SOURCES OF THE PENTATEUCH.
In the last chapter we found evidence that the Pentateuch as it stands
could not have been the work of Moses, though it contains much material
which must have originated in the time of Moses, and is more likely to
have been dictated by him than by any one else; that large portions of
the Mosaic law were of Mosaic authorship; that the entire system of
Levitical legislation grew up from this Mosaic germ, though much of it
appeared in later generations; and that, therefore, the habit of the
Jews of calling it all the law of Moses is easily understood. We thus
discovered in this study that the Pentateuch is a composite book.
The Christian Church in all the ages has been inclined to pin its faith
to what the rabbins said about the origin of this book, and this is not
altogether surprising; but in these days when testimony is sifted by
criticism we find that the traditions of the rabbins are not at all
trustworthy; and when we go to the Book itself, and ask it to tell us
what it can of the secret of its origin, we find that it has a very
different story to tell from that with which the rabbins have beguiled
us. A careful study of the Book makes it perfectly certain that it is
not the production of any one man, but a growth that has been going on
for many centuries; that it embodies the work of many hands, put
together in an artless way by various editors and compilers. The
framework is Mosaic, but the details of the work were added by reverent
disciples of Moses, the last of whom must have lived and written many
hundred years after Moses' day.
Some of the evidences of composite structure which lie upon the very
face of the narrative will now come under our notice. It is plain that
the whole of this literature could not have been written by any one man
without some kind of assistance. All the books, except the first, are
indeed a record of events which occurred mainly during the lifetime of
Moses, and of most of which he might have had personal knowledge. But
the story of Genesis goes back to a remote antiquity. The last event
related in that book occurred four hundred years before Moses was born;
it was as distant from him as the discovery of America by Columbus is
from us; and other portions of the narrative, such as the story of the
Flood and the Creation, stretch back into the shadows of the age which
precedes history. Neither Moses nor any one living in his day could have
given us these reports from his own knowledge. Whoever wrote this must
have obtained his materials in one of three ways.
1. They might have been given to him by direct revelation from God.
2. He might have gathered them up from oral tradition, from stories,
folk-lore, transmitted from mouth to mouth, and so preserved from
generation to generation.
3. He might have found them in written documents existing at the time of
his writing.
The first of these conjectures embodies the rabbinical theory. The later
form of that theory declared, however, that God did not even dictate
while Moses wrote, but simply handed the law, all written and
punctuated, out of heaven to Moses; the only question with these rabbins
was whether he handed it down all at once, or one volume at a time. It
is certain that this is not the correct theory. The repetitions, the
discrepancies, the anachronisms, and the errors which the writing
certainly contains prove that it could not have been dictated, word for
word, by the Omniscient One. Those who maintain such a theory as this
should beware how they ascribe to God the imperfections of men. It seems
to me that the advocacy of the verbal theory of inspiration comes
perilously near to the sin against the Holy Ghost.
The second conjecture, that the writer of these books might have
gathered up oral traditions of the earlier generations and incorporated
them into his writings, is more plausible; yet a careful examination of
the writings themselves does not confirm this theory. The form of this
literature shows that it must have had another origin.
The only remaining conjecture, that the books are compilations of
written documents, has been established beyond controversy by the most
patient study of the writings themselves. In the Book of Genesis the
evidence of the combination of two documents is so obvious that he who
runs may read. These two documents are distinguished from each other,
partly by the style of writing, and partly by the different names which
they apply to the Supreme Being. One of these old writers called the
Deity Elohim, the other called him Yahveh, or Jehovah. These documents
are known, therefore, as the Elohistic and the Jehovistic narratives.
Sometimes it is a little difficult to tell where the line runs which
separates these narratives, but usually it is distinct. Readers of
Genesis find many passages in which the name given to the Deity is
"God," and others in which it is "LORD," in small capitals. The first of
these names represents the Hebrew Elohim, the second the Hebrew Yahveh
or Jehovah. In one important section, beginning with the fourth verse of
the second chapter, and continuing through the chapter, the two names
are combined, and we have the Supreme Being spoken of as "The LORD God,"
Jehovah-Elohim. It is evident to every observing reader that we have in
the beginning of Genesis two distinct accounts of the Creation, the one
occupying the first chapter and three verses of the second, the other
occupying the remainder of the second chapter with the whole of the
third. The difference between these accounts is quite marked. The style
of the writing, particularly in the Hebrew, is strongly contrasted; and
the details of the story are not entirely harmonious. In the first
narrative the order of creation is, first the earth and its vegetation,
then the lower animals, then man, male and female, made in God's image.
