_The Bible carries the refutation of this claim upon the face of its
writings._
They thrust upon the attention of all who are not blind the traces of
human imperfection, of a kind and an extent which precludes any notion of
a clean copy of a perfect script let down from the skies.
The Old Testament historians contradict each other in facts and figures,
tell the same story in different ways, locate the same incident at
different periods, ascribe the same deeds to different men, quote
statistics which are plainly exaggerated, mistake poetic legend for sober
prose, report the marvellous tales of tradition as literal history, and
give us statements which cannot be read as scientific facts without
denying our latest and most authoritative knowledge. I shall not enumerate
these "mistakes of Moses," and of others. That is an ungracious task for
which I have no heart. It may be needful to remind the children of a
larger growth, who persist in believing a saintly mother's beliefs to be
final authority in their studies, that she is not infallible. But one does
not care to catalogue her mistakes and taunt her with them.
That which carries no such reproach in it, but is, when rightly read, an
honor to the Bible, may be pointed out, as the Biblical writers, indeed,
do for us themselves.
The marks of a patient and noble literary workmanship are in every
writing.
We can see this as our fathers could not see it, because the glasses
through which to read literature critically have been ground within our
century. Literary criticism is the study of literature by means of a
microscopic knowledge of the language in which a book is written, of its
growth from various roots, of its stages of development and the factors
influencing them, of its condition in the period of this particular
composition, of the writer's idiosyncrasies of thought and style in his
ripening periods, of the general history and literature of his race, and
of the special characteristics of his age and of his contemporary writers.
Every educated person knows something of the working of this criticism on
other books. You have read your Shakespeare with intelligence, and have
felt many misgivings as to the genuineness of a few plays, and of passages
in many plays. The brutalities and beastlinesses of Titus Andronicus
seemed impossible to the author of "The Tempest" and the "Midsummer
Night's Dream." The historic plays seemed to you often "padded." But there
was nothing more than guess-work in your conclusions, and, you suspected,
in the more pretentious opinions of others. You take up, however, the
lectures of Hudson or the charming study of Dowden, and you find that
criticism is becoming, not merely an art, depending on certain instincts
and tastes, but a science, building slowly a well-settled body of laws and
rules, and shaping already a well defined consensus of judgment. The
growth of the English language and literature, the characteristics of
society, of language and of literature in the Elizabethan era, the idioms
of Shakespeare's contemporaries, the manner of Shakespeare himself, in his
different periods, have all been so minutely studied as to form a distinct
specialty in knowledge. The Shakespearian scholar is a well differentiated
species of the genus scholar, and speaks with a substantial authority upon
what is now a real science. You can follow this teacher into Shakespeare's
work-shop, watch the building of his plays, distinguish the hands which
toiled over them and mark their journeyman's work, till quite sure where
the Master's own inimitable touch caressed them into noble form, and in
what period of his life he thus wrought. There is a new revelation of
Shakespeare to our age.
This criticism turned upon the great books of the ancients. Niebuhr led
the way in reconstructing the early history of the Romans. Dr. Arnold
predicted that a Niebuhr of Jewish literature would arise. He came duly.
His name was Ewald. Successors have followed in abundance. The principles
and processes of literary criticism were applied to the Hebrew writings.
In the present immature stage of this science of Biblical Criticism there
are, of course, plenty of speculations and guesses, of hasty
generalizations and crude opinions. Time will correct these. Meanwhile
there is already so much that may claim to be well established as to
constitute a new knowledge of these old books.
The historical books are seen to be the work of many hands in many ages.
They gather up the popular traditions of the race, carry down on their
slow streams fragments from such far back ages that we have almost lost
the clue to their story--glacial boulders that now lie strangely out of
place in the rich fields of later eras; songs of rude periods, nature
myths, legends of semi-fabulous heroes, folk lore of the tribes, scraps
from long-forgotten books, entries from ancient annals, pages torn from
the histories of other peoples to fill out the story; the whole worked
over many times by many hands in many generations.
Just as Thirlwall and Grote give us studies of Grecian history from the
standpoint of Monarchism and Republicanism, so in the Kings and
Chronicles we have studies of Hebrew history from a prophetic and priestly
point of view.
The legislation of the Pentateuch, supposed formerly to have been drawn up
by Moses, appears, as it now stands, to be a codification, made as late as
the period of the Babylonian exile, under the influence of the
hierarchical and ritual system, then crystallizing into the form familiar
to us all. This codification, like its famous parallel in Roman history,
the code of Justinian, collated the decisions and decrees already in
existence from various periods, and reissued them as one body of laws.
It brings together the "Judgments" of early days upon questions of civil
life--the decisions of tribal heads concerning the rights of person and
property, the counterparts of the "Dooms" of English history; the moral
rules of the local priests in a simple state of society; and the ritual
and discipline of a late ecclesiastical age. The compilation is not very
skilfully done, so that we pass from the minutiæ of a priest's _vade
mecum_ in a highly developed hierarchical period to the civil statutes of
a rude patriarchal society, whose very crimes are archaic.
The prophecies break up into fragmentary collections, in which the words
of many different and obscure prophets are grouped under the name of some
great prophet, as was quite natural in an uncritical age; the whole mass
being arranged with little chronological order.
The Psalter separates into several books of sacred song, dating from
different periods. They repeat the same Psalm, and divide one Psalm into
two and join two into one, on principles by no means apparent to us. Some
of these Psalms are of a highly artificial and mechanical structure. There
are acrostics, in which the couplets begin with the successive letters of
the Hebrew alphabet; double acrostics, and other refinements of literary
ingenuity; the sure signs of a flamboyant and decadent literature.
The other writings of the Old Testament and the books of the New Testament
have yielded similar general results to the touchstone of criticism;
concerning which it is needless to speak further.
Our critical glasses bring out, clear and strong, the fact of a human,
literary craft in these books, the signs on every hand of the labor of
brain and skill of pen through which the literature of a venerable nation,
and of the infant church born of it, took slow shape into our Bible. Such
a work needs must have in it the traces of human imperfection; and these
limitations of thought and knowledge, these mistakes of fallible writers,
are to be seen by every one, save those who will not see.
It is impossible after such a study to rest in the illusion of an
infallible book, of which, as a book, God can be said to be the "author."