Distinction between Textual and Higher Criticism.
The aim of scientific Old Testament criticism is to obtain, through
discrimination between truth and error, a full appreciation of the
literature which constitutes the Old Testament, of the life out of which
it grew, and the secret of the influence which these have exerted and
still exert. For such an appreciation many things are needed; and the
branches of Old Testament criticism are correspondingly numerous. It is
necessary in the first instance to detect the errors which have crept
into the text in the course of its transmission, and to recover, so far
as possible, the text in its original form; this is the task of
_Textual_, or as it is sometimes called in contradistinction to another
branch, _Lower Criticism_. It then becomes the task of critical exegesis
to interpret the text thus recovered so as to bring out the meaning
intended by the original authors. This _Higher Criticism_ partakes of
two characters, literary and historical. One branch seeks to determine
the scope, purpose and character of the various books of the Old
Testament, the times in and conditions under which they were written,
whether they are severally the work of a single author or of several,
whether they embody earlier sources and, if so, the character of these,
and the conditions under which they have reached us, whether altered
and, if altered, how; this is _Literary Criticism_. A further task is to
estimate the value of this literature as evidence for the history of
Israel, to determine, as far as possible, whether such parts of the
literature as are contemporary with the time described present correct,
or whether in any respect one-sided or biased or otherwise incorrect,
descriptions; and again, how far the literature that relates the story
of long past periods has drawn upon trustworthy records, and how far it
is possible to extract historical truth from traditions (such as those
of the Pentateuch) that present, owing to the gradual accretions and
modifications of intervening generations, a composite picture of the
period described, or from a work such as Chronicles, which narrates the
past under the influence of the conception that the institutions and
ideas of the present must have been established and current in the past;
all this falls under _Historical Criticism_, which, on its constructive
side, must avail itself of all available and well-sifted evidence,
whether derived from the Old Testament or elsewhere, for its
presentation of the history of Israel--its ultimate purpose. Finally, by
comparing the results of this criticism as a whole, we have to
determine, by observing its growth and comparing it with others, the
essential character of the religion of Israel.
In brief, then, the criticism of the Old Testament seeks to discover
what the words written actually meant to the writers, what the events in
Hebrew history actually were, what the religion actually was; and hence
its aim differs from the dogmatic or homiletic treatments of the Old
Testament, which have sought to discover in Scripture a given body of
dogma or incentives to a particular type of life or the like.
Biblical criticism, and in some respects more especially Old Testament
criticism, is, in all its branches, very largely of modern growth. This
has been due in part to the removal of conditions unfavourable to the
critical study of the evidence that existed, in part to the discovery in
recent times of fresh evidence. The unfavourable conditions and the
critical efforts which were made in spite of them can only be briefly
indicated.
Growth of criticism.
For a long time Biblical study lacked the first essential of sound
critical method, viz. a critical text of the literature. Jewish study
was exclusively based on the official Hebrew text, which was fixed,
probably in the 2nd century A.D., and thereafter scrupulously preserved.
This text, however, had suffered certain now obvious corruptions, and,
probably enough, more corruption than can now, or perhaps ever will be,
detected with certainty. The position of Christian (and Jewish
Alexandrian) scholars was considerably worse; for, with rare exceptions,
down to the 5th century, and practically without exception between the
5th and 15th centuries, their study was exclusively based on
_translations_. Beneath the ancient Greek version, the Septuagint, there
certainly underlay an earlier form of the Hebrew text than that
perpetuated by Jewish tradition, and if Christian scholars could have
worked through the version to the underlying Hebrew text, they would
often have come nearer to the original meaning than their Jewish
contemporaries. But this they could not do; and since the version, owing
to the limitations of the translators, departs widely from the sense of
the original, Christian scholars were on the whole kept much farther
from the original meaning than their Jewish contemporaries, who used the
Hebrew text; and later, after Jewish grammatical and philological study
had been stimulated by intercourse with the Arabs, the relative
disadvantages under which Christian scholarship laboured increased.
Still there are not lacking in the early centuries A.D. important, if
limited and imperfect, efforts in textual criticism. Origen, in his
_Hexapla_, placed side by side the Hebrew text, the Septuagint, and
certain later Greek versions, and drew attention to the variations: he
thus brought together for comparison, an indispensable preliminary to
criticism, the chief existing evidence to the text of the Old Testament.