In the second narrative the order is, first the earth and its
vegetation, then man, then the lower orders of animals, then woman. In
the first story plant life springs into existence at the direct command
of God; in the second it results from a mist which rose from the earth
and watered the whole face of the ground. These striking differences
would be hard to explain if we had not before our faces the clear
evidence of two old documents joined together.
I spoke in the last chapter of certain historical discrepancies which
are not explicable on the supposition that this is the work of a single
writer. Such are the two accounts of the origin of the name of
Beersheba, the one in the twenty-first and the other in the twenty-sixth
chapter of Genesis. The first account says that it was named by Abraham,
and gives the reason why he called the place by this name. The second
account says that it received its name from Isaac, about ninety years
later, and gives a wholly different explanation of the reason why he
called it by this name. When we find that in the first of these stories
God is called Elohim, [Footnote: In the last verse of this narrative the
word Jehovah is used, but this is probably an interpolation.] and in the
second Jehovah, we can readily explain this discrepancy. The compiler
took one of these narratives from one of these old documents, and the
other from the other, and was not careful to reconcile the two.
A similar duplication of the narrative is found in chapters xx. and
xxvi., with respect to the incident of Abimelech; in the first of these
narratives a serious complication is described as arising between
Abimelech King of Gerar on the one hand and Abraham and Sarah on the
other; in the second Abimelech is represented as interfering, in
precisely the same way and with the same results, in the domestic
felicity of Isaac and Rebekah. The harmonizers have done their work, of
course, upon these two passages; they have said that there were two
Abimelechs, and that Isaac repeated the blunder of his father; but it is
a little singular, if this were so, that no reference is made in the
latter narrative to the former. It is altogether probable that we have
the same story ascribed to different actors; and when we find that the
one narrative is Elohistic and the other Jehovistic, the problem is
solved.
More curious than any other of these combinations is the account of the
Flood, in which the compiler has taken the narratives of these two old
writers and pieced them together like patchwork. Refer to your Bibles
and note this piece of literary joiner-work. At the fifth verse of the
sixth chapter of Genesis this story begins; from this verse to the end
of the eighth verse the Jehovistic document is used. The name of the
Deity is Jehovah, translated LORD. From the ninth verse to the end of
the chapter the Elohistic document is used. The word applied to God is
Elohim, translated God. With the seventh chapter begins again the
quotation from the other document, "And the LORD [Jehovah] said unto
Noah." This extends only to the sixth verse; then the Elohistic
narrative begins again, and continues to the nineteenth verse of the
eighth chapter, including it; then the Jehovistic narrative begins
again, and continues through the chapter; then the Elohist takes up the
tale for the first seventeen verses of the ninth chapter; then the
Jehovist goes on to the twenty-seventh verse, and the Elohist closes the
chapter. It is true that we have in the midst of some of these Elohistic
passages a verse or two of the other document inserted by the compiler;
but the outlines of the different documents are marked as I have told
you. If you take this story and dissect out of it the portions which I
have ascribed to the Elohist and put them together, you will have a
clear, complete, consecutive story of the Flood; the portions of the
Jehovistic narrative inserted rather tend to confusion. "The
consideration of the context here," says Bleek, "quite apart from the
changes in the naming of God, shows that the Jehovistic passages of the
narrative did not originally belong to it. It cannot fail to be observed
that the connection is often interrupted by the Jehovistic passages, and
that by cutting them out a more valuable and clearer continuity of the
narrative is almost always obtained. For instance, in the existing
narrative certain repetitions keep on occurring; one of these,
especially, is connected with a difference in the matters of fact
related, introducing no slight difficulty and obscurity." [Footnote:
Vol. i. p. 273.]
