovBe ev of John i. 3,
although they are in general written continuously. Soon after
the middle of the fifth century (458 or 462), EuthaUus, a dea
con in Alexandria, prepared and dedicated to his bishop an
edition of the Epistles of Paul, which he arranged in lines of
such length as could be read somewhat rhythmically in a single
breath (-n-pos eva-qpov dvdyvwaiv) ; afterwards the Acts and Catholic
Epistles were treated by him in the same way. Tregelles asserts
that EuthaUus treated the Gospels also in the same manner, and
that he was not the originator of the method as applied to the
New Testament ; the assertions are, however, at best, doubtful.^
This stichometric form of writing Scripture found much favor
even outside of Egypt, and some of the oldest MSS. are in this
form. To save room, the separation of the lines was subse
quently made by a point or an enlarged letter. This division
in MSS. so prepared sufficed for interpunctuation : in those not
stichometricaUy arranged, other means were resorted to. In
some, a cross ; in others, two points, one above the other ; in
others, points like our comma, — are employed. Some adopt
the form which was probably in use among Greek grammarians,
and place a point above with the value of a period, in the
middle with the value of our colon, below with the value of
our comma. The more developed form of our present punctu
ation dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century : the
separation of words by a space or a point came into general use
in the ninth century.
The accentuation of the Greek words, although the present
system is attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium (200 B.C.),
was not in general use when even the oldest MSS. of the New
Testament were composed. EuthaUus added accents to his sti
chometric edition of the Acts and Catholic Epistles. The writ
ers of the New Testament probably did not make use either of
the rough breathing or of the iota subscript or postscript. The
prevalent use of breathings and accents belongs to the ninth
century.2 Whether the authors of the New Testament made sections
of their writing, by new Unes or brief spaces between, we have
1 Compare Eeuss, Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., p. 109 ; and Bleek, Einl.
indasN. T.,791f.
2 Among the oldest MSS., D and E of the Pauline Epistles, and E, K, L, M, of
the Gospels, have accents and breathings.

712 THE DOCTEINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
no means of knowing : such sections, if they existed, were not
deemed of enough importance to be preserved in the traditional
text. Tertullian ^ several times alludes to chapters in a New-
Testament writing. The remark of -Dionysius,^ that some be
fore him had considered the Apocalypse chapter by chapter (KaO"
eKaa-rov Ke<j)dXaiov) , is of doubtful meaning: it may refer to merely
ideal divisions, as De Wette, Reuss, and Tregelles suppose,
or to sections in some MSS., as Bleek is inclined to believe.
Chapters (KecjidXaia) much smaUer than ours, of which Matthew
contained 355, Mark 234, Luke 342, John 231,^ were in wide use
very early. Whether the enumeration of these Ke<j)dXaia is to
be ascribed to Ammonius in preparation for his harmony, or to
Eusebius, is undeterminable. A division of the Gospels into
larger sections, called nVAoi, — probably because it was common
to prefix a title to each as a designation of its contents, -
originated not earlier than the fifth century; the time and
manner of its origin are unknown. Of such rirXoi Suidas gives
to Matthew 68, to Mark 48, to Luke 83, to John 18. Among
the Latins they were called breves, and the lists of their con
tents breviaria. The present division of chapters originated in
the thirteenth century, and is probably to be ascribed to Ste
phen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (f 1228), who intro
duced it into his Latin PostUles ; that of verses is the work of
Robert Stephens in 1551.
The unauthoritative character of all these helps to interpre
tation — accents, punctuation, breathing, iota subscript or post
script, divisions of words, chapters, and other sections, etc. —
scarcely needs in these days to be asserted. But it is a truth
for the thoughtful to consider, that, from the very first-hand
copies of the authors through all the subsequent changes, the
call has necessarily been upon the hearer of Sacred Scripture,
— to take heed how he hear. The very style of writing and
propagating this Scripture evokes and demands activity in
judgment for reception and understanding on the hearer's part.
The word is not fixed in words alone, but conveyed by a facile
and plastic art which involves the participation of several hands
and minds. The hearer and the scribe have always had some
share with the author of biblical writings in determining the
1 Ad uxor. II. 2, "De illo capitulo sibi blandiuntur primae ad Corinthios, ubi
scriptum est, etc.: " compare De monog., 11, and De carne Christi, 19.
2 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VII. 25.
» So Caesarius, Dial. 1, resp. 39; and Epiphanius, Ancor. 50, p. 54.

NUMBER OF THE NEW-TESTAMENT MSS. 713
precise form of the words. In some real sense of the declara
tion it is true, that the present diplomatic form of the Bible in
volves the co-operation of a community of souls inspired with a
common impulse of religious thought and feeling.
The amount of the resources in MSS. which can be made
satisfactorily avaUable for a criticism of the text is not to be
estimated by counting the number of uncials and cursives. Of
the latter. Scrivener asserts (p. 73) that " the long list of the
cursives is but a snare and a delusion." Of the uncials, the
same author states the number to be as foUows : in the Gospels,
fifty-six, which are for the most part fragments of inconsider
able length; in the Acts, fourteen; in the Catholic Epistles,
six ; in the Pauline, fifteen (many of them fragments) ; and in
the Apocalypse, only five. A more recent and full statement,
made on the authority of Dr. Ezra Abbot, in the Introduction
to the American edition of Westcott and Hort, increases the
number of uncials to sixty-one of the Gospels, fifteen of the
Acts, seven of the CathoUc, and twenty of the Pauline Epis
tles. The whole number of distinct uncials (not including lec-
tionaries) is given at eighty-three. Of these codices, x. A, B, C,
for their critical value, and D for its many strange and sugges
tive deviations from the other authorities, are our main reliance.
The variations of reading to which all the MSS. introduce us
are innumerable : they were computed at the time of Mill as
thirty thousand, and are now, says Scrivener, " at least fourfold
that quantity." That the essential doctrine and testimony to
the facts of Sacred Scripture are not affected by the phenora
ena of variation in its text, is both to be claimed and to be
conceded. It would not be correct, however, to represent
these phenomena as trifling in importance, or affecting only the
unimportant minutiae of verbal form. The phenomena them
selves are of such nature as to raise, and also in part to answer,
the questions : With what limits of diplomatic uncertainty has
Sacred Scripture been given to us ? and. What are we to infer
from a consideration of these limits concerning its origin and
nature ?
It is certain that the variations and corruptions of the text
of the New Testament are in number so many, and in kind
such, as belong to the very nature of the case. Of the more
famiUar of the phenomena, we need barely notice the follow
ing. Marginal notes have crept into the text through either
the intentional manipulation or the carelessness of some scribe.

714 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Such cases are perhaps 1 John v. 7 ; the ct/c^ found in some
MSS. and versions of Matt. v. 22; the dva^tws of 1 Cor. xi.
29, — probably intended to tone down the respective passages;
the p.ri Kara a-dpKa . . . Kara irvevp-a of Rom. viU. 1, an explanatory
gloss on TOIS ev Xpi(TTw 'I-i]a-ov suggested from verse 4; and the
r-fj dX-TjOeia, pr] TreideaOai of Gal. Ui. 1, to explain the intent of a
question and round off a sentence. From the Church Ordinal,
Acts viii. 37 seems to have come, and the doxology of Matt. vi.
13 from its ritual. Of slight variations in the order of words,
mistakes of one word for another closely resembUng it, of vari
ations in spelling, of the omission or insertion of words that
little affect the sense, of differences of position for the Greek
article, etc., etc., numberless instances are found. Of more
importance are those interchanges of synonymous words which
have been introduced in order to refine and modify according
to the taste of the transcriber. The Codex Beza has opp-drwv
for o^OaXpwv, Matt. ix. 29. The conflict of testimony between
i-n-oirjo-ev and iKepBrjaev, Matt. XXV. 16, originated in this manner :
so also the more interesting question, whether we are to read
BiKaioavvrp/ or iXe-rjpoavvrjV, Matt. vi. 1.
Other errors have arisen from Homoioteleuton, when, two
contiguous clauses ending with the same words, the eye of the
scribe has wandered from the end of the former to the end
of the latter so as to omit the intervening words. Of this we
have examples in some MSS. of Luke xviU. 39, and 1 John
ii. 23. Itacisms, or the confusion of vowels and diphthongs
having the same or similar sound, may be accounted for either
by the habit of writing from dictation, or by the corruption
of the spelling through careless pronunciation. Thus are i and
ei, ai and e, in the earlier, and r/t and ei, rj, ot and v, and even o and
o), 17 and e, in the later MSS., — used almost promiscuously.
According to the nature of the Greek language, such changes
sometimes affect the grammatical form ; as, e.g., eyeipe or eyeipai,
Mark iii. 3, and Acts iii. 6 ; and Kavxaa-Oai Srj oi a-vpcf>epei, or Kav-
Xaa-Oai Bel ov, etc., 2 Cor. xU. 1. Aucieut dialectic forms are
changed into those in vogue in the age when the MS. was
produced. A Greek idiom may be transformed into simpler
language, or a Hebraism softened. The customary abbrevia
tion of words (least met with in the Cod. Vatican.) — such as
6(T for ^Eos, Kcr for Kvpios, la- for hjo-ovs, XO" for XP'OTOS, TTi'a for Trp.evpa,
— might result in corruption of the text. Of such corruption
the most important case is that of 1 Tim. iii. 16, where the

EMENDATIONS OF NEW-TESTAMENT TEXT. 715
choice lies between ©c, an abbreviation of Oeos, and OC.^ The
interpolation into the 'text of introductory clauses or proper
names (such as ^-n-e B'k 6 K-vpios, Luke vii. 31, and Kai a-rpatfiels vpos
Toiis paOrjras etire, Luke X. 22, and the frequent interpolation and
changing position of the name 'Irja-ovs), either from the margins
of the MSS. or from the service-books, is also frequent.^ A
sentence overlooked by the scribe on the first writing of the
text might subsequently be written by him, or by some one else,
upon the near margin, and then be copied into the wrong con
nection by some other hand making another text. In this way
it may be conjectured that the clauses of PhU. i. 16, 17, came
to be reversed.
The scribal amending of the text, which has entered so
largely into the Old Testament, has been a relatively small
element in the New , and yet it is by no means wholly lacking.
The corruptions of the text which have been wrought by
changing the text of one Evangelist in order to assimilate it to
that of another are extensive and troublesome : they tend to
be more fundamental, and more to increase distrust of both
text and scribe, than almost any other form of corruption,^
Probable instances may be found in the interpolation of ets perd-
mavinto Matt. ix. 13, and Mark ii. 17, from Luke v. 32; the
citation ha TrX-tjpwO^, Matt, xxvii. 35, borrowed from John xix.
24; the entire verse, Mark xv. 28, which is introduced from
Luke xxii. 37. So do many MSS. add v-n-aye 6iria-w px)v a-aravS.
(Luke iv. 8) from Matt. iv. 10 ; and some repeat Luke vii. 10
after Matt. vki. 13. Other corruptions have taken place through
the scribes writing in the quotations from the Old Testament
more fully than they were given by the authors of the New
Testament themselves. Thus has the clause beginning iyyi^ei
/tot (Matt. XV. 8) been added in certain MSS.; so also the
clauses, Idaaa-Oai . . . KapBiav (Luke iv. 18), Kat . . . TWV x"pSv erov
(Heb. ii. 7), and ^ /3oAtSt KararoievOyja-erai (Heb. xii. 20). The
desire to remove difficulties of harmony or interpretation has
1 The former reading is authorized by some two hundred cursives and by the
uncials D at third hand, K, L, and P. This authority is, however, of relatively
light weight against K, A (V), C at first hand, F, and G, and also against all the
more important ancient versions, the Fathers, and the decisive considerations of
internal criticism. Even Scrivener gives up the reading ; although he is con
vinced, after at least a score of examinations of that MS., that it is favored by A.
2 Instances of similar interpolations in the English Book of Common Prayer
are given by Scrivener (p. 11 f .) and Burgon (The Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark's
Gospel vindicated, p. 215).
8 See Eeuss, Geschichte der heil. Schriften N. T., II. p. 96.

716 ^HE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
also resulted in certain cowardly and unfaithful omissions or
substitutions. Of such omissions, the Bevrepoirpwrw in some MSS.
of Luke vi. 1 has been regarded as a case ; but the explanation
of the origin of the word adopted by Westcott and Hort is
perhaps preferable. More clear are the cases of the rb p.aprvpiov
of 1 Tim. ii. 6, and the vlov Bapaxiov of Matt, xxiii. 35 (omitted
in a few MSS., apparently because the scribe did not like to face
the fact of a lapsus memoriae). The change to rots ¦7rpo(j>-rjTais
from 'Horaiot TU ¦Kpo<l>riT-ri in Mark i. 2, because this reading implies a
mistake in the Evangelist, is an example of such a substitution.
The number of deliberate falsifications of the text for dogmatic
purposes is, in spite of the fact that the Catholic Church Fathers
and the heretics were given to ready and frequent charges to
this effect against one another, exceedingly smaU. The exam
ples with which these charges are supported arose for the most
part, if not wholly, from critical blunders now familiar enough
to the science of ancient MSS.^ The influence of dogmatic
views upon the text is in certain cases, however, to be detected.
For this reason it would seem that the 'Irja-ov after the rb irvevpa
of Acts xvi. 7 has fallen out of most of the cursives; and
o povoyev7]s vlos has been changed to o p.ovoyevr]s ®e6s (John i. 18).
To the same influence are due the corruptions in the text of
Matt. xix. 17. Of the examples which might be chosen to
exhibit the power of sectional ecclesiastical authority over the
text of the New Testament, that of 1 John v. 7 is the most con
spicuous. This reading, now universally rejected, probably
entered the text as a pious gloss, and was widely retained in
the Latin copies in Africa as a test of orthodoxy. Indeed, the
utterly disingenuous part which dogmatic considerations have
constantly played in the opposition to a critical purity of text
for Sacred Scripture, may be abundantly illustrated from his
tory. Ecclesiastical bigotry and pious fears have hindered the
attempt to revise and edit critically the favorite text of any
particular time or locality. In the translation of the works of
Origen he is made to say, after speaking of- his critical labors,
"In the copies of the New Testament, however, I have not
thought that I could do it without danger." Jerome foresees
that he will be called by the hard names of falsarius and sacri-
legus for his work upon the Latin translation. In the Decree
of Gelasius, the critical attempts of Lucianus and Hesychius
are designated as falsified and apocryphal.
1 See Eeuss, Ibid., II. p. 96.