Unfortunately this great work proved too voluminous to be preserved
entire; and in the form in which it was fragmentarily preserved, it even
largely enhanced the critical task of later centuries. Jerome,
perceiving the unsatisfactory position of Latin-speaking Christian
scholars who studied the Old Testament at a _double remove_ from the
original--in Latin versions of the Greek--made a fresh Latin translation
direct from the Hebrew text then received among the Jews. It is only in
accordance with what constantly recurs in the history of Biblical
criticism that this effort to approximate to the truth met at first with
considerable opposition, and was for a time regarded even by Augustine
as dangerous. Subsequently, however, this version of Jerome (the
Vulgate) became the basis of Western Biblical scholarship. Henceforward
the Western Church suffered both from the corruptions in the official
Hebrew text and also from the fact that it worked from a version and not
from the original, for a knowledge of Hebrew was rare indeed among
Christian scholars between the time of Jerome and the 16th century.
But if the use of versions, or of an uncritical text of the original,
was one condition unfavourable to criticism, another that was not less
serious was the dominance over both Jews and Christians of unsound
methods of interpretation--legal or dogmatic or allegorical. The
influence of these can be traced as early as the Greek version (3rd
century B.C. and later); allegorical interpretation is conspicuous in
the Alexandrian Jewish scholar Philo (q.v.); it may be seen in many New
Testament interpretations of the Old Testament (e.g. Gal. iii. 16, iv.
21-31), found a classical exponent in Origen, and, in spite of the
opposition of the school of Antioch, pre-eminently of Theodore (d. A.D.
428), maintained its power virtually unbroken down to the Reformation.
It is true that even by the most thorough-going allegorists the literal
sense of Scripture was not openly and entirely disregarded; but the very
fact that the study of Hebrew was never more than exceptional, and so
early ceased to be cultivated at all, is eloquent of indifference to the
original literal sense, and the very principle of the many meanings
inherent in the sacred writings was hostile to sound interpretation;
greater importance was attached to the "deeper" or "hidden" senses, i.e.
to the various unreal interpretations, and when the literal sense
conflicted with the dogmas or tradition of the Church its validity was
wholly denied. The extraordinary ambiguity and uncertainty which
allegorical interpretation tacitly ascribed to Scripture, and the ease
with which heretical as well as orthodox teaching could be represented
as "hidden" under the literal sense, was early perceived, but instead of
this leading to any real check on even wild subjectivity in
interpretation and insistence on reaching the literal sense, it created
an ominous principle that maintained much of its influence long after
the supremacy of allegorism was overthrown. This is the principle that
all interpretation of Scripture must be according to the _Regula
fidei_--that all interpretation which makes Scripture contradict or
offend the traditions of the Church is wrong.
The spirit and the age of humanism and the Reformation effected and
witnessed important developments in the study of the Old Testament. It
was still long before any considerable results were achieved; but in
various ways the dogmatic and traditional treatment of Scripture was
undermined; the way was opened for a more real and historical method. It
must suffice to refer briefly to two points.
1. Ignorance gave place to knowledge of the languages in which the Old
Testament was written. In 1506 the distinguished humanist, Johann
Reuchlin, who had begun the study of Hebrew under a Jewish teacher
about 1492, published a work entitled _De Rudimentis Hebraicis_
containing a Hebrew lexicon and a Hebrew grammar. In 1504 Konrad
Pellikan (Pellicanus), whose study of Hebrew had profited from
intercourse with Reuchlin, had published a brief introduction to the
language. In 1514 the Complutensian Polyglott began to be printed and
in 1522 was published. Various Jewish editions of the Hebrew Bible had
already been printed--in part since 1477, entire since 1488; but this
work contained the first Christian edition of the text. Certainly the
editors did not intend hereby to exalt the original above the
versions; for they placed the Vulgate in the centre of the page with
the Hebrew on one side, the Greek on the other, i.e. as they
themselves explained it, the Roman Church between the synagogue and
the Greek Church, as Christ crucified between two thieves. Yet even so
the publication of the Hebrew text by Christian scholars marks an
important stage; henceforth the study of the original enters
increasingly into Christian Biblical schojarship; it already underlay
the translations which form so striking a feature of the 16th century.
