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The point of view represented in this volume is still so little recognised and represented in England and America that the author ventures to prefix a short paper delivered as an address at the Church Congress held at Reading in October 1883. It is proverbially more difficult to write a thin book than a thick one, and the labour involved in preparing this twenty minutes’ paper, with its large outlook and sedulously under-stated claims, was such as he would not willingly undertake again for a like purpose. The subject was not an ephemeral one and the attitude of the Churches towards it has not materially altered within the last three years. The present volume is pervaded by the spirit which breathes, as the author trusts, in every line of this paper. It relates, indeed, only to a small section of the Old Testament, but no part of that ‘library’ (as mediæval writers so well named it) can be studied in complete severance from the rest. And if a high aim is held forward in one of the opening sentences to the Church of which the writer is a son, those who are connected with the other historic communions will easily understand the bitter-sweet feeling of hope against hope with which those lines were penned.

‘My own conviction,’ said the late Dr. Pusey, ‘has long been that the hope of the Church of England is in mutual tolerance.’^[1] That truly great man was not thinking of the new school of Old Testament critics, and yet if the Anglican Church is ever to renovate her theology and to become in any real sense undeniably the Church of the future, she cannot afford to be careless or intolerant of attempts to modernise our methods of criticism and exegesis. It would no doubt be simpler to content ourselves with that criticism and exegesis, and consequently with that theology, which have been fairly adequate to the wants of the past; but are we sure that Jesus Christ would not now lead us a few steps further on towards ‘all the truth,’ and that one of His preparatory disciplines may not be a method of Biblical criticism which is less tender to the traditions of the scribes, and more in harmony with the renovating process which is going on in all other regions of thought? Why, indeed, should there not be a providence even in the phases of Old Testament criticism, so that where some can see merely the shiftings of arbitrary opinion more enlightened eyes may discern a veritable progress, leading at once to fresh views of history, and to necessary reforms in our theology, making this theology simpler and stronger, deeper and more truly Catholic, by making it more Biblical?

Some one, however, may ask, Does not modern criticism actually claim to have refuted the fundamental facts of Bible history? But which are these fundamental facts? Bishop Thirlwall, twenty years ago, told his clergy ‘that a great part of the events related in the Old Testament has no more apparent connection with our religion than those of Greek and Roman history.’ Put these events for a moment on one side, and how much more conspicuous does that great elementary fact become which stands up as a rock in Israel’s history—namely, that a holy God, for the good of the world, chose out this people, isolating it more and more completely for educational purposes from its heathen neighbours, and interposing at various times to teach, to chastise, and to deliver it! It is not necessary to prove that all such recorded interpositions are in the strictest sense historical; it is enough if the tradition or the record of some that are so did survive the great literary as well as political catastrophe of the Babylonian captivity. And I have yet to learn that the Exodus, the destruction of Sennacherib’s army, the restoration of the Jews to their own land, and the unique phenomenon of spiritual prophecy, are called in question even by the most advanced school of Biblical criticism. One fact, indeed, there is, regarded by some of us as fundamental, which these advanced critics do maintain to be disproved, and that is the giving of the Levitical Law by Moses, or if not by Moses, by persons in the pre-Exile period who had prophetic sanction for giving it. Supposing the theory of Kuenen and Wellhausen to be correct, it will no doubt appear to some minds (1) that the inspiration of the Levitical Law is at any rate weakened in quality thereby, (2) that a glaring inconsistency is introduced into the Divine teaching of Israel, which becomes anti-sacrificial at one time, and sacrificial at another, and (3) that room is given for the supposition that the Levitical system itself was an injurious though politic condescension to popular tastes, and consequently (as Lagarde ventures to hold) that St. Paul, by his doctrine of the Atonement, ruined, so far as he could, the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But I only mention these possible inferences in order to point out how unfair they are. (1) The inspiration (to retain an often misused but indispensable term) of the Levitical Law is only weakened in any bad sense if it be maintained that the law, whenever the main part of it was promulgated, failed to receive the sanction of God’s prophetic interpreters, and that it was not, in the time of Ezra, the only effectual instrument for preserving the deposit of spiritual religion. (2) With regard to the inconsistency (assuming the new hypothesis) between the two periods of the Divine teaching of Israel, the feeling of a devout, though advanced critic would be that he was not a fit judge of the providential plan. Inconsistent conclusions on one great subject (that of forgiveness of sins) might in fact be drawn from the language of our Lord Himself at different periods of His ministry, though the parallel may not be altogether complete, since our Lord never used directly anti-sacrificial language. And it might be urged on the side of Kuenen, that neither would the early prophets have used such language—at any rate in the literary version of their discourses if they had foreseen the canonical character which this would assume, and the immense importance of a sacrificial system in the post-Exile period. (3) The theory that the law involves an injurious condescension is by no means compulsory upon advocates of the new hypothesis. Concessions to popular taste have, indeed, as we know but too well, often almost extinguished the native spirit of a religion; but the fact that some at least of the most spiritual psalms are acknowledged to be post-Exile ought to make us all, critics and non-critics alike, slow to draw too sharp a distinction between the legal and the evangelical. That the law was misused by some, and in course of time became spiritually almost obsolete, would not justify us in depreciating it, even if we thought that the lesser and not the greater Moses, the scribe and not the prophet, was mainly responsible for its promulgation. Finally, the rash statement of Lagarde has been virtually answered by the reference of another radical critic (Keim) to the well-attested words of Christ at the institution of the Eucharist (Matt. xxvi. 28).