LIMITS OF VARIATION IN THE TEXT. 717
The limits of variation in the text of the New Testament,
so far as we have adequate MS. authority, may be fixed with
tolerable definiteness ; that is to say, we may affirm, with the
exception of many minor differences and certain more important
ones of limited and specified number, what was the condition
of this text in the fourth century after Christ. The two pas
sages of most considerable length, where the genuineness of
the text may be disputed, are Mark xvi. 9-20, and John vii.
53-viii. 11. Although the former passage has been defended
most elaborately, and in the full light of modern criticism, by
Scrivener and by Rev. J. W. Burgon in his " brilliant mono
graph," ^ we cannot advance a step beyond the confession that
this text has come down to us so lacking in full support, so
mankestly corrupted and suspected in very early times, and
so under the shadow of difficulties of internal criticism, that we
cannot have any firm confidence in its genuineness. As to
the latter. Scrivener is forced to admit, that, " on all intelligent
principles of mere criticism, the passage must needs be aban
doned." In attempting to fix the limits of variation, which, as we
may assert with a high degree of probability, have not been
crossed in the period preceding the earliest MSS., we are more
in uncertainty and doubt. The critical examination of our
helps, viz., the citations of the Church Fathers and the ancient
versions, must progress much farther in order to secure a satis
factory result. Certain unanswerable questions will always
remain. The nature of the text of the Itala, for instance, is still
an unsettled question. Are we to speak of different recensions
of one Latin translation, one of which recensions is to be recog
nized as the Itala ; or of different translations into Latin, one
of which translations is the Itala? Nor are we quite certain
whether the Latin translation of the New Testament to which
TertuUian refers, and which must even then have been some
time in existence, since it is spoken of as in common use (in
usum exiit), is the one customarily used by Tertullian himself.
The differences which were observable in these old Latin MSS.,
regarded as a whole, could not have been due sknply to thq
mistakes of scribes : the MSS. appear too readily separable into
classes which seem to be formed with respect to their varia
tions according to a certain model. We must therefore assume
1 The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark vindicated
against Eecent Objectors, and established. Oxford and London: 1871.

718 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
a number of recensions, if not of independent translations.
At least thus much would seem demanded by the codices alia-
rum regionum^ and interpr etum numerositas^ of which Augus
tine speaks ; if not by the complaint of Jerome, — tot sunt enim
exemplaria pene quod codices.^ There must have been great
diversity and uncertainty in the text of the various Latin MSS.
The same condition of the text in general is witnessed to by
the other more ancient versions. And when we recur to the
earlier Greek MSS. themselves, and read them in the light of
these more ancient helps, we are doubly convinced that a pro
cess of change preceded our most ancient direct means for
determining the exact text, the precise limits of which we are
unable to define. The wide spread of Christianity, and the
more and more frequent copying and translating of its Scrip
tures, would tend greatly to diversify their form ; but the
influence of the central churches, the fame of certain particular
MSS. or libraries, and the local peculiarities of taste and style,
would tend to secure classes of more unifonn text. Thus did
a process of extending change and recurring conformity to a
type antedate our oldest copies, — a process which we have,
with all our MSS. and citations and versions, only the very
partial means of reproducing. How important a matter these
peculiarities of local coloring might become, is notably Ulus
trated by Reuss in the case of 1 Cor. xv. 51, where the so-called
ConstantinopoHtan family of MSS. has Travres oi KOip.r]0rja-6p.eOa, irdv-
T€S 8e aXXayria-opeOa ; the Alexandrine, •TravTES /lev Koip.7]0ri<j6pe0a, ov
¦Ttdvres Be aXXayqa-opeOa ', the Occidental, TrdvTes p-ev dva(m]a-6p,e6a,
ov irdvTes B'k aXXay-qa-opeOa, — a Very considerable variation in the
doctrine which the apostle is made to teach.*
It must be confessed that the conclusions concerning the
origin and nature of Sacred Scripture which can be derived
from a study of the text of the Old and New Testaments, are
almost wholly of negative character. The strong protest which
the phenomena of the biblical text offer to every assumption of
verbal inspiration and infallibility has already been pointed
out. These phenomena confirm the impression that the written
record and instrument of revelation has been made subject to
all the forms of material weakness and human error which be-
i Con. Faustum, XI. 2. 2 De doctrina Christ., II. c. 12, 13, 14.
8 Praef. in Ev. ad Damas. Compare Fritzsche, art. Vulgata, etc., in Herzog
and Plitt; Bleek, Einl. in das N. T., p. 848 f. ; Eeuss, Geschichte der heil. Schriften
N. T., p. 187 f.; and the writings of Eonscli.
^ Compare Westcott and Hort, Appendix.

DIPLOMATIC UNCERTAINTY OF THE BIBLE. 719
long to other written records. It has not been given or pre
served with diplomatic certainty ; it has not been providentially
kept from mistake and corruption; it is not now possible to
determine with more than a greater or less degree of probability
the precise limits of details within which these mistakes and
corruptions from the original writings may be confined.
We must, then, receive the divine and imperishable Word, if
at all, in the human and perishable clothing of words in which
it has come down to us. That the general style and mode of
this clothing of words itself bears the impress of the Divine
Spirit as a spirit of revelation, we have already seen reasons to
believe. But it is only within certain limits, and at most with
a certain degree of assurance, that we can rely upon the precise
text of the Old and New Testaments. These limits are happily
such as to include a certainty concerning all the truths of reli
gion and morals, — the Word of God which is in the changing
words of the record, — so far as they are dependent upon the
text. They are such as to prevent any reasonable doubt con
cerning the same truths.
It may perhaps be added, that the devout mind wUl discover,
in the history of the construction and preservation of the bibli
cal text, not a few proofs of a certain providential care extended
to the dipiomatics of Sacred Scripture. This care has been
exercised through the ordinary instrumentalities of papyrus and
parchment MSS., printed books, industry and diligence of
scribes, and especiaUy the interest and uses of the Christian
Church. But it cannot be forgotten, that, by as much as we
piously augment in our estimation this element of Providence,
by so much the more do we also emphasize our confession that
the Spirit in providence, the Spirit of revelation, has not freed
its sacred record and instrument from the frailties, changes, and
errors which belong to all human works.

CHAPTER XI.
INDUCTIVE THEOEY OP SACEED SCEIPTUEE.
Both the exegetical examination of the claims which the
Bible makes for itself, and the critical examination of its vari
ous classes of phenomena, have now been accomplished in detail.
In order to complete an inductive theory of Sacred Scripture,
the work remains of summing up the results of previous ex
amination, and of uniting them into a more comprehensive and
organic presentation of their truth. In this manner the entire
circuit of sacred writings contained in both the Old Testament
and the New — when considered as to all their direct and in
direct claims, and when tested by the judgment of modern
science, history, and criticism — may be heard to answer for
themselves. Two classes of questions, the answers to which involve the
results of aU the previous research, may be made to cover the
main points of the induction. Of these two classes of questions,
one class concerns the relation of the conclusions of modern
science, history, and criticism, to the claims, direct and indirect,
of the Bible itself. Where no conflict appears between such
conclusions and such claims, we may at once derive an infer
ence from the substantial coincidence of the two. But wher
ever a conflict of testimony has appeared, we need to review
carefully both the exegetical evidence by which the biblical
claims have been established, and also the evidence for the criti
cal conclusions. If, after this review of evidence, the appearance
of conflict still persists, both the claims and the critical conclu
sions may be considered as proof that we need to regard the ori
gin and nature of the biblical writings from a new point of view.
It would seem, then, that we cannot in all cases reconcile the
claims of the biblical writers with the conclusions of criticism.
We must remember, however, that so-called modern criticism is
not infallible. Its more doubtful conclusions, its conjectures
and speculations, form no warrant for rejecting such claims of
720

CONFLICT OF INDUCTION AND DOGMA. 721
Sacred Scripture as have had the continuous testing and ap
proval of the moral and religious consciousness. For, whUe
subjective considerations cannot, on matters of fact, reverse the
conclusions of objective evidence, critical theories may often be
refused the power to reverse traditional judgments on matters
closely connected with ethical and religious truth. But, on the
other hand, it may not infrequently happen that the critical
conclusions require a modification or surrender of the biblical
claims. The other class of questions, the answers to which are in
volved in an inductive theory of Sacred Scripture, concerns
the manner in which we must synthetically construct all the
results of the previous research. What, judging from the evi
dence akeady examined, may we conclude that the Bible is?
This one comprehensive question naturally separates itself into
the foUowing three : first. What is the true inductive theory of
the unity of the Bible ? second. What is the nature of its so-
caUed infaUibUity ? third. What is the nature, and what are the
proofs, of its so-called inspiration? Partial answers to these
three questions have been involved in the previous exegetical,
historical, and critical research.
We consider, then, — in answer to the first of the two classes
of questions, — some of those points of coincidence or diver
gence which have been seen to exist between the claims of the
Bible and the conclusions of modern scientific and historical
study. For the mind which accepts the religious teachings of
Christ and the apostles, and the reality of an historic course
of divine self-revelation, no theory of Sacred Scripture can be
satisfactory which does not take the biblical claims into the
account. But for the mind which understands the methods
and results of the modern scientific study of the Bible, no the
ory can be satisfactory which does not employ certain of these
methods, and accord with certain of these results. Do faith
and science, then, irreconcilably differ as to the origin and
nature of the Bible ? And must we find our choice between
an inductive statement which contradicts all the biblical claims,
and a dogmatic statement which upholds those claims at the
sacrifice of the most conclusive results of scientific study ? An
affirmative answer to these questions would place us in a dis
tressful dilemma.
But the previous discussions have disclosed the right position
for understanding the import of just such questions as those
VOL. L 2 z

722 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
proposed above. Considering together all the claims which the
writers of the Bible make for any portion of its varied contents,
we must conclude that some of the claims are modified or con
tradicted by modern research, whUe others of them are most
amply confirmed. The inquiry becomes, then, of vital import :
What, and what kind of claims, are modified or contradicted,
and what confirmed ?
In general, it may be affirmed that the claims of the Bible,
direct or indirect, which can fairly be said to have been modified
or contradicted by modern research, do not affect the substance
of its own doctrine as to its own nature and origin. All the
most important elements of all the claims, and all the claims
which have most important bearing upon the authority with
which the Bible teaches its distinctively ethical and religious
truths, remain untouched by our previous critical conclusions.
In general, also, it may be affirmed that the parsimony with
which the sacred writings put forth all their claims is a vaUd
argument for regarding favorably the claims which they do
make most strongly. If the Bible had made for itself one tithe
the claims which have been made for it, it would have involved
all its authority in hopeless conflict with human reason and
historico-critical research. In spite of this general parsimony,
however, there are certain claims of the Bible which cannot be
accepted as wholly valid in the sense in which they were in
tended. In rejecting these claims we do not reject the authori
ty of Sacred Scripture upon matters upon which it both claims
and possesses the authority to teach. We may even save the
more important claims by separating them from those wliich
we are obliged in part to reject. Thus the validity of the more
important claims stands all the more secure, because it is no
longer liable to be involved in the fate of such claims as cannot
bear the tests of science, history, and criticism.
The Bible does not lay claim to historical science or historical
criticism in the modern understanding of the words ; it does not
directly claim any infallibility, or even extraordinary security
against mistakes in historical composition. The biblical histo
rians tell their story in a straightforward manner ; using the
best helps at their command, — whether of previously written
documents, oral tradition, or the memory of living witnesses, —
and handling their material with a freedom which savors as
little as possible of any fear lest they might not be exact in
every detail. In the mere fact that they are writers of such

AIM OF THE BIBLICAL HISTORIANS. 723
history, the general claim to veracity and accuracy is, of course,
implied. But this implied claim, in most eases, is not primarily
a claim to be veracious and accurate historians ; it certainly is
not a claim to have composed their history in a manner which
corresponds at all to the modern notions of accuracy. The
biblical writers, on the contrary, show little or no comprehen
sion of the conditions which the modern notions impose upon
the critical writer of historj^ They write, that is, so far as the
strictly historical qualities of their work are concerned, with
preciselj' the same notions of the nature of historical composi
tion as those which belonged to their contemporaries. The his
torians of the Old Testament do not think it incumbent upon
themselves to subject the materials (written or oral) of their
history to a process of critical examination. They are chiefly
intent upon the arrangement and reproduction of these materi
als for a purpose which is at least semi-ethical and semz-religious.
Thus they see no inconsistency, as judged by their purpose, in
placing two divergent traditions of one event side by side, or
in combining them, without blending, into a single narrative. In
many such cases, it is a decided help, instead of a hinderance,
to our understanding of the history, that the biblical writers
have preserved the traditions in their divergence rather than
rejected either one wholly ; it is also a help, that they have made
no futUe effort at a critical selection amongst the divergent
detaUs. How much richer and more certain, for instance, is,
on this account, our knowledge of the history of Christ ! The
ckcle of traditions touclUng the history of Christ which is pre
served in the Synoptic Gospels is, indeed, a limited one; and
at times we ardently wish that it could have been greatly en
larged. But such as it is, it is limited for the most part by an
ethical and religious purpose : it is limited by the same kind of
purpose which has been served ever since by this same circle
of traditions. If the divine pla>i for the Christian Scriptures
and the Christian Church provided that this limit should be so
fixed, who could wish that the Evangelists, instead of recording
in simple good faith what they found, had attempted to write
critical lives of Jesus after the modern fashion? One of them,
namely Luke, does indeed distinctly avow his purpose to make
a sifting of his materials, to search dUigently after the truth,
and to give an orderly arrangement of what he finds to present.
But the very fact that this Evangelist agrees so substantially
with the other Synoptists in the picture which he presents of