Luther's German version (Pentateuch, 1523) and Tyndale's English
version (Pentateuch, 1530) were both made from the Hebrew. At first,
and indeed down to the middle of the 17th century, Jewish traditions
and methods in the study of Hebrew dominated Christian scholars; but
in the 17th and 18th centuries the study of other Semitic languages
opened up that comparative linguistic study which was systematized and
brought nearer to perfection in the 19th century (which also
witnessed the opening up of the new study of Assyrian) by scholars
such as Gesenius, Ewald, Olshausen, Renan, Noeldeke, Stade and Driver.
This has done much to render possible a more critical interpretation
of the Old Testament.
2. An increasing stress was laid on the _literal_ sense of Scripture.
The leading Reformers--Luther, Zwingli, Melancthon--frequently
expressed themselves against the prevailing view of the manifold sense
of Scripture, and in particular questioned the legitimacy of
allegorical interpretation--except for purposes of popular and
practical exposition. The effort to get at and abide by the literal
sense is characteristic of Calvin's extensive exegetical works. True,
practice did not always keep pace with theory, and the literal sense
had to yield if it came into conflict with the "Faith": the
allegorical method for long obscured the meaning of the _Song of
Songs_, and any departure from it was severely condemned; just as
Theodore of Mopsuestia drew down on himself for maintaining the
literal sense of the _Song_ the condemnation of the Second Council of
Constantinople (A.D. 553), so Sebastian Castellio owed (in part) to
the same indiscretion his expulsion from Geneva in 1544. Even in the
16th and 17th centuries scholars like Grotius and Michaelis met with
violent opposition for the same cause.
But, however slowly and irregularly, the new conditions and the new
spirit affected the study of the Old Testament. It became subject to
the same critical methods which since the Renaissance have been
applied to other ancient literatures. Biblical criticism is part of a
wider critical movement, but it is noticeable how, from stage to
stage, Biblical scholars adopted the various critical methods which as
applied to other literatures have been proved valid, rather than
themselves initiated them. The textual criticism of the classical
literatures made way before the textual criticism of the Old
Testament: Bentley's _Phalaris_ (1699) preceded any thorough or
systematic application of Higher Criticism to any part of the Old
Testament; Niebuhr's _History of Rome_ (1811) preceded Ewald's
_History of Israel_ (1843-1859).
Conditions of Textual Criticism in the Bible.
The fundamental principles of the Textual Criticism of the Old Testament
are the same as those which apply to any other ancient text and need not
be described here (see the article TEXTUAL CRITICISM). There are also,
however, certain conditions peculiar to the text of the Old Testament.
The significance of these and the extent to which they must govern the
application of the general principles have even yet scarcely obtained
full and general recognition. These, then, must be briefly described.
The earliest Hebrew MSS. of the Old Testament date from not earlier than
the 9th century A.D., or nearly one thousand years after the latest
parts of the Old Testament were written. These MSS., and the Hebrew
Bibles as usually printed, contain in reality two perfectly distinct
texts--the work of two different ages separated from one another by
centuries: the one is a text of the Old Testament itself, the other a
text of a later Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament. The text of
the Old Testament consists of consonants only, for the alphabet of the
ancient Hebrews, like that of their Moabite, Aramaean and Phoenician
neighbours, contained no vowels; the text of the interpretation consists
of vowels and accents only--for vowel signs and accents had been
invented by Jewish scholars between the 5th and 9th centuries A.D.; the
text of the Old Testament is complete in itself and intelligible, though
ambiguous; but the text of the interpretation read by itself is
unintelligible, and only becomes intelligible when read with the
consonants (under, over, or in which they are inserted) of the text of
the Old Testament. But the fact that the later text makes use of the
earlier to make itself intelligible in no way destroys the fact that it
is as entirely distinct a work from the earlier as is any commentary
distinct from the work on which it comments. The first task of Old
Testament textual criticism after the Reformation was to prove the
independence of these two texts, to gain general recognition of the fact
that vowels and accents formed no part of the original Hebrew text of
the Old Testament. The conflict that arose over this question in the
Christian Church was prolonged and bitter--in part because it
unfortunately became inflamed by the contending interests of Roman
Catholic and Protestant. The coeval origin of consonants and vowels had
indeed been questioned or denied by the earliest reformers (Luther,
Zwingli, Calvin), but later, in the period of Protestant scholasticism
and under the influence of one school of Jewish Rabbis, Protestant
scholars in particular, and especially those of the Swiss school,
notably the Buxtorfs, had committed themselves to the view that the