I have spoken thus much on the assumption that the hypothesis of Kuenen and Wellhausen may be true. That it will ever become universally prevalent is improbable—the truth may turn out to lie between the two extremes—but that it will go on for some time gaining ground among the younger generation of scholars is, I think, almost certain. No one who has once studied this or any other Old Testament controversy from the inside and with a full view of the evidence can doubt that the traditional accounts of many of the disputed books rest on a very weak basis, and those who crave for definite solutions, and cannot bear to live in twilight, will naturally hail such clear-cut hypotheses as those of Kuenen and Wellhausen, and credit them with an undue finality. Let us be patient with these too sanguine critics, and not think them bad Churchmen, as long as they abstain from drawing those dangerous and unnecessary inferences of which I have spoken. It is the want of an equally intelligent interest which makes the Old Testament a dead letter to so many highly orthodox theologians. If the advanced critics succeed in awakening such an interest more generally, it will be no slight compensation for that ‘unsettlement of views’ which is so often the temporary consequence of reading their books.

One large part, however, of Kuenen and Wellhausen’s critical system is not peculiar to them, but accepted by the great majority of professed Old Testament critics. It is this part which has perhaps a still stronger claim to be considered in its relation to Christian truth, because there is every appearance that it will, in course of time, become traditional among those who have given up the still current traditions of the synagogue. I refer (1) to the analysis of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua into several documents, (2) to the view that many of the laws contained in the Pentateuch arose gradually, according to the needs of the people, and that Ezra, or at least contemporaries of Ezra, took a leading part in the revision and completion of the law book, and (3) to the dating of the original documents or compilations at various periods, mostly long subsequent to the time of Moses. Time forbids me to enter into the grounds for the confident assertion that if either exegesis or the Church’s representation of religious truth is to make any decided progress, the results of the literary analysis of the Pentateuch must be accepted as facts, and that theologians must in future recognise at least three different sections, and as many different conceptions of Israel’s religious development, within the Pentateuch, just as they have long recognised at least three different types of teaching in the Old Testament as a whole. On the question as to the date of these sections, and as to the Mosaic origin of any considerable part of them, the opinions of special scholars within the Church will, for a long time yet, be more or less divided. There is, I know, a belief growing up among us, that Assyrian and Egyptian discoveries are altogether favourable to the ordinary English view of the dates of the historical books, including the Pentateuch. May I be pardoned for expressing the slowly formed conviction that apologists in England (and be it observed that I do not quarrel with the conception of apologetic theology) frequently indulge in general statements as to the bearings of recent discoveries, which are only half true? The opponents of whom they are thinking are long since dead; it is wasting time to fight with the delusions of a past age. No one now thinks the Bible an invention of priestcraft; that which historical critics doubt is the admissibility of any unqualified assertion of the strict historicalness of all the details of all its component parts. This doubt is not removed by recent archæological discoveries, the critical bearings of which are sometimes what neither of the critical schools desired or expected. I refer especially to the bearings of Assyrian discoveries on the date of what are commonly called the Jehovistic narratives in the first nine chapters of Genesis. I will not pursue this subject further, and merely add that we must not too hastily assume that the supplement hypothesis is altogether antiquated.

