The Theories of the Critics Violate True Criticism: Analogy of the Dreyfus Case

But, we shall be told, the grounds on which scholars assign the Mosaic books to the sixth century B. C. are the result of a critical examination of the text. The statement is absolutely unwarranted and untrue. In placing “Moses” after “the prophets;” the critics not only dislocate the whole scheme of Biblical revelation — Old and New Testament alike — and ignore the plain teaching of our divine Lord, but they flagrantly violate their own much-vaunted methods of criticism. If they applied those methods to the examination of the Pentateuch they would find abundant proof ‘that the books were written in the very cir-

‘cumstances in which they profess to have been

written.*; As already urged, we must distinguish be-

*To enlarge on this here is, of course, impossible. But overwhelming proof of my statement will be found in the pages of Lex Mosaica, from the first article by Prof. Sayce to the last by Dr. Wace, Dean of Canterbury. As I write, another book, equally convincing and much more accessible, has been published in an English translation by the Religious Tract Society, Are the tween true criticism and the dicta of those who claim to be Higher Critics. The work of the German Higher Critics and their English disciples has the same relation to the principles of criticism that the Dreyfus trial in France had to the principles of justice. The judges decidedthe case and then proceeded to try it. The object of the trial was not to investigate the charge, but to convict the accused. And so here. Having made up their minds on grounds now proved to be untenable that the Mosaic books are forgeries, the critics set themselves to establish this conclusion. And to attain this end they violate the first principles of criticism; they ignore everything urged on the other side by scholars as able as themselves; and, as in the Dreyfus trial, nothing is too trivial for use if only it can be made to support their case.

In a court of justice every doubtful point is construed in favour of the accused. But with

Critics Right? by Wilhelm Moller (who was at one time “immovably convinced of the irrefutable correctness of theGraf-Wellhausen hypothesis”), with an introduction by Prof. von Orelli, D. D. And by all means see Canon Girdlestone’s Hebrew Oriticism. (‘Twentieth Century Papers,” John F. Shaw & Co., 48 Paternoster Row, London.)

D 49 the critics, as in the Dreyfus trial, the opposite principle prevails. It has been well stated that “the idea of a written revelation may be said to be logically involved in the notion of a living God.”* And if this be so, it is certain that the world cannot have been left without a revelation during the thousands of years before the Mosaic age. But the critics show grounds for supposing that several documents were used in compiling the Book of Genesis. And the inference is legitimate that these were the records of earlier revelations. Archeology, however, has brought to light old-world pagan records, which contaii; tithe midst of much that is protesque and sill grotesque and sillytraditions akin to

those of Genesis. The critical scholar maintains That the wild and~sity-verstoris the original. Old-fashioned orthodoxy insists that

Genesisis the original: Tue critic — the judicial expert — asserts his right to adjudicate in the matter, and his knowledge of human nature and of the prinicples of evidence leads him to decide that both the Mosaic records and the pagan inscriptions are derived fro the same original, and that the Mosaic records * Principal Fairbairn, of Mansfield College, Oxford.

Christianized tationalism

being (in contrast with the inscriptions) coherent and simple and pure, are the authentic version of that original.

Prof. Delitzsch’s Babel and Bible supplies striking evidence to confirm this conclusion, and at the same time it illustrates in a no

less striking manner the writer’s incapacity to

reason from the facts which he advances. If I suspect an agent of betraying my confidence by repeating what I communicate to him, I may test him by telling him something which I invent for the purpose. The publication of any part of my story is proof of his dishonesty. But not so if I tell him facts; for those facts, being known to others, may have been imparted by others. And so here. If, for example, there was no creation and no deluge, Prof. Delitzgch’s argument is sound. But not otherwise. His inference as to the sabbath is a notable instance of this. “But” (he writes) since the Babylonians also had a sabbath day

.. tt is scarcely possible for us to doubt that we owe the blessings decreed in the sabbath or Sunday rest” to Babylon. Does the Professor deny that the weekly day of rest is a divine institution? And if he does not deny this his argument is absolutely puerile.

vA He sinks to a still lower level when he refers

/ the Biblical teaching about angels to the fact

that ‘a Babylonian ruler required an army of messengers to carry his commands into every land.” And in this slough of pretentious folly he probably “touches bottom” when he connects our Lord’s use of spittle in certain of His miracles with the words of the pagan prayer, “QO Marduk! to thee belongs the spittle of life.” And the amazing part of it is that anyone should take all this as discrediting the Bible. It discredits only the lecturer. It shows him to be a notable specimen of a not uncommon type of university “don”; a man of. great erudition and culture, but wholly wanting n sens i r reasoning. “Babel” is his hobby, and he is “riding it to death.”