724 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Jesus should convince us how faithfuUy they all present the
true picture as it had become stamped upon the memories, and
was depicted in the preaching, of the eye-and-ear witnesses.
And — to recur again to examples which might be taken from
the Old Testament — we have no reason, in any claims which
the writers themselves make, to attempt a defence of the histor
ical infallibility, or the extraordinary historical accuracy, of the
Books of Kings and Chronicles. The witness of both these
writings testifies that the materials which their authors used
contained elements doubtful, discrepant, and even demonstra
bly false. Although we are persuaded that Graf, Kuenen, and
their followers have maligned the later writer beyond all war
rant from the facts, we cannot withhold the acknowledgment
that he is inferior, in respect to historical trustworthiness and
freedom from so-called " tendency " influences, to the writer of
Kings. But we do not thereby depreciate the increased oppor
tunity afforded us by the Book of Chronicles for obtaining a
substantially valid history of ancient Israel. As we have al
ready seen, the -n-pwrov tj/evBos, historically considered, of Graf,
Kuenen, and all their followers, consists in this : they make use
of the variety of material afforded them for positively construct
ing a history of ancient Israel, only to destroy the possibUity of
such a history. This they appear to do, not so much because
of the discrepancies which exist in the materials, as because of
their predetermination to reject as untrustworthy all the mate
rials which partake largely of the Hebrew belief in the super
natural. We do no violence to the spirit of the biblical claims, as
made for the historians of Sacred Scripture, when we consider
these historians as subject to all the imperfections and limita
tions belonging to any writer of those times who dealt, in the
manner of the times, with such kinds of materials. In other
words, the claims of the writers are not lodged in, or entangled
with, the perfect historical accuracy of all that they record.
Even in the case of that most important history of the Ike and
discourses of our Lord to which his promises of divine assist
ance for the memory especially apply, the same truth holds
good. For it is not historical accuracy in detaUs which is
included in the promise of Christ to his apostles. Indeed, it
is not so much the mere facts as the meaning, ethical and reli
gious, of the facts, to which his promise chiefly applies. It cer
tainly does not embrace a claim for the perfect historical accu-

CONFIRMATION OF THE HISTORICAL CLABIS. 725
racy of those who, at the second remove from the apostles,
wrote down the traditions of his life. His promises do, how
ever, involve the claim, in the behalf of those apostles, to recall
by divine assistance the substance of the acts and teaching of
their Lord, and to understand these acts and this teaching in
thek fuller import up to the point of comprehending in its ful
ness the great truth revealed in them.
Concerning this entire class of claims, we can assert with
confidence that critical and historical research does not contra
dict, but rather confirms them. There are certain entire books
of the Bible, and certain passages of other books, however,
whose apparent claims to even substantial historical accuracy
such research either modifies or disproves. But these eases do
not affect the verdict which must be rendered in behalf of
the biblical Mstories at large. The Bible gives us a substan
tially true Instory of the progress of divine self-revelation in
Israel, of the life, discourses, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, and of the founding of the Christian Church. And this
— accepting its "claims as a whole, and regarding them in their
spirit and intent, rather than in the case of certain special and
exceptional examples, like the Book of Esther and the historical
chapters of Daniel — is what the Bible assumes to do. What
it assumes to do by its histories, that it really and in good faith
accompUshes : so much we can conclude after the most thorough
criticism of its historical contents. It fulfils its implied prom
ises, indeed, with a wide range as respects the amount and
limits of its historical accuracy. The history of the kingdom
of God in Israel, like all human history, arises from the mists
of antiquity. It emerges into clearer and yet clearer detail
of outline. But all the while we may be sure that the Dis
poser of history is both the guide of its events, and the guard
ian of thek record. The historical accuracy is sufficient to
allow of the biblical history being what it chiefly claims to
be, viz., the vehicle for those ethical and religious verities,
both of fact and of doctrine, which God has thus given to men.
In the use of our superior means for the critical study of the
history which they uncritically recorded, we can confirm by
this record these important verities, while modifying our views
as to the nature of many of the events in which the verities
were made manffest.
Another class of claims, nearly allied to the foregoing, and
yet not so purely historical, are more difficult of adjustment

726 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
with the apparently valid results of modern research. Such
claims concern the nature and origin of the Mosaic law, —
more particularly of certain portions of the Middle Books of
the Pentateuch. They are, therefore, closely allied with the
views which the later Hebrew writers held as to the authorship
of the Torah, and of the books which contain it. In the view
of these later writers, this Torah was revealed in detaU to the
inspired person Moses, at different periods of his history, and
therefore with different historical setting ; and it was revealed
in the form of concrete institutions, enactments, or transac
tions of a legal kind. The constant formula for the historical
announcement of the appearance of any of these institutions,
enactments, or transactions, is the following : " The Lord spake
unto Moses, saying," — or some equivalent for this formula.
In such cases an etbico-religious doctrine as to the divine origin
of the Torah is blended with an historical opinion as to the
circumstances in the midst of which some one section of this
Torah originated, and as to the recipient or scribe of such a
section. In other words, the ethical and religious truth, that
the Torah of Israel was a divine gift to the nation, is repeatedly
stated in the form of an historical opinion, that, at given times
and under given circumstances, God revealed the several por
tions of it through Moses. This statement of times and cir
cumstances is essentially an historical opinion. The question
arises at once, In what manner did it become known to the
writer that the several portions of the Torah called Mosaic
were revealed to Moses, at precisely such alleged times, and
under such alleged circumstances? If these historical state-,
ments were all of them made by Moses himself, or by any of
his contemporaries or immediate successors to whom he had
himself confided the truth, they would, of course, have the
historical value of statements made at first hand. But we have
already seen that the composite nature, not only of the Penta
teuch as containing the record of the Torah in its widest
circuit, but also of that Torah itself when regarded as an
aggregate of legal institutions, enactments, and transactions,
is as well established by modern criticism as any truth of such
a nature can well be. Moreover, these very statements, " The
Lord spake unto Moses, saying," etc., as well as the contents
of law and history which follow them, seem in not a few cases
to bear the marks of a date much later than the age of Moses.
We are obliged, then, to press the inquiry. On what grounds

THE FACTS OF HISTORY NOT REVEALED. 727
can the later writers base their historical opinion that such
and such contents of the Torah were actually revealed to
Moses at the times and under the circumstances which they as-
sig-ned to them?
In reply to the question raised above, several answers are
conceivable : but only one can be rendered probable in the
light of all the analogies ; and, of course, only one can be true.
Let it be steadfastly kept in mind, that, when a writer of a
later generation asserts that any portion of the Torah was
revealed to ¦ Moses at a certain period in history and under
certain definite circumstances, he makes an assertion which is
liistorical, and is therefore subject to the tests of accurate his
tory. Now, it is possible to affirm that information upon such
a fact of accurate history might be imparted by divine revela
tion : the later writer might be informed in a purely supernat
ural way, that, at such times and under such circumstances, a
certain portion of the Torah had been, centuries since, revealed
to Moses. Such a form of revelation would be the definite
imparting from God of a definite historical truth, which the
writer would have no means of knowing, and no means of ver
ifying, outside of the revelation itself. But certainly, if such
revelations were made as to particulars in the history of the
origin of; the Mosaic Torah, they are quite unique as examples
of even bibUcal history. I^or we have seen no other proof that
the writers of this history did not get their materials in the
very form in which they either openly or implicitly assert that
they got them : they got them, that is to say, in the form of
previous written sources, of oral tradition, and of eye-and-ear
witnesses. In the case of the Gospel history, the one Evangel
ist who writes most self-consciously, and who gives us most
information as to his method, openly asserts this truth regard
ing himself. The Apostle John bases his knowledge upon
memory and observation. We should certainly need consid
erable evidence to convince us that Providence has suffered
the history of Jesus Christ and of the founding of the Chris
tian Church to submit to the necessary conditions of human
historical composition, but has given by direct revelation all
the otherwise unknown items as to the history of the Mosaic
Torah. Moreover, it is very difficult to see how the divine purposes
of revelation could be accomplished by the making known of
bistorical facts to an uninformed author. The very nature

728 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of revelation seems to require, that, when it concerns historical
facts, it should be made upon the basis of such facts as are
already known in the historical way. What purports to be a
definite history of the past, when given forth to men on a claim
to have received it by revelation from God, is quite too uncer
tain and ideal an affair to form a basis for more purely moral
and religious truth. A similar theory, in its attempt to account
for the Mosaic cosmogony as a product of prophecy looking
backwards, quite breaks down. To discern the ethical and
religious meaning of past facts, and to anticipate the course
of history in sb far as it is the working-out of ethical and
religious elements, — these are gifts of prophecy. But where
do we find the historians of the Bible claiming to know the
definite events of the past by divine revelation ? WhUe, then,
we should not venture to pronounce such a method of arriving
at the truths of history abstractly impossible, we have no hesi
tation in saying, that, as a matter of fact, there are no authenti
cated examples of it in Sacred Scripture. And nothing else
would more surely destroy all prospect of permanent confidence
in the history of the Bible than to find its authors claiming
to liave had the events of the past revealed to them. The
most uncritical summary of meagre records and traditions
would inevitably command more permanent confidence and
respect than such a claim as this. To base a knowledge of the
facts of revelation upon another revelation, made to the writer
who recorded the facts, could never be the method of founding
the kingdom of God in actual human history.
Moreover, the existence in later writers of claims to give by
revelation the detailed history of the origin of the Mosaic Torah
would not relieve us from our embarrassments : on the contrary,
it would rather increase them. For these embarrassments do
not arise from a lack of such claims : they arise rather from the
abundance of facts which would seem to contradict such claims.
All the facts which historical and critical research has elicited
to show that the Mosaic Torah, in its complete form and as we
have it left on record, is an historic growth, would be adverse to
such claims. The claims would need, then, to be supported by
such a demonstration of the infallibility of the biblical writers
in all matters of history and criticism as would be strong and
complete enough to sustain the immense weight of counter evi
dence. But how could such a demonstration be, of itself, ac
complished ? It cannot be assumed as a necessity of faith, that

HISTORICAL INFALLIBILITY NOT DEMONSTRABLE. 729
the later Hebrew writers must know all the historical facts with
regard to the origin of their national Torah. It cannot be in
ferred from the claims of these writers, that they are infallible
in their historical statements or assumptions ; for they make no
claims which wUl serve as legitimate points of starting for such
an inference. The historical infallibility of the writers must,
then, be demonstrated, if at all, by historical and critical re
searches : it must be shown, as a matter of fact, that these
writers are correct when they affirm that the different portions
of the Torah were revealed, at such definite times and under
such definite circumstances, to Moses. But this is the same
kind of evidence which we seem to have for asserting, in a con
siderable number of instances, precisely the contrary.
It follows, then, that any historical statements which the later
hands, who labored in completing the record of the Mosaic
Torah, made regarding the origin of that Torah, must be tested
by critical and historical researches. When it is said, "The
Lord spake unto Moses saying," an historical statement is made
to lend its form to an ethical and religious doctrine. Such a
statement may fitly be subjected to all the tests of accurate
history. It is a question of fact, whether or not any given
section of the Mosaic Torah came into existence at a particular
date and under certain particular circumstances.
In the case of the Law of Moses, certain important historical
clauns are, then, more or less modified or abrogated by historical
and critical researches. The only escape from this conclusion
is the assumption, either that all these parts of the Pentateuch
are Mosaic in origin, or else that all the claims of its later
authors and redactors are historically infallible. But neither of
these claims can in any way be established without historical
and critical researches ; and to either of them such researches
are decidedly unfavorable.
There is, however, an important choice as to the manner in
which such bibUcal claims shall be modified. The conclusions
of certain critics oblige us to regard these claims as almost
wholly of late origin, spurious, and, indeed, largely designed to
foist into the meagre ancient records of the Torah the recent
ritualism and ecclesiastical order enacted by the writers them
selves. The phrase, " The Lord spake unto Moses, saying,"
then becomes an expression of the design to give to certain late
enactments the authority of an ancient name ; and the historical
setting of the enactments becomes a manufactured framework.

730 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
in which the ideal picture of what might or should have been
is set. The reasons which prevent our acceptance of such crit
ical conclusions regarding the Mosaic Torah have already been
given. It should be noticed in this connection, however, that
such conclusions almost inevitably involve the sacrifice of other
claims of the biblical writers more important than any mere
claims to historical fidelity. It is quite possible, abstractly
considered, that the divine revelation of the Law might have
continued through the post-Exilian period, might even have
flourished in that period beyond all others. Why might not
God reveal ethical and religious truth to Ezra as well as to
Moses ; and that, too, in the form of legal institutions and en
actments? We cannot affirm that he might not. What we
know of the age of Ezra tends of itself, however, to convince us
that no such revelation took place. Perhaps we ought also
decidedly to hesitate before we affirm that certain contents of a
law revealed from God could not be given in forms that partake
so largely of pious fraud. We have already refused unquali
fiedly to affirm that the Fourth Gospel could not contain a sub
stantially true view of the life and person of Christ as revealed
to an inspired mind, even if it were not written by the Apostle
John. In the cases of Deuteronomy and Daniel, we have found
later writers assuming to speak in the name of men of earlier
generations, and in their name to communicate ethical and
religious truth; and yet we are not able to say precisely to
what extent they give us historically accurate representations
of the deeds and teachings of those earlier men in whose name
they speak. Again, in the ease of the New Testament, we
should not feel compelled to deny that the ethical and religious
truth of Second Peter or of the Pastoral Epistles could be truth
of revelation, received through inspired minds, because the gen
uineness of the former is very doubtful, or because it is hard to
find a place in the life of Paul for the latter.
But the case of the Middle Books of the Pentateuch is in
some respects different from any of the above-mentioned cases.
An elaborate, manifold, and continuous attempt to fabricate the
contents of these books, and to foist them into earlier legal
writings, is necessarily assumed in the theories of those who
assign the books to the post-Exilian period. Moreover, this at
tempt is the result of action on the part of a class : it manufac
tures a course of history in which to set its manufactured laws.
It does not simply represent IVIoses as giving a hortatory and