The results of the anticipated revolution in our way of looking at the Pentateuch strike me as fourfold. (1) Historically. The low religious position of most of the pre-Exile Israelites will be seen to be not the result of a deliberate rebellion against the law of Jehovah, the Levitical laws being at any rate virtually non-existent. By this I mean, that even if any large part of those laws go back to the age of Moses they were never thoroughly put in force, and soon passed out of sight. Otherwise how can we account for this, among other facts, that Deuteronomy, or the main part of it, is known in the reign of Josiah as ‘the law of Moses’? We shall also, perhaps, get a deeper insight into the Divine purpose in raising up that colossal personage who, though ‘slow of speech,’ was so mighty in deed: I mean Moses—and shall realise those words of a writer specially sanctioned by my own university: ‘Should we have an accurate idea of the purpose of God in raising up Moses, if we said, He did it that He might communicate a revelation? Would not this be completely to misunderstand the principal end of the mission of Moses, which was the establishment of the theocracy, and in so far as God revealed through him the revelation was but as means to this higher end?’^[2]

(2) We shall, perhaps, discriminate more between the parts of the Old Testament, some of which will be chiefly valuable to us as bringing into view the gradualness of Israel’s education, and as giving that fulness to our conceptions of Biblical truths which can only be got by knowing the history of their outward forms; others will have only that interest which attaches even to the minutest and obscurest details of the history of much-honoured friends or relatives; others, lastly, will rise, in virtue of their intrinsic majesty, to a position scarcely inferior to that of the finest parts of the New Testament itself.

(3) As a result of what has thus been gained, our idea of inspiration will become broader, deeper, and more true to facts.

(4) We shall have to consider our future attitude towards that Kenotic^[3] view of the person of Christ which has been accepted in some form by such great exegetical theologians as Hofmann, Oehler, and Delitzsch. Although the Logos, by the very nature of the conception, must be omniscient, the incarnate Logos, we are told, pointed His disciples to a future time, in which they should do greater works than He Himself, and should open the doors to fresh departments of truth. The critical problems of the Old Testament did not then require to be settled by Him, because they had not yet come into existence. Had they emerged into view in our Lord’s time, they would have given as great a shock to devout Jews as they have done to devout Christians; and our Master would, no doubt, have given them a solution fully adequate to the wants of believers. In that case, a reference to some direction of the law as of Mosaic origin would, in the mouth of Christ, have been decisive; and the Church would, no doubt, have been guided to make some distinct definition of her doctrine on the subject.

Thus in the very midst of the driest critical researches we can feel that, if we have duly fostered the sense of Divine things, we are on the road to further disclosures of religious as well as historical truth. The day of negative criticism is past, and the day of a cheap ridicule of all critical analysis of ancient texts is, we may hope, nearly past also. In faith and love the critics whose lot I would fain share are at one with many of those who suspect and perhaps ridicule them: in the aspirations of hope their aim is higher. Gladly would I now pass on to a survey of the religious bearings of the critical study of the poetical and prophetical books, which, through differences of race, age, and above all spiritual atmosphere, we find, upon the whole, so much more attractive and congenial than the Levitical legislation. Let me, at least, throw out a few hints. Great as is the division of opinion on points of detail, so much appears to be generally accepted that the number of prophets whose works have partly come down to us is larger than used to be supposed. The analysis of the texts may not be as nearly perfect as that of the Pentateuch, but there is no doubt among those of the younger critics whose voices count (and with the pupils of Delitzsch the case is the same as with those of Ewald) that several of the prophetical books are made up of the works of different writers, and I even notice a tendency among highly orthodox critics to go beyond Ewald himself and analyse the Book of Daniel into portions of different dates. The result is important, and not for literary history alone. It gives us a much firmer hold on the great principle that a prophet’s horizon is that of his own time; that he prophesied, as has been well said, into the future, but not directly to the future. This will, I believe, in no wise affect essential Christian truth, but will obviously modify our exegesis of certain Scripture proofs of Christian doctrine, and is perhaps not without a bearing on the two grave theological subjects referred to already.

Bear with me if, once again in conclusion, I appeal to the Church at large on behalf of those who would fain modernise our criticism and exegesis with a view to a not less distinctively Christian but more progressive Church theology. The age of œcumenical councils may have passed; but if criticism, exegesis, and philosophy are only cultivated in a fearless and reverent spirit, and if the Church at large troubles itself a little more to understand the workers and their work, an approximation to agreement on great religious questions may hereafter be attained. What the informal decisions of the general Christian consciousness will be, it would be impertinent to conjecture. It is St. John’s ‘all truth’ after which we aspire—‘all the truth’ concerning God, the individual soul, and human society, into which the labours of generations, encouraged by the guiding star, shall by degrees introduce us. But one thing is too clear to be mistaken—viz. that exegesis must decide first of all what essential Christian truth is before a devout philosophy can interpret, expand, and apply it, and Old Testament exegesis, at any rate, cannot be long separated from its natural ally, the higher criticism. A provisional separation may no doubt be necessary, but the ultimate aim of successive generations of students must be a faithful exegesis, enlightened by a seven-times tested criticism.