vowels formed an integral and original part of the text of the Old
Testament; and this they maintained with all the more fervency because
the ambiguity of the consonants without the vowels was a troublesome
fact in the way of the extreme Protestant doctrine of the inspiration,
verbal infallibility and sufficiency of Scripture, while it was by no
means unwelcome to Catholic theologians with their doctrine of the need
for an authoritative interpretation. Still in the end it was due in
large measure to the learning and argumentative power devoted to this
subject by the French Protestant scholar, Louis Capell, and, amongst
others, by the English Protestant scholar, Brian Walton, that by the end
of the 17th century this particular controversy was practically at an
end; criticism had triumphed, and the later origin of the vowels was
admitted. Yet, as often happens, the influence of tradition lingered
long after it had been proved to be false; thus the R.V., instead of
being an independent translation of the Hebrew text, is intended (with
rare exceptions, as e.g. in Is. lix. 19, where R.V. translates the
Hebrew text and R.V. margin the Jewish interpretation) to be merely a
translation of the Jewish interpretation; and to the present day it is
usual, though obviously uncritical and wrong, to describe perfectly
legitimate translations of the received consonantal text, if they happen
to presuppose other vowels than those provided by Jewish tradition, as
based on emendation; even in the English edition of Haupt's _Sacred
Books of the Old Testament_ (see below) the possibility of this
unfortunate misunderstanding is not altogether removed.
But the original text of the Old Testament long before it was combined
with the text of the Jewish or Massoretic interpretation had already
undergone a somewhat similar change, the extent of which was indeed far
less, but also less clearly discoverable. This change consisted in the
insertion into the original text of certain consonants which had come to
be also used to express vowel sounds: e.g. the Hebrew consonant
corresponding to w also expressed the vowel o or u, the consonant h the
vowel a, and so forth. For reasons suggested partly by the study of
Semitic inscriptions, partly by comparison of passages occurring twice
within the Old Testament, and partly by a comparison of the Hebrew text
with the Septuagint, it is clear that the authors of the Old Testament
(or at least most of them) themselves made some use of these vowel
consonants, but that in a great number of cases the vowel consonants
that stand in our present text were inserted by transcribers and editors
of the texts. Again, and for similar reasons, it is probable that in
many cases, if not in all, the original texts were written without any
clear division of the consonants into words. In view of all this, the
first requisite for a critical treatment of the text of the Old
Testament is to consider the consonants by themselves, to treat every
vowel-consonant as _possibly_ not original, and the existing divisions
of the text into words as original only in those cases where they yield
a sense better than any other possible division (or, at least, as good).
Certainly all this brings us face to face with much ambiguity and
demands increased skill in interpretation, but anything short of it
falls short also of strict critical method. A perception of this has
only been gradually reached, and is even now none too general.
Apart from these changes in the history of the text, it has, like all
ancient texts, suffered from accidents of transmission, from the
unintentional mistakes of copyists. This fact was, naturally enough and
under the same dogmatic stress, denied by those scholars who maintained
that the vowels were an integral part of the text. Here again we may
single out Capellus as a pioneer in criticism, in his _Critica sacra
sive de variis quae in sacris V. T. libris occurrunt lectionibus_,
written in 1634, much studied in MS. by scholars before its publication
in 1650, and unavailingly criticized by Buxtorf the younger in his
_Anticritica seu vindiciae veritatis hebraicae_ (1653). Capellus drew
conclusions from such important facts as the occurrence of variations in
the two Hebrew texts of passages found twice in the Old Testament
itself, and the variations brought to light by a comparison of the
Jewish and Samaritan texts of the Pentateuch, the Hebrew text and the
Septuagint, the Hebrew text and New Testament quotations from the Old
Testament.
In order that the principles already perceived by Capellus might be
satisfactorily applied in establishing a critical text, many things were
needed; for example, a complete collation of existing MSS. of the Jewish
text and of the Samaritan text of the Pentateuch, the establishing of a
critical text of the Septuagint, a careful study of the several versions
directed to determining when real variants are implied and what they
are. Some of this work has been accomplished: much of it remains to be
done.
The Hebrew MSS. were collated by Kennicott and de Rossi at the close of
the 18th century, with sufficient thoroughness to justify the important
conclusion that all existing MSS. reproduce a single recension. The
Samaritan MSS. are still very imperfectly collated; the same is true of
the Syriac and other versions except the Septuagint. In regard to the
Septuagint, though the work is by no means complete, much has been done.