SPECIAL CASE OF THE MOSAIC TORAH. 731
rhetorical version of a law which is honestly accepted as com
ing from him, and is known for substance to be on record in
ancient documents and usages. It does not simply represent
Moses as enforcing for the present generation the moral and
religious truth whicli was actually beUeved to have come from
him. It largely hypothecates an entire system of laws, and
also a course of history, within the details of which it arbitrarily
disposes these laws.
In the view of such a theory as the foregoing, it is extremely
difficult, if not impossible, to regard the so-called Mosaic Torah
in its completeness as being in any sense of divine nature and
origin. It is difficult, that is, not to deny in toto both its own
claims and those made for it by Christ and the apostles. For
the ethical and religious claims of the Mosaic Torah seem, with
in certain limits, to involve a different view of its nature and
origin. It is, indeed, also difficult to say at precisely what
point, if any, the critical and historical questions of the manner
of its origin become inextricably involved with the ethical and
religious questions of its revelation and inspiration. Again we
aver that we do not admit the claim so persistently made by
Kuenen ; viz., that his own critical opinions as to the date of
the Mosaic writings are irreconcUable with the supernaturalistic
view of the origin and nature of the Mosaic Torah. Again,
however, do we also aver the very plain fact, that the reconcile
ment of these opinions with the supernaturalistic view seems
especially difficult.
We have a right, then, to demand of critical and historical
research some very plain evidences for the validity of critical
opinions which it is so difficult to reconcile with an important
dogmatic view, received in part on the testimony of Christ and
the apostles. To demand this is simply to ask for evidence
which in quality and amount is competent to serve as a proper
basis for the opinion which is demanded of us. The opinion
that the legal contents and writings of the Middle Books of the
Pentateuch are largely the result of pious fraud in the post-
ExUian era has no such evidence to offer. We have not found
proof that the claims involved in the quasi-hi&toYical statement,
"The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, " were largely made with
the knowledge that the statement is a mistaken one.
But, on the other hand, it cannot be admitted that the claims
made for the writings of the Torah are all historically and criti
caUy accurate: it cannot be admitted that the later writers

732 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
stated an historical truth whenever they represented a particu
lar section of this Torah as revealed at a given time, and under
given circumstances, to the person Moses. In proof of any such
statement they could have had only such evidence, satisfactory
to themselves, as belonged to their times and circumstances.
It does not follow that the same evidence would justify us in
making the same statement. Precisely what the evidence was
in each particular case, we shall never know ; for to know this
evidence we must be able to reconstruct the history of Israel in
all its details precisely as it occurred. But to reconstruct the
history in its details, we should require far more of contempora
neous records than these historians themselves ever possessed.
We can, however, in some general and indefinite way form a
very probable opinion as to what was the state of the case.
The opinion which seems to us most probable is that which has
already been given in considering the Mosaic Torah, and the
Hebrew legal writings which contain it, as a composite historic
growth. Let us, then, suppose one of these later workmen upon the
legal writings of Mosaism to be engaged in his work. He
receives these writings as they have been left by earlier work
men. His written sources consist, then, of larger and smaller
documents, for the most part legal, but also in part historical.
In addition to such written records of the past, he finds certain
legal customs, enactments, and institutions, which represent in
concrete form the Torah of his own day. To him the whole
of this material constitutes the one law, — the Torah called by
the name of Moses, and perpetuallj^ regarded by the nation as
revealed by God to the one great lawgiver among their ances
tors. So truly did this Torah become, in the mind of the pious
Hebrew, the universal solvent of all customs, institutions, and
enactments, that- each custom, institution, and enactment is
scarcely established by one generation before it is regarded by
the next as part of the one Law of Moses. The Torah is a
living and organic whole : it grows by assimilation of all the
elements upon which it can lay hold. The Torah is a perpetual
voice from God, — sounding to the nation from antiquity in the
name of his servant Moses, and gathering to itself all the sepa
rate voices which speak from the succeeding centuries. But
the scribe of the Torah must receive the Torah as he finds it,
— one law in several members. It is his work, in part,' to give
it more ^f that express organic unity which he, in common witlj

SPECIAL CASE OF THE MOSAIC TORAH. 733
all the others, regards as really belonging to it. And as the
law grows, the book of the law, following not far behind, grows
also. In addition to the more distinctively legal records of tho
previous national life, there are those which are more distinct
ively historical; the latter records are also the inheritance
and possession of the scribe of the Torah. Such records are,
to a large extent, the history of how Jehovah dealt with his
people in founding and executing the Torah. But the two
convictions — viz., that the law is one and of Mosaic origin,
and that the history of Israel is a narrative of the dealings of
Jehovah with Israel on the basis of a law which is a covenant —
cannot remain apart. The very process of unifying leads to the
presentation of the Mosaic Torah in those historical relations
in the midst of which it was supposed to have been enacted.
And doubtless the more definite fixing of such historical rela
tions was itself, like the law and its record, and like the history
and its record, a matter of growth. Some of these relations
might be fixed on the authority of ancient written sources,
others on the authority of concurrent or undisputed traditions,
stUl others by the conjecture of the writer himself.
In some such way as the foregoing does historical and criti
cal research seem to compel us to picture to ourselves the pro
cess in which the writings of the Pentateuch combined their
ethical and religious doctrine of the nature and origin of the
Mosaic Law with incorrect historical opinions as to the times
and circumstances of its separate enactments. The validity of
the ethical and religious doctrine, in that understanding of it
which we have already defended as the teaching of Christ and
the apostles, we find no reason in historical and critical re
search to retract: the historical opinions touching the'^times
and circumstances, we must modify according to the evidence
furnished by such research.
With the exceptions and limitations which have been made
either in this chapter or in preceding chapters, we can assert
that the claims of the Bible to historical veracity are fully
maintained by a scientific treatment of its historical contents.
Besides the more purely historical claims, those that concern
the authorship of the books are the claims with respect to which
the biblical writers receive most important corrections from
modern critical researches. The claim to historical and critical
knowledge concerning the date and authorship of ancient writ
ings nowhere appears in Sacred Scripture. Many of its most

734 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
important books are left entirely without any claim, direct or
indirect, concerning either their date or their authorship. In
other cases, however, an ancient writing is assigned to some
ancient author on the authority of a later writer. This appears
to be the case with those portions of the Pentateuch, the writ
ing of which is ascribed to the hand of Moses. In all such cases
the general rule seems to hold true : The testimony of the later
biblical writer as to the authorship of an earlier writing is to
be taken for what it appears to be worth when examined in the
light of critical and historical research. It never appears that
the means by which any later writer assumed to know the truth
concerning the authorship of an earlier writing were extraor
dinary, not to say supernatural. Ancient superscriptions, com
mon report, or conjecture, furnished means which were deemed
abundant. The modification or correction of such an indirect
claim of the Bible by the doubts or discoveries of modern criti
cism does not affect any of its more direct and important claims.
Decidedly more serious, however, is the case of those doubt
ful claims to a particular authorship which are either implied
or expressed within the contents of a writing, and which belong
to the author himself. But serious as such a case may appear
to be, we cannot a priori affirm that no pseudonymous writing
exists in the Canon of either the Old or the New Testament.
On the contrary, we have already had our attention called to
a very few instances of this kind. The fact that such instances
are so rare, when considered in connection with the fact that
the Bible is generally so sparing of all kinds of claims, accords
with our favorable view of the complete honesty of its books.
We have already seen how the writer of Deuteronomy wished
to be understood in making Moses speak to the people, and how
substantially true was his claim that Moses did speak to them
in the words of the later writer. We have also seen that the
most important case of alleged pseudonymous writing — viz.,
the Fourth Gospel — can successfully vindicate its claim to be
the work of the Apostle John. For certain other books of the
New Testament, and notably for Second Peter, Jude, James,
Second and Third John, by no means so clear a case can be
made out. Nor can we Aenj that difficulties encompass the
acceptance of the claims, with respect to their own authorship,
which are made within the Pastoral Epistles. In the case of
Daniel, the decision of criticism is decidedly adverse to its claims.
But all these cases, in which a fair consideration of the evidence

THE ESSENTIAL CLAIMS CONFIRMED. 735
of criticism and history demands either a suspension of judg
ment or a decision adverse to the claims, do not necessitate a
change in our inductive theory of Sacred Scripture. We can
not deny that ethical and religious truth may be revealed, in
certain times and circumstances, through pseudonymous litera
ture. The biblical writers in general attribute the biblical
writings to their alleged authors in genuine good faith; but
criticism, on the ground of new and different evidence, may
either accept or reject the ancient opinions. The opinions
themselves are not such that revelation and inspiration can be
claimed for them : they are not put forth in connection with
such a claim.
But, after making the foregoing exceptions, which are applica
ble to certain implicit and unessential claims of Sacred Scripture
touching its own nature and origin, we may rely with all the
more confidence upon its other more express and essential
claims. Of such essential claims, every one is either left un
touched, or else greatly strengthened, by all legitimate critical
and historical research. The conclusions arrived at in the
separate chapters of the second division of our work confirm
the claims which were summarized in the last paragraphs of
the preceding division. For the detailed proof of this impor
tant assertion, each of these chapters has already made its own
response. But a brief exhibit of the nature and extent of the
proof is in place at this point.
That aU the essential claims (both direct and indirect) of the
biblical books, to give the means for a substantially true and
sufficiently accurate history of the kingdom of redemption ki
Jesus Christ, are verified by historical and critical research,
we confidently affirm. The amount of accuracy which is neces
sary to substantial truth, the amount of inaccuracy and, even
of unhistorical matter in the form of historical narrative which
is compatible with such truth, cannot be determined a priori.
We make the above statement, however, on the basis of an
examination of aU the important facts concerned. The Bible
undoubtedly claims to be a record of the historic process of
divine self-revelation : it cannot, therefore, make good one of
its most essential claims without being essentially historical.
And yet we do not simply assert that it must be substantially
true history : we say, on the basis of careful researches, that it
is so. But we can neither say that it must be, nor that it actu
ally is, a record perfectly accurate and free from all elements

736 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
of uncertain tradition, partial and faulty information, mistaken
apprehension of historical facts, or even cases of conjectural and
idealized narratives of alleged facts. To what extent any such
elements have entered into it, and either mar or vitiate its per
fect historical accuracy, we can only pronounce as the result of
historical and critical research. As one most important result
of such research, we are able to maintain that these elements
have not entered into Sacred Scripture to such an extent as to
refute its more direct and important claims.
Both the claims and the phenomena of the Bible, when con
sidered in their widest extent and most important relations,
enable us, therefore, to make the following statement as to
what the Bible reaUy is. The Bible is the record, substantiaUy
true and sufficiently accurate, of the history of that process of
divine self-revelation and redemption which culminates in Jesus
Christ. This record is made up from sources which are so an
cient, and so well preserved and faithfuUy handled, as to give us
a substantially true knowledge of the origins as well as progress
of this process. Both as to the origins of the preparatory process
in Jewish history, and as to the origins of the process of fulfil
ment in Christ, we have substantially true knowledge. The
clearness and extent of our knowledge in the two grand stages
of this process are, however, very different ; and the superiority
of clear and accurate knowledge is precisely where we most
need it, — that is, with the later stage.
Do such affirmations as the foregoing seem of little importance
to any mind that at all appreciates the long and difficult course
of examination which is indispensable ip order intelligently and
confidently to make them ? Do the claims of the Bible as to
its own history, when thus explained and re-affirmed, seem of
relatively little importance? Does it appear quite unworthy
of so much effort at thorough and candid research, to be able to
affirm only this? Let him who is inclined to answer these
questions by a speedy and unqualified " Yes," pause long, and
weigh well his one word of answer. Let him rather conclude,
that, if the Bible could substantiate only this claim, it would
be incomparably the grandest and most important collection of
books. Nay, more : this claim is precisely the most important
of all the claims winch can possibly be made and substantiated
for the biblical books. Nothing else is so important for the per
petuation and future growth of the kingdom of redemption as a
substantially true record of the process of its founding and early

THE BIBLE A RECORD OF FACTS. 737
growth. For this kingdom is essentially and pre-eminently an
historic affair. It is not a bundle of speculative ideas ; it is not
a growth of ideal origin and nature. It is emphatically a series-
of stupendous and correlated facts. No discourses of Jesus him
self, no explanations or exhortations (in themselves considered)
of the Apostle Paul, no profound and mystical contents of
Johannean faith, are so important as the facts which underlie
them all. Jesus Christ is an historical verity : the facts of his
presence, his life, his death, are the matters of primary concern
ment and peerless value. His relations with Old-Testament
religion, its history, its predictions, its ethico-religious truths,
are historical facts. And this Old-Testament religion, with
which he places himself in such relations, is pre-eminently an
historical affak. However misty are its historical origins, how
ever doubtful are the precise arrangements which we must
make of many of its principal facts, the religion, in all that
ckcuit of truth within which these relations of Jesus are com
prised, is an historical fact. If, then, we know the most central
and important facts on the authentic record of the Bible, and on
that alone, the value of the book to us as a simple record can
only be measured by the magnitude of the facts.
Let us consider briefly the question : What could be the con
ceivable nature of revealed religion, without a record of facts ?
The briefest consideration convinces us, that either the whole
nature of revelation must be essentiaUy changed, or else a
record of its historic process must somehow be preserved. To
be sure, the fact of ultimate and supreme importance is the fact
of revelation itself. But the very nature of revelation, if it is
to take the form of an historic process, is such as to demand
a record of that process. The foundations of Christianity are
historically laid ; they are laid in such manner that its origin
could not have been secured without centuries of previous
history which had somehow preserved itself in records of the
past. For us, Christianity must ever remain largely a matter
of recorded history. The record, we say yet again, is to have
its value, as a simple record, measured by the magnitude of
the facts which it records. Moreover, between the record of the
reUgion in its founding, and the religion as a life, there exist
many important relations, to which we shaU recur more in
detaU in other connections.
But this one important result of an induction which has
taken into account both the historical claims and the historical
VOL. L ^ •*¦