Hear the Jehovist: "And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great
in the earth" (ch. vi. 5). Now hear the Elohist (vi. 11): "And the earth
was corrupt before Elohim, and the earth was filled with violence." The
Jehovist says (vi. 7): "And Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the ground." The Elohist says (vi. 13): "The
earth is filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy
them with the earth." In the ninth verse of the sixth chapter we read:
"Noah was a righteous man and perfect in his generations; Noah walked
with Elohim." In the first verse of the seventh chapter, we read, "And
Jehovah said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for
thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation." These
repetitions show how the same story is twice told. But the
contradictions are more significant. Here the one narrative represents
Elohim as saying (vi. 19): "And of every living thing of all flesh, two
of every kind shalt thou bring into the ark to keep them alive with
thee; they shall be male and female. Of the fowl after their kind and of
the cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after
its kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee to keep them alive."
But the other narrative represents Jehovah as saying, "Of every clean
beast thou shalt take to thee seven and seven, the male and the female;
and of the beasts that are not clean, two, the male and the female; of
the fowl also of the air seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed
alive upon the face of all the earth." The one story says that of every
kind of living creature one pair should be taken into the ark; the other
says that of _clean_ beasts, seven pairs of each species should be
received, and of unclean beasts only one pair. The harmonists have
wrestled with this passage also; some of them say that perhaps the first
passage only meant that they should _walk in_ two and two; others
say that a good many years had elapsed between the giving of the two
commands (of which there is not a particle of evidence), and we are left
to infer that in the mean time the Almighty either forgot his first
orders, or else changed his mind. It is a pitiful instance of an attempt
to evade a difficulty that cannot be evaded. One of the very
conservative commentators, Dr. Perowne, in Smith's "Bible Dictionary,"
concludes to face it: "May we not suppose," he timidly asks, "that we
have here traces of a separate document, interwoven by a later writer,
with the former history? The passage has not, indeed, been incorporated
intact, but there is a coloring about it which seems to indicate that
Moses, or whoever put the book of Genesis into its present shape, had
here consulted a different narrative. The distinct use of the divine
names in the same phrase (vi. 22; vii. 5), in the former Elohim, in the
latter Jehovah, suggests that this may have been the case." [Footnote:
Art. "Noah," iii. 2179, American Edition.]
"May we not suppose," the good doctor asks, that we have traces of two
documents here? Certainly, your reverence. It is just as safe to suppose
it, as it is to suppose, when you see a nose on a man's face, that it is
a nose. There is no more doubt about it than there is about any other
palpable fact. The truth is, that the composite character of Genesis is
no longer, in scholarly circles, an open question. The most cautious,
the most conservative of scholars concede the point. Even President
Bartlett, of Dartmouth College, a Hebraist of some eminence, and as
sturdy a defender of old-fashioned orthodoxy as this country holds, made
this admission more than twenty years ago: "We may accept the traces of
earlier narratives as having been employed and authenticated by him
[Moses]; and we may admit the marks of later date as indications of a
surface revision of authorized persons not later than Ezra and
Nehemiah." And Dr. Perowne, the conservative scholar already quoted, in
the article on the "Pentateuch" in "Smith's Bible Dictionary," sums up
as follows:--
"1. The Book of Genesis rests chiefly on documents much earlier than
the time of Moses, though it was probably brought to very nearly
its present shape either by Moses himself, or by one of the
elders who acted under him.
"2. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are to a great extent
Mosaic. Besides those portions which are expressly declared to
have been written by him, other portions, and especially the
legal sections, were, if not actually written, in all probability
dictated by him.
"3. Deuteronomy, excepting the concluding part, is entirely the work
of Moses, as it professes to be.
. . . . . . . . . .
"5. The first _composition_ of the Pentateuch as a whole could
not have taken place till after the Israelites entered Canaan.
"6. The whole work did not finally assume its present shape till its
revision was undertaken by Ezra after the return from the
Babylonish captivity."
The volume from which I have quoted these words bears the date of 1870.
Twenty years of very busy work have been expended upon the Pentateuch
since Dr. Perowne wrote these words; if he were to write to-day he would
be much less confident that Moses wrote the whole of Deuteronomy, and he
would probably modify his statements in other respects; but he would
retract none of these admissions respecting the composite character of
these five books.
The same fact of a combination of different documents can easily be
shown in all the three middle books of the Pentateuch, as well as in
Genesis. This is the fact which explains those repetitions of laws, and
those singular breaks in the history, to which I called your attention
in the last chapter. There is, as I believe, a large element of purely
Mosaic legislation in these books; many of these laws were written
either by the hand of Moses or under his eye; and the rest are so
conformed to the spirit which he impressed upon the Hebrew jurisprudence
that they may be fairly called Mosaic; but many of them, on the other
hand, were written long after his day, and the whole Pentateuch did not
reach its present form until after the exile, in the days of Ezra and
Nehemiah.