For collection of material the edition of Holmes and Parsons (Oxford,
1798-1827), with its magnificent critical apparatus, is pre-eminent; the
preparation of a similar edition, on a rather smaller scale but
embodying the results of fresh and more careful collation, was
subsequently undertaken by Cambridge scholars.[19] These editions
furnish the material, but neither attempts the actual construction of a
critical text of the version. Some important contributions towards a
right critical method of using the material collected have been made--in
particular by Lagarde, who has also opened up a valuable line of
critical work, along which much remains to be done, by his restoration
of the Lucianic recension, one of the three great recensions of the
Greek text of the Old Testament which obtained currency at the close of
the 3rd and beginning of the 4th centuries A.D.
More especially since the time of Capellus the value of the Septuagint
for correcting the Hebrew text has been recognized; but it has often
been used uncritically, and the correctness of the Hebrew text
underlying it in comparison with the text of the Hebrew MSS., though
still perhaps most generally underestimated, has certainly at times been
exaggerated.
Results of Criticism.
It has only been possible here to indicate in the briefest way what is
involved in the collection and critical sifting of the extant evidence
for the text of the Old Testament, how much of the work has been done
and how much remains; and with equal brevity it must suffice to indicate
the position which faces the textual critic when all that can be done in
this way has been done. In so far as it is possible to recover the
Hebrew text from which the Greek version was made, it is possible to
recover a form of the Hebrew text current about 280 B.C. in the case of
the Pentateuch, some time before 100 B.C. in the case of most of the
rest of the Old Testament. By comparison of the Hebrew MSS. it is not
difficult to recover the recension which with few and unimportant
variants they have perpetuated, and which may safely be regarded as
differing but slightly from the text current and officially established
before the end of the 2nd century A.D. By a comparison of these two
lines of evidence we can approximate to a text current about 300 B.C. or
later; but for any errors which had entered into the common source of
these two forms of the text we possess no documentary means of detection
whatsoever. The case then stands thus. Except by the obviously absurd
assumption of the infallibility of copyists for the centuries before c.
300 B.C., we cannot escape the conclusion that _errors lurk even where
no variants now exist_, and that _such errors can be corrected, if at
all, only by conjectural emendation_. The dangers of conjectural
emendation are well known and apparent; large numbers of such
emendations have been ill-advised; but in the case of many passages the
only alternative for the textual critic who is at once competent and
honest is to offer such emendations or to indicate that such passages
are corrupt and the means of restoring them lacking.
Conjectural emendations were offered by Capellus in the 17th, and by
scholars such as C.F. Houbigant, Archbishop Seeker, Bishop Lowth and
J.D. Michaelis in the 18th century. Some of these have approved
themselves to successive generations of scholars, who have also added
largely to the store of such suggestions; conjectural emendation has
been carried furthest by upholders of particular metrical theories (such
as Bickell and Duhm) which do not accommodate themselves well to the
existing text, and by T.K. Cheyne (in _Critica Biblica_, 1903), whose
restorations resting on a dubious theory of Hebrew history have met with
little approval, though his negative criticism of the text is often keen
and suggestive.
A model of the application of the various resources of Old Testament
textual criticism to the restoration of the text is C.H. Cornill's _Das
Buch des Propheten Ezechiel_ (1886): outstanding examples of important
systematic critical notes are J. Wellhausen's _Der Text der Buecher
Samuelis_ (1871) and S.R. Driver's _Notes on the Hebrew Text of the
Books of Samuel_ (1890). Haupt's _Sacred Books of the Old Testament_,
edited by various scholars, was designed to present, when complete, a
critical text of the entire Old Testament with critical notes. The
results of textual criticism, including a considerable number of
conjectural emendations, are succinctly presented in Kittel's _Biblia
Hebraica_ (1906); but the text here printed is the ordinary Massoretic
(vocalized) text. The valuable editions of the Old Testament by Baer and
Delitzsch, and by Ginsburg, contain _critical_ texts of the Jewish
interpretation of Scripture, and therefore necessarily _uncritical_
texts of the Hebrew Old Testament itself: it lies entirely outside their
scope to give or even to consider the evidence which exists for
correcting the obvious errors in the text of the Old Testament as
received and perpetuated by the Jewish interpreters. See also the
authorities mentioned in the following section. (G. B. G.*)