738 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
contents of Sacred Scripture must be supplemented by still
other results.
The Bible claims to be somewhat more than a history of the
process of divine self-revelation and redemption : it makes certain
very direct and important claims concerning its ethico-religious
truths. These claims are, indeed, most intimately connected
with the foregoing. The most fundamental of its ethico-reli
gious truths are given to the world as they are embodied in
facts of history. But the claims authoritatively to bring before
men such ethico-religious truths extend far beyond the simple
claim to contain a true history of the process of revelation and
redemption. There are many claims in Sacred Scripture to
bring before men the truths of revelation; e.g., in prophecy
with its element of prediction, in law with its ideal contents
of absolute righteousness, in the more purely doctrinal and
more nearly speculative portions, in practical exhortations,
rebukes, encouragements, and manifold means of chastening
and building up the religious life, in various appeals to the
experiences of that life. Such claims, in the sense and with
the limitations to which abundant reference has already been
made, are all verified by the phenomena of the Bible, even as
seen under the light of the most penetrating historical and
critical research. Both the claims and the contents agree in
their testimony that the Bible contains elements of ethical and
religious truth which have been revealed to inspired minds;
and which, when interpreted in the due order of revelation
and of their relations to the most central truth, both constitute,
and are comprised in, the historic process of divine self-revela
tion. In other words, the Bible both claims to be, and really
is, not simply a record of divine revelation and redemption in
its historical elements, but also a vehicle which conserves and
conveys to men many different divine words, or communica
tions of truth divinely revealed. And if we conceive of all
these separate words, or communications of truth, as in some
sort unified about the central truth, and therefore as capable
of being called by a common title, then we may say that the
Bible claims to contain, and actually does contain, the veritable
Word of God.
The more complete statement and discussion of the doctrine
of the Sacred Scriptures as containing the Word of God, and
the more detailed consideration of the relations in which it thus
stands to the Christian consciousness and to the whole system

CLAIMS OF THE ETHICO-RELIGIOUS CONTENTS. 739
of Christian truth, will occupy us farther on. But a certain
doctrine of the Bible, as containing the Word of God, may be
said to have been already inductively established by the agree
ment of its claims with its phenomena.
It has already been proved that the one claim of the teachers
and writers of the Bible, which is most generally applicable to
its writings, is a claim that arises from the nature of its con
tents. More particularly, this claim is the claim that certain
contents of the Bible are eternal truths of religion, which
were received by revelation through inspked minds. The
claim applies to certain contents of Mosaism and Prophetism,
and especially to those contents of Christian truth which
apostles and apostolic men claimed to receive by revelation
and inspkation from God. In the wider meaning of the term,
these contents are all ethico-religious : they are such, not as
separated from the other classes of contents, but rather as per
vading the other contents, and as being embodied in them.
Similar claims are enforced by the teaching both of prophets
and apostles; they are authenticated absolutely by the word
of Christ himself. They are, moreover, either verified or left
untouched by all merely critical and historical researches.
Whether such contents be given in the particular form of law,
prophecy, miracle, doctrine, exhortation, or expression of expe
rience, they in each form bear the marks of their origin through
revelation given to inspired minds.
But even the ethico-religious contents are neither all alike
important, nor all alike verifiable and unmixed with erroneous
formal and material elements. They do not, however, claim to
be what they are not. Indeed, taking the Bible in its largest
circuit, it is itself our best guide in distinguishing what Christ
has bidden us to distinguish; viz., in distinguishing between
the absolute and permanent, and the fallible and changeable.
The total record of Sacred Scripture is designed to furnish us
with the means of seeing how the shadowy half-truth gave way
to more exact and eternal truth; the typical, to its realization ;
the imperfect and transitory, to its complete fulfilment in
Christ. Such is, in part, the truth which underlies the declara
tion (often perverted) that the Bible is its own interpreter.
Each separate part of the process of divine self-revelation must
be considered in its relations to the whole. And the necessity
of discriminating is even more imperative with respect to the
ethico-religious contents of the Bible than with respect to its

740 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
history. Each stage in the process must be considered in the
light of the final result. The demand that the critic shall
thus consider the alleged elements of revealed ethical and
religious truth is not a demand simply for respect and rever
ence : it is also a demand for fairness, intelligence, and insight.
When thus fairly and inteUigently considered in its relations
to the entire process, and in the light of its final purpose, the
true nature of each moment or increment of truth (so to speak)
is most clearly apparent. Each one partakes of two sets of
characteristics, which may be called the absolute or perfect, and
the relative or imperfect ; each one partakes both of the natural
and human, and also of the supernatural and divine. The
means of testing the characteristics, and so of distinguishing
the divine from the human, are generously furnished, however,
by the Bible itself. When considered in its complete compass,
Sacred Scripture corrects its own errors in ethical and reUgious
matters, supplements its own deficiencies, and warns and
guards against its own mistakes.
The truth of the foregoing statements might be iUustrated
by an examination of all those portions of Sacred Scripture by
which its ethical and religious verities are conveyed to the
mind. Such verities are conveyed by the biblical form of
the cosmogony, and by the bibUcal view of the origin and
nature of the human race. The very progress of revelation
throws off some of the formal errors which belonged to the
earlier statement of the verities: others of them it is left for
modern science, centuries after the biblical books were finished,
to discover and correct. But the essential truths concerning
the relations of man to nature, of man and nature to the super
natural, and of the origin of both man and nature, remain the
same throughout all time. These truths are truths of revela
tion : they are truths which man knows only as they are made
known to him by God. They are also pre-eminently truths of
biblical revelation ; because in the Bible alone do we find them
in their purity, at so remote an antiquity, and in true relations
to human history and to the other contents of revelation.
Moreover, the germinal truths of a divine covenant for the
redemption of man are given by revelation as lodged within
certain half-truths or mistakes concerning the phenomena and
second causes of nature. But it is not concerning the phe
nomena and the second causes of nature that the Bible is
chiefly interested or fitted to teach.

THE CORRECTIVE OF THE BIBLE ITSELF. 741
In like manner does the process of revelation, as recorded
in the Bible, correct and clarify the biblical conceptions and
statements as to miracles and prophecy. The biblical concep
tions of the miracle and of prophecy come to their highest and
absolute form in the teaching of the New Testament, as that
teaching is concentrated in the words and work of Jesus
Christ. It does not follow, however, that relatively imperfect
conceptions and faulty records may not have their necessary
place in the entire course of divine self-revelation. And, in
the case of both miracle and prophecy, we behold in the record
of revelation a nearer and yet nearer approach to the perfect
conception. The merely physical excitement and excesses,
the swarming in schools under a common and lower impulse,
which characterized prophecy in its earlier stages, become in
the later stages of relatively little account. The tendency to
look upon the miracle as a mere wonder gives place to the feel
ing which regards it as the natural characteristic (so to speak)
of Him who is the ideal of God's servant, to do all works of
grace upon the bodies and souls of men. But as long as man
remains both body and soul, and as long as nature and God
stand in the relations which necessarily belong to them, the
permanent and essential elements of such biblical conceptions
wUl remain unchanged. It is especially true of prediction, that
each separate element must be considered in its relations to the
whole process of revelation, and in the light of its final result.
If we could properly consider the biblical predictions as iso
lated attempts to foretell precisely what will in the future take
place, we should be compeUed to pronounce many of them
quite false and misleading. But looked at in the light of the
divine intent, as shown by that which is their real fulfilment,
they may confidently be affirmed to have had their origin in
the Spirit of all revelation, who forms the anticipatory ideas
and typical judgments of prophecy within the hearts and minds
which he inspires.
That the Bible is, and does, what has been briefly described
above, is precisely that which the biblical claims may be summed
up as affirming. This is also precisely that which the phenome
na of the Bible confirm. Both claims and phenomena accord in
the conclusion that the writings of the Old and New Testaments
contain the record of those words of the Lord to Israel and to
the early Christian Church, which were revealed to his inspired
servants, and which, when considered in the unity that they

742 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
attain by their relations to one another and to their central
truth, constitute the 'Word of God in redemption to the entire
race of men.
Furthermore, the loftiest and most convincing claim which
the biblical writings can possibly make arises out of the relations
in which some of them stand to the person and work of Christ.
The Bible, then, is not simply the history of that process of
founding the divine kingdom of redemption which culminated
in Christ ; it is not simply the record of those communications
of revealed moral and religious truths which, taken together,
constitute a word of God to men : but it is pre-eminently the
book which brings before us the true picture of the person and
work of Christ. In this statement we reach the very kernel of
its ethico-religious claims. This one pre-eminent claim is, in
deed, virtually included in the two preceding claims ; and yet
it needs separate recognition and statement on account of its
surpassing import. So far as the doctrine of the person and
work of Christ is lodged in the historical records of his Ufe, the
Bible brings this doctrine to us under the essential conditions
which belong to the formation and transmission of historical
records. So far as the doctrine is a result of the revelations
made to inspired apostles and other early disciples, it is subject
to the conditions which belong to all such revelations. But
inasmuch as this doctrine is the peculiar possession of the bib
lical writings, and is recognized as the very heart of all its
history and of all its revealed truths, it is most wonderfully and
effectively guaranteed and guarded by all the biblical phenome
na and all the biblical claims. By every critical token of true
history, we know the history of Christ in the New Testament
to be substantially true. By every token of revelation, we
know the essential truths concerning his person and work to be
truths of revelation. So far as the truths concerning Christ
have been given in Old-Testament prediction, we distinguish
between their formal and imperfect elements and the absolute
truths which these elements envelop and contain. We even
mark a progress of the truths revealed to the writers of the
New Testament regarding the essential nature of his person
and work. But with regard to the doctrine of that person and
work, the most searching criticism of the New-Testament writ
ings reveals no essential variation from one and the same
pattern of truths. The true norm and fruitful germ of this
doctrine are unmistakably furnished by the word of Christ him-

WITNESS OF THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 743
self. From this personal word of Christ concerning the person
of Christ, we find in the writings of the New Testament no im
portant departure. It is this doctrine of himself as the Christ,
which Christ taught his apostles in his personal work with
them, and into the fulness of which he promised that his Spirit
should lead them after his death. By his teaching and by his
promises, by the essential agreement of his inspired apostles
with all other disciples, by the concord of the history with the
doctrine, — in brief, by all the claims and all the phenomena
which are concerned in the case, — we know that we have iu
Sacred Scripture the very word of God regarding the person
and work of Jesus Christ. For this reason pre-eminently do
M'e speak of the Bible as sacred and inspired.
Moreover, in tlUs case the more objective tests and proofs of
verity are supplemented and confirmed by the more subjective.
For the truths of revelation, and pre-eminently the true doctrine
of the person and work of Jesus Christ, appeal to a certain
phase, or condition, of the consciousness of man. This phase is
the so-caUed religious consciousness: pre-eminently it is the
so-caUed Christian consciousness. Just as the historic and crit
ical sense, and the researches of those who have this sense, tests
and approves, or corrects, the historical claims and contents of
the biblical writings, so does the religious and especially the
Christian consciousness test and approve the ethico-religious
contents and claims of the same writings. That this conscious
ness in certain cases, especially of the Old Testament, corrects
the bibUcal claims, is precisely what it is empowered to do by
the same Spirit who communicates all the ethico-religious truths
of revelation. That in the case of the New Testament, and
especially in respect to the doctrine of the person and work
of Christ which is there taught, it only approves the biblical
claims, — this is both a proof and a result of the identity of the
Spirit in the Christian's soul and the Spirit in the book. But
upon this point we must not further anticipate conclusions
subsequently to be made.
Can it be that any reader' is inclined to complain of the mea
gre and unsatisfactory nature of those conclusions which have
been reached by an examination of the biblical claims and the
biblical phenomena ? Let such an one reflect upon the shallow
mgratitude, and sad lack of confidence in the divine wisdom,
which would characterize such a complaint. He has in the Bi
ble a substantially true and sufficiently accurate history of the

744 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
kingdom of redemption on earth ; he has a record of the truths
of a divine process of revelation, so complete and united as to
constitute an organic word of God to man; he has the true
doctrine of the person and work of the Redeemer Jesus Christy
— he has all this, and yet complains that he has not enough.
Without doubt, the fooUshness of God in providing only this is
as far above all human thoughts touching what God ought to
have done as the highest heaven is above the earth.
Certain more remote inferences as to the characteristics of
the Bible are also warranted upon the basis laid in the agree
ment of its claims with its phenomena. We may derive from
the previous exegetical and critical examination certain rudi
ments, at least, of an inductive theory of the unity, the infaUi
bility, and the inspiration, of Sacred Scripture.
What, then, is the view warranted by the previous induction
concerning the unity of Sacred Scripture ? The answer to this
inquiry may be made both negatively and affirmatively. That
this unity is not one of date, language, authorship, or specific
contents, there is no need to say. Judged both by the claims
of the Bible and by the tests of critical and historical science,
all the contents of Sacred Scripture are not alike excellent and
unimpeachable, or aUke intimately related to revelation and
inspiration. The various divisions of the gross contents of the
Bible which may be made and justified also clearly exhibit cer
tain particulars in which its unity cannot consist. The grand
division of the biblical writings into the Old and New Testa
ments corresponds to a great number of facts ; and these facts
include not only differences of language, date, and authorship,
but also differences of relation and grades of importance in the
contents themselves. The New Testament, when compared
with the Old, shows in respect to every class of contents per
haps as many points of unlikeness as of likeness. Its history
is, on the whole, more clear and authentic ; its prophecy is of a
more subdued tj^pe ; its miracles are far less affected with any
of the characteristics which belong to ordinary prodigies ; its
ethical and religious contents are of a higher and pre-eminent
kind. Moreover, its doctrine of the person and work of Jesus
Christ differences it from the Hebrew writings as substance from
shadow, or as an ideal realizing of the highest type from more
or less crude and imperfect preparatory types.
Within the Old Testament, moreover, we may break up
whatever unity its writings possess into the three main divisions