The upholders of the traditional theory--that Moses wrote the
Pentateuch, just as Blackstone wrote his Commentaries--are wont to make
much account of the disagreements of those critics who have undertaken
to analyze it into its component parts. "These critics," they say, "are
all at loggerheads; they do not agree with one another; none of them
even agrees with himself very long; most of them have several times
revised their theories, and there seems to be neither certainty nor
coherency in their speculations." But this is not quite true. With
respect to some subordinate questions they are not agreed, and probably
never will be; but with respect to the fact that these books are
composite in their origin they are perfectly agreed, and they are also
remarkably unanimous in their judgments as to where the lines of
cleavage run between these component parts. The consensus of critical
opinion now is that there are at least four great documents which have
been combined in the Pentateuch; and the critics agree in the main
features of the analysis, though they do not all call these separated
parts by the same names, nor do they all think alike concerning the
relative antiquity of these portions. Some think that one of these
documents is the oldest, and some give that distinction to another; nor
do they agree as to how old the oldest is, some bringing the earliest
composition down to a recent period; but on the main question that the
literature is composite they are at one. The closeness of their
agreement is shown by Professor Ladd in a series of tables [Footnote:
_The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture_, Part II. chap. vii.] in which
he displays to the eye the results of the analysis of four independent
investigators, Knobel, Schrader, Dillmann, and Wellhausen. He goes
through the whole of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua,--the
Hexateuch, as it is now called,--and picks out of every chapter those
verses assigned by these several authorities to that ancient writing
which we have been calling the Elohistic narrative, and arranges them in
parallel columns. You can see at a glance when they agree in this
analysis, and when they disagree. I think that you would be astonished
to find that the agreements are so many and the disagreements so few. So
much unity of judgment would be impossible if the lines of cleavage
between these old documents were not marked with considerable
distinctness. "The only satisfactory explanation," says Professor Ladd,
"of the possibility of accomplishing such a work of analysis is the fact
that the analysis is substantially correct." [Footnote: _What is the
Bible?_ p. 311.]
Professor C. A. Briggs, of the Union (Presbyterian) Theological Seminary
in New York, bore this testimony three years ago in the "Presbyterian
Review:" "The critical analysis of the Hexateuch is the result of more
than a century of profound study of the documents by the greatest
critics of the age. There has been a steady advance until the present
position of agreement has been reached, in which Jew and Christian,
Roman Catholic and Protestant, Rationalistic and Evangelical scholars,
Reformed and Lutheran, Presbyterian and Episcopal, Unitarian, Methodist,
and Baptist all concur. The analysis or the Hexateuch into several
distinct original documents is a purely literary question in which no
article of faith is involved. Whoever in these times, in the discussion
of the literary phenomena of the Hexateuch, appeals to the ignorance and
prejudices of the multitude as if there were any peril to faith in these
processes of the Higher Criticism, risks his reputation for scholarship
by so doing. There are no Hebrew professors on the continent of Europe,
so far as I know, who would deny the literary analysis of the Pentateuch
into the four great documents. The professors of Hebrew in the
Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, and tutors in a large
number of theological colleges, hold to the same opinion. A very
considerable number of the Hebrew professors of America are in accord
with them. There are, indeed, a few professional scholars who hold to
the traditional opinion, but these are in a hopeless minority. I doubt
whether there is any question of scholarship whatever in which there is
greater agreement among scholars than in this question of the literary
analysis of the Hexateuch."
I have but one more witness to introduce, and it shall be the
distinguished German professor Delitzsch, who has long been regarded as
the bulwark of evangelical orthodoxy in Germany. "His name," says
Professor Ladd, "has for many years been connected with the conception
of a devout Christian scholarship used in the defense of the faith
against attacks upon the supernatural character of the Old Testament
religion and of the writings which record its development." In a preface
to his commentary on Isaiah published since his recent death, he speaks
with great humility of the work that he has done, adding, "Of one thing
only do I think I may be confident,--that the spirit by which it is
animated comes from the good Spirit that guides along the everlasting
way." The opinion of such a scholar ought to have weight with all
serious-minded Christians. When I give you his latest word on this
question, you will recognize that you have all that the ripest and most
devout scholarship can claim. Let me quote, then, Professor Ladd's
abstract of his verdict:--
"In the opinion of Professor Delitzsch only the basis of the several
codes... incorporated in the Pentateuch is Mosaic; the form in which
these codes... are presented in the Pentateuch is of an origin much
later than the time of Moses. The Decalogue and the laws forming the
Book of the Covenant are the most ancient portions; they preserve the
Mosaic type in its relatively oldest and purest form. Of this type
Deuteronomy _is a development_. The statement that Moses 'wrote'
the Deuteronomic law (Deut. xxxi. 9, 24) _does not refer to the
present Book of Deuteronomy, but to the code of laws which underlies
it_.
"The Priest's Code, which embodies the more distinctively ritualistic
and ceremonial legislation, is the result of a long and progressive
development. Certain of its principles originated with Moses, but its
form, which is utterly unlike that of the other parts of the Pentateuch,
was received at the hands of the priests of the nation. Probably some
particular priest, at a much later date, indeed, than the time of Moses,
but prior to the composition of Deuteronomy, was especially influential
in shaping it. But the last stages of its development may belong to the
period after the Exile.
"The historical traditions which are incorporated into the Hexateuch
were committed to writing at different times and by different hands. The
narratives of them are superimposed, as it were, stratum upon stratum,
in the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. For the Book of Joshua is
connected intimately with the Pentateuch, and when analyzed shows the
same composite structure. The differences which the several codes
exhibit are due to modifications which they received in the course of
history as they were variously collected, revised, and passed from
generation to generation.... The Pentateuch, like all the other
historical books of the Bible, is composed of documentary sources,
differing alike in character and age, which critical analysis may still
be able, with greater or less certainty, to distinguish and separate
from one another." [Footnote: _What is the Bible?_ pp. 489-491.]
That such is the fact with respect to the structure of these ancient
writings is now beyond question. And our theory of inspiration must be
adjusted to this fact. Evidently neither the theory of verbal
inspiration, nor the theory of plenary inspiration can be made to fit
the facts which a careful study of the writings themselves bring before
us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly
given to that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable
while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a
composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this claim,"
says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertained results of
criticism, 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 infallibly inspired; every one who made any
changes in any one of these fundamental writings was infallibly
inspired; every compiler who put together two or more of these writings
was infallibly inspired, both as to his selections and transmissions
[omissions?], and as to any connecting or explanatory words which he
might himself write; every redactor was infallibly inspired to correct
and supplement and omit that which was the product of previous
infallible inspirations. Or perhaps it might seem more convenient to
attach the claim of a plenary inspiration to the last redactor of all;
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 claim for a
plenary inspiration of the Pentateuch in its present form on the ground
of the infallibility of that one of the Scribes who gave it its last
touches some time subsequent to the date of Ezra!" [Footnote: _The
Doctrine of Sacred Scripture_, i. 499]
And yet this does not signify that these books are valueless. When it
was discovered that the Homeric writings were not all the work of Homer,
the value of the Homeric writings was not affected. As pictures of the
life of that remote antiquity they had not lost their significance. The
value of these Mosaic books is of a very different sort from that of the
Homeric writings, but the discoveries of the Higher Criticism affect
them no more seriously. Even their historical character is by no means
overthrown. You can find in Herodotus and in Livy discrepancies and
contradictions, but this does not lead you to regard their writings as
worthless. There are no infallible histories, but that is no reason why
you should not study history, or why you should read all history with
the inclination to reject every statement which is not forced on your
acceptance by evidence which you cannot gainsay.
These books of Moses are the treasury, indeed, of no little valuable
history. They are not infallible, but they contain a great deal of truth
which we find nowhere else, and which is yet wonderfully corroborated by
all that we do know. Ewald declares that in the fourteenth chapter of
Genesis Abraham is brought before us "in the clear light of history."
From monuments and other sources the substantial accuracy of this
narrative is confirmed; and the account of the visit of Abraham to Egypt
conforms, in all its minute incidents, to the life of Egypt at that
time. The name Pharaoh is the right name for the kings reigning then;
the behavior of the servants of Pharaoh is perfectly in keeping with the
popular ideas and practices as the monuments reveal them. The story of
Joseph has been confirmed, as to its essential accuracy, as to the
verisimilitude of its pictures of Egyptian life, by every recent
discovery. Georg Ebers declares that "this narrative contains nothing
which does not accurately correspond to a court of Pharaoh in the best
times of the Kingdom." Many features of this narrative which a rash
skepticism has assailed have been verified by later discoveries.