THE UNITY OF EACH TESTAMENT. 745
of Mosaism, Prophetism, and the Hokhmah. These tliree di
visions we find making different claims, standing in different
relations to the New Testament, and exhibiting quite diverse
phenomena. We find, besides, in the Old Testament, writings
historical, prophetic, and more distinctively ethical and religious :
we even find some writings which appear to have small claim
to any place in Sacred Scripture on account either of their
sacred history, their prophecy, or their ethical and religious
truth. And when we consider the different ways of dividing
the writings, as indicating the general estimate which must be
put upon thek place in the sacred records, and upon their uses
for the larger purposes of Sacred Scripture, we are obliged to
make other very plain distinctions in the apparent unity of the
Bible. The Prophecy, with its ethical and predictive elements ;
the Law, with its pedagogic uses and anticipatory cultus ; the
Psalms, with their relations to religious experience and religious
growth, — these are the chief parts of the Old-Testament Scrip
tures. With the exception of the Psalter, the writings of the
Hokhmah are only somewhat remotely connected with the true
centre of the Hebrew sacred writings : the claims of the Hokh
mah are little dwelt upon in either Old Testament or New.
The writings of the New Testament, both with respect to
those more external characteristics which criticism can discover
and appreciate, and also with respect to the more interior
characteristics of an ethical and religious kind, are a unity in a
stricter sense than those of the Old Testament. The history
of thek origin, with its more definite limitations of time and
circumstances and classes of authors, reveals many of the causes
of this unity. They were nearly all written within the same
half-century, in the same characteristic form of the Greek
language, and under the impressions of essentially the same
characteristic ideas. Yet even in the New Testament we find
several types of Christian truths, several views of Christ's per
son and work ; and we also find a progress of thought which
evinces the results of the reflection of various minds upon the
same circle of facts and truths. It cannot be denied that there
are some particulars in respect to which we can assert a corre
spondence with the essential unity of the New Testament only
after we have understood them somewhat differently from the
way in which they were understood by the writers themselves.
Nor is the division which we might introduce into this unity,
by speaking of the body of Gospels and the body of Epistles,

746 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
entirely without significance for our present purpose. This
division introduces the distinction between facts, which are
capable of different degrees of importance and of historic credi
bUity, and teachings which are given upon the basis of the facts,
but with different degrees of intimacy in relation to the princi
pal facts and with varying degrees of authority. And yet such
a distinction cannot be strictly carried out in the New-Testa
ment writings ; for the histories show abundant results of re
flection on the part of their writers, and the Epistles assume a
certain history as the motive for their exhortation, warning, in
struction, and advice. Whether, then, we consider the subject
from the critical point of view, or from that furnished by the
Christian consciousness, it is an undoubted fact that the New
Testament is a unity of a decidedly higher and stricter order
than the Old. Were we to sum up the difference between the
two in a word, we might say : "^^le Old Testament is a provi
dential unity, but the unity of the New Testament is theopneus
tic in the stricter sense.
But all the forms and degrees of diversity which a critical
examination shows to be actually present in the Bible do not
prevent a certain unity of Sacred Scripture. Indeed, it may be
said, that, the higher and more strictly organic the unity, the
greater the diversity of elements and energies which enter into
that unity. We cannot, however, hold any view of the unity of
Sacred Scripture which does not permit us to assign each part of
the whole to that position in which the examination shows it to
belong. We cannot justify any conception of an organic unity
of Sacred Scripture which abrogates a single one of the impor
tant distinctions already established by historical, critical, and
exegetical science. Such science shows that the different parts
of the Bible are not of like quality and value, whether for the
constructing of the history of revelation, or for the establishing
of doctrine, or for the building-up of the religious life.
Nevertheless, both the claims and the phenomena of the Bible
authenticate a certain doctrine of the unity of Sacred Scripture.
A certain unity, that is to say, may be inductively established
and defended by all the proofs appropriate to the subject. And
to the proof of biblical science the proof of Church history and
of Christian experience may be added. That the Church Cath
olic has in some sense agreed to regard the canonical writings
as constituting a unity, is an undoubted fact of the history.
That the impression of a certain unity in the biblical writings

NATURE OF THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 747
is made upon the religious mind, is a matter of common reli
gious experience. But, on the other hand, the history of the
formation of the Canon, and of the use which the Church Cath
olic has made of the sacred writings, gives emphasis also to the
fact of their diversity. Within the Canon of Sacred Scripture,
a considerable number of writings stand only on the border
line : it is even doubtful whether certain writings would have
been admitted into the Canon at all if mistaken views of their
nature and origin had not prevailed when they were canonized.
Still other writings stand within the Canon of a section of the
Christian Church, while they are, by a purer and more defensi
ble conception of Sacred Scripture, placed outside the Canon
by another section of the Church. Moreover, common Chris
tian experience emphasizes the differences as well as the unity
of the bibUcal writings.
Still further must it be admitted, that, from the very nature
of the case, no claims of the Bible itself can cover this subject
of the unity of Sacred Scripture. For, as a total collection of
books, the Bible makes no dkect claims for itself. We are
obUged, then, to resort to certain of the more indirect claims,
and to certain valid inferences from those elaims, in order to
discover the nature of the unity of Sacred Scripture. For a
description of the nature of this unity, the mention of the four
foUowing particulars will suffice.
The writings of the Bible have a certain unity which is due to
the unity of revelation itself. The essential unity of revelation
is an assumption of all faith, made on both philosophic and reli
gious grounds. Inasmuch as God, the source of all revealed
truth, is one and self-consistent, the various truths of his
revealing must be portions of one self-consistent truth. That
the Bible contains a body of facts and truths divinely commu
nicated to men, and set in the various forms of historj', law,
prophecy, doctrine, and the expression of experience, we have
ample reason to affirm. We have already reached the conclu
sion that this body of facts and truths constitutes so much of a
unity of divine communications of truth as to enable us to
affirm : The Bible brings to us the Word of God. It is frora
the unity of the revealed truth which it brings, that the Bible
derives, at least in part, the unity of its various writings. One
Spirit, the Spirit of revelation, moves through aU those writings
which convey the truths of revelation ; the movement of the
one Spirit articulates and organizes all the truths.

748 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
We notice, moreover, that the unkying effect of revelation
upon Sacred Scripture is exercised in a twofold manner, accord
ing as its influence is more or less immediate. There are some
writings, and portions of writkigs, which contain the truths of
revelation in the strictest sense and in the most immediate
form. Such are the writings which record and contain those
original communications of the divine mind and purpose made
to inspired men, which are truths of revelation in the strictest
sense. But such truths, when once lodged in the minds of
men, cannot subsequently lose their influence. Even after
they have become truths of record and of common acceptance,
they continue to shape the writings of contemporaneous and
subsequent times. The revelations which the authors of other
writings receive through, truths previously revealed are more
properly called secondary and mediate ; perhaps, in the strict
est and highest sense, they should not receive the name of reve
lations at all. Both original revelations and traditional re
vealed ideas have largely shaped the writkigs of Sacred Scrip
ture throughout. In the Old Testament, many of those parts
which are in their characteristics most remote from the truths
and ideas of original revelation have received an indirect im
press from them. Even Proverbs and the most untheocratic
portions of the historical writings have been indirectly reached
and shaped by truths and ideas, of revelation. Indeed, we can
speak of only a few portions of the canonical Hebrew writ
ings which exhibit no valid tokens of such influence. In the
New Testament we find the plain marks of revelation and
its influences, either immediate or mediate, from first to last.
With but few exceptions, then, we can say that the bibUcal
writings have a certain unity that is due to the unity of the
revelation which has, either immediately or mediately, pervaded
and shaped them throughout.
The writings of the Bible have also a certain unity which is
due to the unity of the Divine Spirit as a co-ordinating force
in history. In other words. Providence has, by directing and
combining the forces and materials of the history of Israel and
of the Christian Church, secured a certain unity to these Sacred
Scriptures. Such a statement is a legitimate inference from
some of the most indubitable and important elaims of the Old
Testament , it is also virtually involved in the promises made
by Christ to his apostles. But the same statement can be
enforced in detail by reference to all the various orders of the

NATURE OF THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 749
bibUcal phenomena. All the phenomena of the biblical writ
ings exhibit the historical connections of one writing with
another, and of each portion of each writing with a certain
historical unity. The Pentateuch is an historical unity because
it is an historical growth ; it is a single result because the sepa
rate parts were subjected to the conditions of several centuries
of history as all those conditions are secured and controlled
by God in history. By historical forces working together to
accomplish a plan, and therefore working in a superior kind
of unity, this literary growth attained its present unity. The
whole historical process has itself been unified by the divine
idea, which has given it a final purpose ; this process has uni
fied the writings which have resulted from the process. The
same unifying force is apparent, although in less degree, in
other writkigs of the Old Testament. Each one of these
writings is, in some large measure, not simply the product of
one author, but the child of history. Each individual historian
entered into an inheritance of previous records , each prophet,
as a writer of prophecy, stood in historical connections with
the previous works of his class. The unity of the history of
Israel, regarded as the result of a divine co-ordinating force,
gave a certain unity to the writings which sprung up under
the conditions of that history. In the case of the New Testa
ment, all the writings may be regarded as one jet or outburst
of certain forces in history that were manifestly made to co
operate according to a divine plan.
But the unity of Sacred Scripture which is secured by God
in history has yet other relations of more extended import.
Great ideas, impressions, and doctrines, concerning man, God,
and the kingdom of God, were transmitted from generation to
generation, and are seen growing along various historic lines.
To assert this is but to recur again to the great truth that the
divine self-revelation is given to man in an historical process.
What takes place in the literature of every nation took place
pre-eminently in that of Israel. The literature underwent a
certain course of historical development which secured a certain
unity to all the portions of the Uterature. What takes place in
any great epoch of surprising and sudden literary development
took place pre-eminently in the case of the New-Testament
literature. Great forces of history combined with the oppor
tunities offered by suitable individuals to produce a sudden
and matchless literary result. And, on the level of the lowest

750 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
considerations, whoever sees anywhere the unity of the divine
will carrying out a divine idea in the history of literature,
should certainly see pre-eminent proofs of this unity in the
literature of Israel and of the Christian Church. But even in
this one respect, the biblical literature is quite peculiar. For
there is abundant proof that many of the writers wrought with
more or less self-consciousness and intelligent conception of
their part in a common work, and that the later writers looked
upon the previous writings as constituting a peculiar kind of
unity. Moreover, the fact that the historical and literary unity
is itself due to a higher ethical and religious unity, can scarcely
be too much emphasized.
The unity of the writings of the Bible is further due to the
unity of the Divine Spirit, providentially securing and guiding
the formation of the Canon of Sacred Scripture. As co-operat
ing with this providential impulse and guidance, we must also
admit a work of the Divine Spirit in the consciousness of the
entire community of believers. The inspiration of the commu
nity of believers is, whatever form it may take, to be ascribed
to one and the same Spirit. The same spiritual influence which
impels to the production of Sacred Scripture also impels to its
collection and preservation. But the same imperfections and
limitations may surround and envelop the divine elements in
either case. The spiritual illumining which results in the pro
duction of sacred writings by certain members of the entire
community, results in their approbation, preservation, and ap
propriate estimate by other members of the same community.
In neither case is the process once for all guaranteed, or placed
beyond the power of subsequent investigators to detect its im
perfections and apparent failures. We have already seen that
the history of the Canon shows tokens of an Ulumining spirit
and a guiding hand. We cannot affirin a priori that Provi
dence will prevent all misjudgment and error with respect to
the testing and collecting of sacred writings by the Church.
But we can affirm: The more thorough our researches, the
more convinced do we become, that, with few if any exceptions,
the Church has been guided aright in the formation of the
Canon. The work of the spiritually illumined consciousness
of the community of believers, in selecting and segregating a
certain number of writings to be formed into a canonical whole,
has imparted a certain unity to that whole. How important
this fact has been in determining the nature and origin of

NATURE OF THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 751
Sacred Scripture, it does not require deep reflection to perceive.
Many as are the difficulties now encountered in forming a ten
able theory of Sacred Scripture, how greatly would they have
been increased if the selective process had been much less dis
criminating than it really was ! As the case now stands, it is
much embarrassed by the attempt to enclose within the Canon
of the Old Testament those apocryphal writings which only a
part of the Christian Church receives. But if the limits of
New-Testament Scripture had in fact been so loosely fixed as
to include, not only the so-called Antilegomena, but also that
swarm of apocryphal Christian writings which is now lost, how
insecure would have been the historical foundations of Chris
tianity, how vague and unauthoritative its system of doctrinal
truth !
But, once more, a certain pre-eminent unity is given to some
of the biblical writings by the unity of the truth as it is in
Jesus Christ. The history of the Old Testament may be re
garded as the history of that preparation in Israel which God
secured for the coming of Christ. Its law may be regarded as
pedagogic for his coming, and as containing certain elements of
ethical and religious truth which were anticipatory of the truth
of Christ. Its prediction is distinguished from all mere prog
nostication, whether amongst the Jews themselves or in heathen
antiquity, by being typically Messianic, in the largest sense of
these words. The history, law, and prediction of the Old Testa
ment are, therefore, capable of being regarded as a peculiar
kind of unity, in that they aU are so largely filled with one
divine idea, and swayed, as it were, with one divine purpose.
But this very bond which unites so many of the principal ele
ments of the Old Testament into a peculiar kind of unity is, of
course, the same as that which unites the same elements of the
Old Testament with the entire body of the truth in the New.
In a looser sense, and yet in a sense important and significant,
we can say that the biblical writings are, like the Christian
Church, made one in Jesus Christ.
The unity of the Divine Spirit in revelation, the unity of
the same Spirit as a co-ordinating force in history, the unity
of the Spirit as Providence securing the formation of the Can
on, the unity of the truth as it is in Christ, — these forms of an
organizing and unifying energy are manifest in Sacred Scrip
ture. From them the Bible derives its peculiar kind of unity.
And to say that such unity cannot co-exist with all those diver-