We are told in the Exodus that the Israelites were impressed by Pharaoh
into building for him two store-cities ("treasure cities," the old
version calls them), named Pithom and Rameses, and that in this work they
were made to "serve with rigor;" that their lives were embittered "with
hard service in mortar and brick and all manner of hard service in the
field;" that they were sometimes forced to make brick without straw. The
whereabouts of these store-cities, and the precise meaning of the term
applied to them, has been a matter of much conjecture, and the story has
sometimes been set aside as a myth. To Pithom there is no clear
historical reference in any other book except Exodus. Only four or five
years ago a Genovese explorer unearthed, near the route of the Suez
Canal, this very city; found several ruined monuments with the name of
the city plainly inscribed on them, "Pi Tum," and excavating still
further uncovered a ruin of which the following is Mr. Rawlinson's
description: "The town is altogether a square, inclosed by a brick wall
twenty-two feet thick, and measuring six hundred and fifty feet along
each side. Nearly the whole of the space is occupied by solidly built,
square chambers, divided one from another by brick walls, from eight to
ten feet thick, which are unpierced by window or door or opening of any
kind. About ten feet from the bottom the walls show a row of recesses
for beams, in some of which decayed wood still remains, indicating that
the buildings were two-storied, having a lower room which could only be
entered by a trap-door, used probably as a store-house, or magazine, and
an upper one in which the keeper of the store may have had his abode.
Therefore this discovery is simply that of a 'store-city,' built partly
by Rameses II.; but it further appears from several short inscriptions,
that the name of the city was Pa Tum, or Pithom; and thus there is no
reasonable doubt that one of the two cities built by the Israelites has
been laid bare, and answers completely to the description given of it."
[Footnote: Quoted by Robinson in _The Pharaohs of the Bondage_, p.
97.]
The walls of Egypt were not all laid with mortar, but the record speaks
of mortar in this case, and here it is: the several courses of these
buildings were usually "laid with mortar in regular tiers." More
striking still is the fact that in some of these buildings, while the
lower tiers are composed of bricks having straw in them, the upper tiers
consist of a poorer quality of bricks without straw. Photographs may be
seen in this country of some of these brick granaries of this old
store-city of Pithom, with the line of division plainly showing between
the two kinds of bricks; and thus we have before our eyes a most striking
confirmation of the truth of this story of the bondage of the Israelites
in Egypt. Quite a number of such testimonies to the substantial
historical verity of these Old Testament records have been discovered in
recent years as old mounds have been opened in Egypt and in Chaldea, and
the monuments of buried centuries have told their story to the wondering
world. The books are not infallible, but he who sets them all aside as a
collection of myths or fables exposes his ignorance in a lamentable way.
But what is far more to the purpose, the ideas running all through the
old literature, the constructive truths of science, of ethics, of
religion, are pure and lofty and full of saving power. Even science, I
say, owes much to Genesis. The story of the Creation in the first
chapter of Genesis must not indeed be taken for veritable history; but
it is a solemn hymn in which some great truths of the world's origin are
sublimely set forth. It gives us the distinct idea of the unity of
Creation,--sweeping away, at one mighty stroke, the whole system of
naturalistic polytheism, which makes science impossible, when it
declares that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
In the same words it sets forth the truth by whose light science alone
walks safely, that the source of all things is a spiritual cause. The
God from whose power all things proceed is not a fortuitous concourse of
atoms, but a spiritual intelligence. From this living God came forth
matter with its forces, life with its organisms, mind with its freedom.
And although it may not be possible to force the words of this ancient
hymn into scientific statements of the order of creation, it is most
clear that it implies a continuous process, a law of development, in the
generations of the heaven and the earth. This is not a scientific
treatise of creation, but the alphabet of science is here, as Dr. Newman
Smyth has said; and it is correct. The guiding lights of scientific
study are in these great principles.
Similarly the ethical elements and tendencies of these old writings are
sound and strong. I have shown you how defective many of the Mosaic laws
are when judged by Christian standards; but all this legislation
contains formative ideas and principles by which it tends to purify
itself. Human sacrifices were common among the surrounding nations; the
story of Abraham and Isaac banishes that horror forever from Hebrew
history. Slavery was universal, but the law of the Jubilee Year made an
end of domestic slavery in Israel. The family was foundationless; the
wife's rights rested wholly on the caprice of her husband; but that law
of divorce which I quoted to you, and which our Lord repealed, set some
bounds to this caprice, for the husband was compelled to go through
certain formalities before he could turn his wife out of doors. The law
of blood vengeance, though in terms it authorized murder, yet in effect
powerfully restrained the violence of that rude age, and gave a chance
for the development of that idea of the sacredness of life which to us
is a moral commonplace, but which had scarcely dawned upon the minds of
those old Hebrews. Thus the history shows a people moving steadily
forward under moral leadership, out of barbarism into higher
civilization, and we can trace the very process by which the moral
maxims which to us are almost axioms have been cleared of the crudities
of passion and animalism, and stamped upon the consciousness of men. Is
not God in all this history?
Those first principles which I have called the guiding lights of science
are also the elements of pure religion. Science and religion spell out
different messages to men, but they start with the same alphabet. And
the religious purity of that hymn of the Creation is not less wonderful
than its scientific verity. Compare it with the other traditional
stories of the origin of things; compare it with the mythologies of
Egypt, of Chaldea, of Greece and Rome, and see how far above them it
stands in spiritual dignity, in moral beauty. "We could more easily,
indeed," says Dr. Newman Smyth, "compute how much a pure spring welling
up at the source of a brook that widens into a river, has done for
meadow and grass and flowers and overhanging trees, for thousands of
years, than estimate the influence of this purest of all ancient
traditions of the Creation, as it has entered into the lives and revived
the consciences of men; as it has purified countries of idolatries and
swept away superstition; and has flowed on and on with the increasing
truth of history, and kept fresh and fruitful, from generation to
generation, faith in the One God and the common parentage of men."
[Footnote: _Old Faiths in New Light_, p. 73.]
Above all, we find in all this literature the planting and the first
germination of that great hope which turned the thought of this people
from the earliest generations toward the future, and made them trust and
pray and wait, in darkest times, for better days to come. "Speak unto
the children of Israel that they go forward!" This is the voice that is
always sounding from the heights above them, whether they halt by the
shore of the sea, or bivouac in the wilderness. They do not always obey
the voice, but it never fails to rouse and summon them. No people of all
history has lived in the future as Israel did. "By faith" they worshiped
and trusted and wrought and fought, the worthies of this old religion;
towards lands that they had not seen they set their faces; concerning
things to come they were always prophesying; and it is this great hope
that forms the germ of the Messianic expectation by which they reach
forth to the glories of the latter day. This attitude of Israel, in all
the generations, is the one striking feature of this history. No
soulless sphinx facing a trackless desert with blind eyes--no impassive
Buddha ensphered in placid silence--is the genius of this people, but
some strong angel poised on mighty pinion above the highest peak of
Pisgah, and scanning with swift glances the beauty of the promised land.
Now any people of which this is true must be, in a large sense of the
word, an inspired people; and their literature, with all the signs of
imperfection which must appear in it, on account of the medium through
which it comes, will give proof of the divine ideas and forces that are
working themselves out in their history.
It is in this large way of looking at the Hebrew literature that we
discover its real preciousness. And when we get this large conception,
then petty questions about the absolute accuracy of texts and dates no
longer trouble us. "He who has once gained this broader view of the
Bible," says Dr. Newman Smyth, "as the development of a course of
history itself guided and inspired by Jehovah, will not be disconcerted
by the confused noises of the critic. His faith in the Word of God lies
deeper than any difficulties or flaws upon the surface of the Bible. He
will not be disturbed by seeing any theory of its mechanical formation,
or school-book infallibility broken to fragments under the repeated
blows of modern investigation; the water of life will flow from the rock
which the scholar strikes with his rod. He can wait, without fear, for a
candid and thorough study of these sacred writings to determine, if
possible, what parts are genuine, and what narratives, if any, are
unhistorical. His belief in the Word of God, from generation to
generation, does not depend upon the minor incidents of the Biblical
stories; it would not be destroyed or weakened, even though human
traditions could be shown to have overgrown some parts of this sacred
history, as the ivy, creeping up the wall of the church, does not loosen
its ancient stones." [Footnote: _Old Faiths in New Light_, p. 59.]