752 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
sities which historical and critical research points out in the
Bible, is to sacrifice the verities both of faith and of science to
a worthless a priori assumption.
What, moreover, is the view warranted by the previous in
duction concerning the infallibUity of Sacred Scripture ? The
more important part of the answer to this question can be given
in full only after an examination of the doctrine of Sacred
Scripture, as giving the rule of faith and of life ; and this ex
amination belongs to another part of our work. A certain view,
however, is both suggested and in part proved, as one result
of the previous induction. This view, like that which we have
set forth as to the unity of the Bible, involves both negative
and positive considerations.
The word "infaUibility," as applied to the biblical writings,
is so indefinite, misleading, and provocative of irrational and
fruitless debate, that it would be well if it could be banished
from the literature of the subject. Especially out of place is
this word in the attempt to estabUsh an inductive theory of
Sacred Scripture. The theory of the infallibUity of the biblical
writings, in the sense that these writings, being throughout
co-extensive with the word of God, cannot err, — the doctrine
that the Bible has the quality non posse peccare, — can never
be established by an induction. Such a theory is entirely out
of the range of possible results of induction. For the most that
any induction could possibly seem to establish would be the
judgment : We find no error in the Bible. On the other hand,
such a theory, as a pure assumption of faith, breaks down under
the weight of a single opposing fact, once established by legiti
mate and trustworthy historical and critical science. But if the
form of infallibility claimed for the Bible be modified so as to
take the shape of the theory that it is conceivable, or possible,
that its writings should contain no error at all, — posse non
peccare, — its case is but little better. The abstract possibility
of infallibilitj-, considered as belonging to human writings, is
indeed contrary to all human experience. An inductive theory
of Sacred Scripture, if it raise the question of bibUcal infalli
bility at all, can do nothing more nor less than present the
evidence from established facts. These established facts re
quire the denial of all the ordinary theories of the infallibility
of the Bible.
In the first place, our previous induction obliges us to affirm
that the Bible is not infallible — in the sense of having either

THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE BIBLE. 753
the quality of non posse peccare or of posse non peccare — in the
following respects. The biblical text is not infallible ; Sacred
Scripture is not given to us in the form of a perfect diplomatic
certainty. That infallibUity can be predicated of no one pres
ent form of the bibUcal text, is, of course, indisputable. But
the best form of text at present attainable is the only text which
can furnish any basis for a judgment as to what were the quali
ties of Sacred Scripture in its original texts. All that we know
convinces us that neither the original writers themselves, nor
the redactors and copyists of the original writings, intended to
lodge any of the qualities of their gifts of revelation and inspi
ration in the mere letter of their text. God has not thought
it wise to teach the world by the perpetual miracle of a race
of infallible scribes : he has the rather sent the scribes to the
inferior positions in his great school. Nor is there proof, that
could we attain the exact form of the original writings, and
had they been transmitted in perfect diplomatic accuracy, we
should be helped in any of our more serious difficulties with
the Bible. Indeed, in the case of the Pentateuch, and to a
certain extent of some other biblical writings, some of our
difficulties arise from the very fact that one scribe after another
has had so much to do, not only with fixing, but also with mak
ing the text.
Neither can we affirm vnth perfect confidence the infallibUity
of those conclusions, which, in thek common effect, have resulted
in fixing the Canon of Sacred Scripture. We can indeed affirm,
as a matter of fact, that the Christian Church appears to have
decided, within very narrow Umits, precisely what books shall
be considered as constituting her sacred writings. Narrow
limits, however, yet remain, within which she is not wholly
agreed as to her Canon of Sacred Scriptures. We believe that
the final and unanimous judgment will exclude rather than
include those apocryphal writings about which the two sections
of tradition divide themselves. Nor is it certain that the Church
wiU not revive in some form the distinction, which has, indeed,
never been wholly lost, between proto-canomcal and deutero-
canonical writings ; or between writings which are to be used
as sources of doctrine, and others which are to be used as build
ing up (or simply interesting) the ethical and religious life.
At any rate, we cannot affirm the perfect infallibUity of the
judgment of the Church, without distinctions or limitations:
therefore we cannot affirm the a priori assumption of an in
faUible Canon of Sacred Scripture.
xrm T O B

754 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Neither can we affirm the infallibUity of the historical views
and statements of the biblical writings, even when they concern
tbe narratives of miracles, or of the miraculous life and resurrec
tion of Christ. We cannot ascribe to the histories of the Bible
the quality of either non posse peccare, or posse non peccare ; or
affirm that it is actually without any historical error or fault.
The limits of the historical fallibility of the biblical writings
cannot be definitely fixed by a priori assumptions : they must
be determined by historical and critical research. There is,
indeed, a certain centre of historical truth, which we might
assume it would accord with the divine purpose in revelation
to secure against such an amount of error as would vitiate this
purpose ; and, as a matter of fact, we find much more of trust
worthy history within the Bible than barely enough to serve
such a purpose.
Neither can we affirm that the scientific and literary form of
the Bible is infallible; nor that its grammar, language, and
style are without fault ; nor that the logic of its argumentative
passages is irreproachable, and its interpretation of its own
earlier passages always defensible ; nor that its selection and
arrangement of material is in the best possible system ; nor
that its views of external nature, and of its own literature, are
in all respects true to the facts as they are now known. With
regard to all these matters of scientific and literary form, if we
were entitled to make any a priori assumption at all, we should
be warranted in assuming the probable fallibility, rather than
infallibility, of Sacred Scripture.
Neither can we affirm, without making distinctions and Um
itations, the infallibility, both in form and contents, of aU the
ethical and reUgious teachings of Sacred Scripture. The rela
tive imperfection and formal inferiority of the entire Old-Testa
ment dispensation communicates itself to the writings in which
the truths of this dispensation are scripturaUy fixed. The
Old-Testament writings bear in many places the marks of the
ethically imperfect conceptions which belonged to their authors ;
in all places they bear, to a greater or less extent, the marks of
those historical limitations which belong to every stage of the
divine process of self-revelation. In a certain few places, we
cannot assert that the Scripture is free from even immoral feel
ings impressed upon it by the human character of its origin.
But in the New Testament, as a matter of fact, — although we
find stages of development in its ethical and religious truth, aud

THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE BIBLE. 755
differences of impression as to the nature of such truth, — we
find everywhere a remarkable elevation of moral and religious
tone, a remarkable freedom from every form of ethical and reli
gious error. Even in the New Testament, however, we cannot
deny that there exist mistaken impressions in matters of ethical
and religious kind ; as, for example, in respect to the precise
manner and time of the second coining of Christ. In general, it
is true of the predictive elements of biblical prophecy, that they
are ethical and religious in their characteristics, as distinguished
from all mere prognostication and divination, and yet that they
contain some erroneous impressions as to the precise time and
manner in which the substance of truth predicted should reach
its fulfilment. The word of the Lord in prophecy is unfailing ;
but the impressions of the prophet, and therefore the predictions
of the prophet, are not in all respects infallible. Thus, also,
may certain maxims and precepts for the conduct of the reli
gious life be given as applications of unchanging principles of
religious truth, and yet the form of the precepts and maxims
may be affected by the false impression that the conditions of
human society (considered as affecting the form) are themselves
also unchanging. In all such cases, however, we must distin
guish between false teaching of an ethical and religious kind,
and the teaching of ethical and religious truth under forms
that show elements of faUibility in the human judgment of the
teacher. In general, — with regard to ethical and religious truth, as with
regard to aU other kinds of truth, — we cannot make the a priori
assumption that the bibUcal writings are infallible. We are,
however, entitled to the presumption, that the record of revealed
ethico-religious truth, if its purpose be the ethical and religious
weU-being of man, will be kept from such error of an ethical
and religious kind as shall vitiate this purpose. Precisely how
much of infallibility (if, indeed, we may speak of degrees of in
fallibility) is necessary to secure the purpose, we are not com
petent a priori to assume. As a matter of fact, however, the
critical examination of the biblical writings shows that we must
distinguish between the Old Testament and the New; and
that in both Testaments we must distinguish between matters
essential to faith and matters unessential, and, amongst the
unessential, between matters important and matters unimpor
tant. Both the power and the right to make such distinctions
are lodged in the Christian consciousness, which is itself depend-

756 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
ent upon the facts and doctrines given to us in these same bib
lical writings. We have thus estabUshed, to be sure, a certain
circulus in arguendo; but this circulus is only of such a nature
as is involved in the verification of all ethical and .religious
truth, when considered both as a matter of objective revelation
and of subjective susceptibiUty to the contents of revelation.
But in what positive sense, if at all, can we feel warranted in
declaring the infallibUity of the Bible ? If by infallibUity be
meant an assumed or actual freedom from aU admixture of
error, we cannot affirm infallibility of any one of those classes
of contents under which we have considered the subject-matter
of the Bible, or of any one of its separate books or larger divis
ions of the contents. But if the question be raised : In what
sense, and within what limits, do the biblical writings, when
considered as a whole and in their right relations to their own
central truth, afford an unfailing and essentially trustworthy
source of knowledge upon the origins and history of revealed
religion, and also an unfaUing source of those truths of revealed
reUgion which constitute the contents of faith? then the an
swer may be confidently given. The detailed answer to pre
cisely this question wiU occupy the entire second volume ; but
certain items of the answer may fitly be indicated at this place,
as agreeing with the results of the previous induction.
The Bible is the unfailing and sufficiently trustworthy source
of the history of the divine work of redemption, both in the
preparatory stage of the Old-Testament religion, and in the life,
death, and resurrection of the Redeemer, and the founding of
his Church.
The Bible is the unfailing source of those ethico-religious
truths which were revealed by God to his inspked servants
during the process of the biblical history, and which, taken to
gether in their due relations to one another and to the central
truth of revelation, constitute the Word of God to man.
The Bible is the unfaiUng — and when its facts are sifted by
critical and historical research, and its truths are apprehended
and developed in the Christian consciousness, it is the perfect
and complete — source of the true doctrine of the person and
work of Jesus Christ.
Finally, what is the view warranted by the previous induction
concerning the inspiration of Sacred Scripture ? To this third
inquiry, the negative answer which is made necessary by the
induction may be given in a single sentence : Neither the claims

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 757
nor the phenomena of the biblical writings permit us to regard
them as all inspired to the same degree and in the same sense ;
or to regard any portion of them as written under any such
divine impulse, or influence, as may not belong to other mem
bers of the community of believers in the same era, and to the
authors of the writings themselves as speakers of the same
truths which the Scripture records. In other words, while there
are abundant claims and evidences of the inspiration of the
biblical writings, in several meanings of the word inspiration,
there is no claim and no evidence for any peculiar kind or de
gree of inspiration which is imparted to the authors simply ad
seribendum or in scribendo. Every special form of inspiration
assumed for the writings, as writings, must, then, be referred to
the claims and the evidence for the inspiration possessed by the
writers in thek personal activities in behalf of the kingdom of
God. With this statement, and whatever limitations are legiti
mately contained in the statement, once for all admitted, we
may affirm the inspkation of the biblical writings in the follow
ing meanings of the term.
Certain portions of the biblical writings may be called in
spired, because they contain in written form those ethico-reli
gious ideas and truths which the Divine Spirit has revealed
through the selected and inspired souls who were the authors
of the writings. In all such cases we apply the term " inspira
tion " to both the author and his writing, because of an assumed
or obvious connection between the two. The quality of the
author's mind and heart determines the character of his writ
ing. If the author be inspired, and express himself in writing
upon the subjects to which his inspiration extends, the vsTitten
form of his inspired thought and feeling may also be called
inspked. If, on the other hand, the contents of any writing
which is by an unknown author, when examined by the appro
priate tests, appear to possess those qualities which we know in
other cases to have resulted from an inspired mind, it may be
assumed that such writing also is by an inspired mind : a writ
ing by an unknown author may, therefore, be spoken of as in
spired. Considerable portions of the Old and New Testaments
make, in this form, a direct or an impUed claim to inspiration :
they claim to give in written form the ideas and truths of revela
tion which have come to mankind through the media of selected
and inspired minds. Of such inspired writings, the prophetic
and apostolic stand in the first rank. The genuine prophetic

758 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
and apostolic writings of the Bible claim to contain, scriptur
aUy fixed, certain ethico-religious ideas and truths which the
Holy Spkit revealed to their authors. But inspiration is the
inseparable accompaniment and correlate of revelation. Such
writings, therefore, clakn to be inspired. The word of God to
Israel, when lodged — as it were — in sacred writings, imparts
such a quality to those writings that they may fitly be caUed
inspired. In contradiction of such a claim for these portions
of the biblical writings, critical and historical research has
nothing vaUd to urge. On the contrary, aU research tends to
confirm and iUustrate the claim. Critical research does in
deed disprove many of the claims which have been made for
the historical and critical accuracy of the biblical writings;
but such disproof does not also disprove the inspiration of the
writings, until it is shown that historical and critical accuracy
is an indispensable quaUty of inspked writings. The elements
of error, however, may be most reasonably ascribed to the na
ture of the second causes through which the Spkit of revelation
has accomplished his work. Certain elements of error have
plainly been eliminated from the writings by the inspkation
of their authors. Certain elements of imperfection and fault,
belonging to other writings, have been excluded from the in
spired. For inspiration has so operated as to make for itself,
to a considerable extent, its own peculiar form. But the mere
ly historical and human elements have not all been excluded
by revelation and inspiration ; neither have they all been so
transformed and purified as to remove the limitations of human
history and the imperfections of human nature.
The fact that biblical revelation is of the nature of an histori
cal process compels us to use the terms of "revelation" and "in
spiration," when applied to the writings of the Bible, in several
somewhat different meanings. The different meanings of the
terms only correspond to differences in the facts. What these
different meanings are, we shall consider more specifically far
ther on. It is enough in this connection to say that an histori
cal process of revelation involves the commitment of the ideas
and truths of direct revelation to the keeping of either oral or
written tradition. HaAdng once been revealed, in the strictest
sense of the word " revelation," they afterward remain as ideas
and truths of revelation in only a secondary sense. Every soul,
however, which comes to a real apprehension of these ideas and
truths, to a living seizure of them, for the purposes of ethical

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 759
and religious life, has them revealed to itself anew : every such
soul is necessarily, therefore, an inspired soul. The only re
vealer of the reality of ethico-reUgious truth is the Spirit of
the ever-living Source of truth. Moreover, in experience it is
not easy to distinguish between new and old, — between those
traditional ideas and truths which become the possession of the
individual soul through the illumining of the Spirit, and the im
mediate revelations of new truths, or new forms of old truths,
which are made by the same Spirit.
We have, then, to recur to the thought of a work of revela
tion and inspiration which penetrates and influences an entire
community of beUevers in the entke course of their history.
Such a work of revelation and inspiration was abundantly
manffest in Israel and in the Christian Church ; and this work
has penetrated the Hebrew and Christian writings. Most of
the writings of the Old Testament exhibit obvious tokens of
such penetrating influence. They, indeed, exhibit such tokens
in varying degrees of energy. The energy of inspiration, in its
formative work upon th« Hebrew Scriptures, may be said to
fade graduaUy away from the centre toward those portions
which are least penetrated and influenced by great ethical and
religious truths. But in the New Testament the energy of the
Spirit is seen at work with an exclusiveness and an intensive
quality which belong to the age of the Spirit, and which fitly
'Characterize the establishing of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.
The biblical writings, therefore, may be spoken of as inspired,
according as the ideas and truths of revelation have penetrated
and influenced the minds of their authors. In even this sec
ondary meaning of the word " inspiration," there are some few
portions of the Old Testament which make little or no claim,
and give little or no proof, of being inspired. Other larger
portions of the Old Testament exhibit the marks of inspiration
in very low degree. But the proportion of such parts to those
which are quite obviously moulded by the work of the Spirit
of revelation and inspiration is so small, that the latter, rather
than the former, are entitled to give a term to the characteris
tics of the whole.
In the above-mentioned meanings of the word "inspiration,"
both the claims and the phenomena of the Bible entitle us to
caU a large proportion of its writings inspired. But neither
one of these meanings, nor any other appropriate meaning of
the term, authorizes us to speak of the biblical writings, from

760 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRED SCRIPTURE.
Genesis to Revelation, as being in all respects alike inspired.
Much of the history of the Bible is obviously unlike other his
tory, because it is written by men providentially selected for
this purpose, and penetrated with the same ethical and religious
ideas wliich are embodied in the history. According to the
evidence of the operation of such spiritual influences upon the
minds of the writers, do we properly speak of the historical
writings of the Bible as inspired. The proverbs of Israel are
not, in any sense of the word, inspired writing, except so far as
they are penetrated with the ethical and religious ideas of the
Torah and of Prophetism. But by the true conception of a
Canon of Sacred Scripture we acquire a certain additional right
to consider the biblical writings as constituting an inspired
whole. To be sure, we thus employ the word inspiration in a
still lower and looser sense. But we express our weU-founded
conviction that the Divine Spirit, acting as Providence and as
the Illuminer of the Church, has guided the community of
believers in its judgment (for the most part involuntarily exer
cised) as to the writings which it shall deem sacred and inspired.
In brief: we call the biblical writings inspired in the various
meanings which we find can be attached to that word when
applied to each one of the writings in particular, and also when
applied to the Bible as a whole.
Is it objected, however, that the foregoing definitions of the
unity, infallibility, and inspkation of Sacred Scripture do not
serve to class the Bible in all respects apart from the works of
all other human teachers and authors ? The answer must be :
Precisely so ; the definitions define according to the facts. It
is a fact, that the biblical writings are not in all respects unlike
all other human literary products. But men do not abolish all
marked specific differences whenever they bring a species under
a genus. We do not need two spirits, in order to account for
the diversities of gifts administered by one and the same Holy
Spirit ; or two human natures in order to account for the human
elements of the sacred writings, in their points of likeness and
unlikeness when compared with other literary works. If the
true inductive theory forbids that we should conceive of the
unity, infallibUity, and inspiration of Sacred Scripture in such
a way as to distinguish it, in all respects, from other results of
human thought and feeling , nevertheless, the same theory most
clearly and indisputably evinces the lofty distinctions which, in
some most important respects, require that the biblical writings.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 761
should be placed in a class by themselves. Daylight and twi
light are not of the same value to walk by safely, simply be
cause both kinds of light are from the same source. The wheat
and the thistle are not of the same value and uses, simply be
cause they have both been created for some good purpose by
the same God. Moreover, the Bible has certain qualities which
do not appear in their peerless strength and brilliancy to the
eye of critical and historical science ; nor are such highest qual
ities to be affirmed of it on its own witness alone. But to
affirm such qualities requires a detailed consideration of the re
lation which the Bible sustains to the moral and religious con
sciousness of the Church and of mankind.
The testing and approbating of the Bible by the moral and
religious consciousness stiU lie before us. But there has been
gained, as the priceless result of a long and careful induction,
this conclusion : The Bible claims to contain, and does contain,
those sacred and inspked writings which constitute the sources
of the history of divine redemption in Christ, and of those ideas
and truths of revelation which have been imparted in an his
torical process to the ever-living Church of God.

VOL. L

3b2

T. and T. ClarMs Publications.

Just published, in demy ita, Third Edition, price 25s.,
BIBLICO-THEOLOGICAL LEXICON OF NEW
TESTAMENT GREEK.
By HERMANN CREMER, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY Ilf THE UNIVERSITY OF GREIFSWALD.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF THE SECOND EDITION
(WITH ADDITIONAL MATTER AND CORRECTIONS BY THE AUTHOR)
By V/ILLIAM URWICK, M.A.
' Dr. Cremer's work is highly and deservedly esteemed in Germany. It gives with
care and thoronghness a complete history, as far as it goes, of each word and phrase
that it deals with. . . . Dr. Cremer's explanations are most lucidly set out.' — Guardian.
'It is hardly possihle to exaggerate the value of this work to the student of the Greek
Testament. . . . The translation is accurate and idiomatic, and the additions to the
later edition are considerable and important.' — Church Bells.
' A valuable addition to the stores of any theological library. ... It is what it claims
to he, a Lexicon, both biblical and theological, and treats not only of words, but of the
doctrines inculcated by those words.' — John Bull.
'We very heartily commend this goodly volume to students of biblical literature.' —
Evangelical Magazine.
'We cannot find an important word in onr Greek New Testament which is not
discussed with a fulness and discrimination which leaves nothing to be desired.' —
Nonconformis .
' Cremer's Lexicon is, and is long likely to be, indispensable to students whether of
theology or of the Bible, and must always bear witness to his scholarship, erudition, and
diligence.' — Exposim:
' A work of immense erudition.' — Freeman.
'This noble edition in quarto of Cremer's Biblico-Theological Lexicon quite super
sedes the translation of the first edition of the work. Many of the most important
articles have been re-written and re-arranged. . . . We heartily congratulate Mr. Urwick
on the admirable manner in which he has executed his task, revealing on his part
adequate scholarship, thorough sympathy, and a fine choice of English equivalents and
definitions.' — Briish Quarterl-y Review.
'As an aid in our search, we warmly commend the honest and laborious New
Testament Lexicon of Dr. Cremer.' — London Quarterly Review.
'The judiciousness and importance of Dr. Cremer's design must be obvious to all
students of the New Testament; and the execution of that design, in our judgment, fully
establishes and justifies the translator's encomiums.' — XVaich'man.
'A majestic volume, admirably printed and faultlessly edited, and will win gratitude
as well as renown for its learned and Chi-istian Author, and prove a precious boon to
students and preachers who covet exact and exhaustive acquaintance with the literal
and theological teaching of the New Testament.'— Z>«cKra«ora's Theological Quarterly.

T. and T. ClarJis Publications.

Just published, in One Volume, Suo, price 12s.,
FINAL CAUSES.
By PAUL JANET, Member of the Institute, Paris.
€ran£ilat£t( from t\it jTreiui) bp OTilliam 9£Htcfe, 33.i3.
CONTENTS.— PRELonNARY Chapter— The Problem. Book I.-The Law of
Finality. Book IL— The First Cause of Finality. App]ENDt!c
' This very learned, accurate, and, within its prescribed limits, exhaustive work. . . .
The book as a whole abounds in matter of the highest interest, and is a model of learn
ing and judicious treatment.' — Gwvrdian.
'IUustrated and defended with an ability and learning which must command the
reader's admiration.' — Dublin Review.
,'A great contribution to the literature of this subject. M. Janet has mastered the
conditions of the problem, is at home in the literature of science and philosophy, and has
that faculty of felicitous expression which makes French books of the highest class such
delightful reading ; ... in cleaxness, vigour, and depth it has heen seldom equalled, and
more seldom excelled, in philosophical literature.' — Spectator.
' A wealth of scientific knowledge and a logical acumen which will win the admiration
of every reader.' — Church Quarterly Review.
' Both on the physical and on the metaphysical side the work is well worth studying.
It is the best recent work on n. controversy which, if it has not yet found ite way
to our pulpits, is keenly discussed in all educated circles.' — Clergymar^s Magazine.
' The book is a valuable addition to the permanent literature on this great subject, and
we welcome its appearance in an English dress; as supplying a want iu the philosophical
thought of the day regarding natural theology.' — British Quarterly Review.
'M. Janet has done his work with a sustained power, a logical acuteness, and an
extensive knowledge of many provinces of science which is worthy of all praise and
thanks.' — Literary Churchman.
' One of those exhaustive pieces of reasoning, which go thoroughly to prove the validity
of the view of Pinal Causes which the Author has adopted.' — BelFs Weekly Messenger.
' One of the most important contributions of late years made to European literature.' —
English Independent.
' The style of this distinguished essayist throughout is singularly philosophical. He
is always calm and cool, eminently analytic and painstaking, yet often throwing out
new and striking views of the subject without the slightest parade.' — Tablet.
' This is perhaps the most exhaustive book that has been written on a subject with
TV hich all deep thinkers have been more or less exercised.' — English Churchman.

Z". and T. Clark's Publications.

Just published, in demy Svo, price 8s. 6d.,
SYNTAX OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
By HEINRICH EWALD.
SEransIateli from t]iz ffitsStfj ffierman] ©bt'tion
By JAMES KENNEDY, B.D.
' The work stands unique as regards a patient investigation of facts, written with a
profound analysis of the laws of thought, of which language is the reflection. Another
striking feature of the work is the regularly progressive order which pervades the
whole. The Author proceeds by a natural gradation from the simplest elements to the
most complex forms.' — British Quarterly Bemeie.
' To more advanced students of Hebrew the translation of Ewald's Syntax will be a
great boon. . . . We hope the translation will do much to advance the higher, more
thorough study of Hebrew.' — XVatchTnan.
' Haa long been known to Hebrew scholars both in England and on the Continent as
a work of almost unique value.' — Bapist Magazine.
'It is well known that Ewald was tbe first to exhibit the Hebrew Syntax in a
philosophical form, and Ms Grammar is the most important of his numerous works.' —
Ahemeum. 'The varied and extensive erudition of the late Heinrich Ewald is universally
recognised. . . . There cau be but one opinion upon the value of Ewald's contribution
to the elucidation of the language of the Old Testament.* — Clergyman's Magazvae.
'Nor has Mr. Kennedy only succeeded in presenting this valuable work in good and
readable English, but he has further enriched it with explanations, illustrations, and
references of his own, which \vitness to his familiarity with the subject.' — Literary
Churchman, 'The book is the product of genuine work, and will fill a gap in our theological
literature.' — Daily Review.
Recently published, in demy Suo, Fourth Edition, price 7s. 6d.,
AN INTRODUCTORY HEBREW GRAMMAR
'miti) l^voQxti6ibt (SymiStS in 3£l£at(tng anB Mriting.
By a. B. DAVIDSON, M.A., LL.D.,
Professor of Hebrew, etc., in the New CoUege, Edinburgh.
In One large Svo Volume, Eighth English Edition, price 15s.,
A TREATISE ON THE
GRAMMAR OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK,
§l.ejga:rir£ir as i\t §asi:s of it^fo C-estam^nt ®^£0£sis.
Translated from the German of Dr. G. B. WINER.
With large additions and full Indices. Second Edition. Edited by Eev. TV.
F. Moulton, D.D., one of the New Testament Translation Eevisers.

T. and T. Clark's Publications.

Jiist piiiblished, in crovm Svo, price 4s. Qd.,
THE WORLD OF PRAYER;
#r, f ragu in xdntian io f irsonal ^«%xon.
By Bishop MONRAD.
SEtanglateb from t^e Jonrtfj ®£tman lEbttion.
'English readers are greatly indebted to Mr. Banks for his translation of this work:
he has rendered available to them a book of devotional reading, which admirably com
bines the truest Christian mysticism with the soundest and healthiest practical teaching.'
— London Quarterly Review.
' One of the richest devotional books that we have read.' — Primitive Methodist Magazine.
' An excellent manual ou prayer in its relation to spiritual life and character.' — BiHtisk
and Foreign Evangelical Review.
Just published, in demy Svo, price 10s. 6d.,
HISTORY OF THE
PASSION AND RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD,
CoitstofMb in i\iit yig^t of p;ohm Critirism.
By Dr. F. L. STEINMEYER,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, BERLIN.
' Our readers will find this work a most valuable and suggestive help for their thoughts
and teaching during Passion-tide and Easter.' — English Churchman.
' Dr. Steinmeyer's work will well repay earnest study.' — fVeeJily Review.
Just piblished, in demy Svo, price 10s. 6d.,
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.
% Contribution ia §iblijral C^^ologg,
By ERICH HAUPT.
' The Author has rendered the Church a good service by his work. Whoever accom
panies him on the path of his well-grounded researches, will find he has made good
speed in the understanding of the apostolic epistles.' — Evangelische Kirchert-Zeitung.
'We recommend it especially to the use of ministers, and are sure that they will find in
it such scientific penetration, and far deeper and more suggestive preparation for sermons
and Bible lectures, than in the expositions which are written specially for ministers for
homiletical use.' — iVeue Evangelische Kirelten-Zeitung.
In crown Svo, price 5s.,
MESSIANIC PROPHECY:
^i^ #rigin, pislorical Ci^araettr, anb §l.eIa.tion ia
H^to C£stam.ent JfnMmmt.
Translated from the German (with the Approbation of the Author) of
Db. EDWARD RIEHM.
' Undoubtedly original and suggestive, and deserving careful consideration.' — Literary
Churchman. ' Its intrinsic excellence makes it a valuable contribution to our biblical literature.' 
British and Foreign Evangelical Review.

-'ALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08844 2638