Chapter VII
Staid and pious folk are apt to forget their piety, and sometimes even their morals, when, in visiting some foreign country,they no longer feel the restraining influences which regulate their life at home. And a like phenomenon is not unknown in a wholly different sphere. The air of the United States is in no way incompatible with Christian truth — witness the noble stand for the Bible maintained by some of the greatest American scholars. But it seems to have a disturbing effect upon the minds of visitors.
In 1899 Dr. George Adam Smith, Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature in the Glasgow Theological College of the Free Church of Scotland, crossed the Atlantic to deliver the “Yale Lectures” of that year. His lectures were afterwards published under the title “Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament “; and men of no narrowness of mind or creed were startled to find in this volume some of the worst heresies and follies of the pseudo-Criticism respecting the Hebrew Scriptures.
The waning Puritanism of the Free Church was supposed to have received a new stimulus by the recent accession of the United Presbyterian body. As was but natural, therefore. Professor Smith was put upon his defence. A “memorial “emanating from “a meeting of ministers and elders” brought the matter formally to the notice of the “College Committee “; and the Committee called upon the Professor for his apologia, with a view to referring the whole question to the Supreme Court of the United Free Church.
When, therefore, the General Assembly met in Edinburgh in 1902 Professor Smith’s case came up for decision; and the decision arrived at was a refusal, on technical grounds, to take any action in the matter.
In the old hanging days a judge allowed a felon to escape if a flaw was found in the indictment. And if the question here had been that of handing over a heretic to the secular arm, or even excommunicating him, the decision of the Assembly might obtain general approval. But that decision was by no means of a purely negative character. It had far-reaching practical effects of extreme gravity. Notwithstanding a repudiation of Professor Smith’s heresies, it practically condoned these heresies; and, in continuing him in his Chair, it operated as a public avowal that he was deemed to be a suitable teacher of candidates for ordination in the United Free Church of Scotland, and therefore, of course, that such teaching is legitimate from the pulpits of that Church.
It is with a definite object that I emphasise this. For there are special reasons why I wish to say as little as possible about Professor Smith’s book.^ And just as the acceptance of a bill ousts all questions about the drawer of it, so the decision of the Assembly
^I learn from friends of Dr. Smith that owing to ill-health he has been compelled to leave home for the East, and that he will be absent for some time.
covers the Professor, and throws his book into the shade. Moreover, the Assembly’s decision was not taken upon the book itself, but upon the charges laid in the “memorial,” the author’s defence, and the Committee’s report on the case.
In “Babel and Bible “we have the jaunty profanity of a sceptic with a hobby. Dr. Smith’s book is characterised throughout by the reverence and piety of a man whose personal influence is due to the sincerity of his faith and to his zeal in practical Christian work. And the object of his book is not at all, as seems to be generally supposed, to establish ‘’ the results of the latest and best scholarship,” or, in other words, the decrees and dicta of the pseudo-Critics. On the contrary, he assumes those results. “Modern criticism,” he declares, “has won its war against the traditional theories. It only remains to fix the amount of the indemnity.”
Claptrap of this kind is not worthy of the author. And yet it indicates the character of his book. For it is not so much a scholarly treatise as a popular appeal. It is addressed to “preachers” rather than to students;’* and, so far as I know, it is the only book of its kind which breathes the Christian spirit. “Truth is one.” But it is not so in Professor Smith’s theology. For with him the wine of doctrine is kept, as it were,
‘p. 72.
p. 209. Here and there it betokens carelessness, as for example, where he refers (pp. 7, 8) to Dr. Ryle’s “Canon of the Old Testament” as “the text-book on the subject,” and yet makes disparaging statements about the Canon, which are opposed both to the letter and the spirit of that work.
in bottles; so that the good is untainted by the bad. Though rare with Protestants, this is not uncommon with Roman Catholics.
His “task” he defines to be “to inquire, first, whether this criticism has been true to the liberty which the New Testament sanctions “; and second, whether it “has conserved or has imperilled that permanent religious value of the Old Testament which Christ and His Apostles so fully enforced.” It is important to keep this in view.
At the very outset I must express my sympathy with the author in his revolt against “traditional beliefs.” Every Protestant should be ready to bring all such? beliefs to the test of Scripture. If our own country has escaped the revolutionary influences which have at times destroyed or threatened public order in less favoured lands, it is because we have so long enjoyed the safety-valve of free thought and free discussion. And those of us who have learned to distinguish between Divine truth and the decrees and creeds of Churches and theologies, are not likely to be submerged by this wave of pseudo-Criticism. It only makes us take a firmer hold of “the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture.”
But Professor Smith’s revolt against an iron-bound creed has been of the nature of a revolution. Indeed he uses the word “revolutionary” as describing: his new views. Having got hold, for example, of the great principle that Divine revelation is progressive — which is as true of the New Testament as of the Old
p. 22.
* On this subject I would refer to Canon Bernard’s” Prog-
—he at once runs riot with it. It leads him to dismiss the early chapters of Genesis as “myth and legend,” though it would suggest to a more sober judgment that these “documents” are the authentic records of earlier revelations, and that a task akin to that of Nehemiah in a later age was then discharged by Moses.
It leads him also to adopt many of what may fitly be described as the stock bctises of the pseudo-Criticism. A flagrant example of this appears even in his preface. In the beginning, he tells us, “God revealed Himself as a tribal deity — the only conception of the Divine nature of which at the time the Semitic mind was capable.” *
Within the present generation we ourselves have witnessed how American Indians, African savages, and even debased cannibals of the New Hebrides have been brought to the knowledge of the Christian’s God, and yet we are told that men like Abraham were incapable under Divine teaching of a higher conception of God than that of “a tribal deity “— Abraham, of whom the Master said that he rejoiced to see His day, ‘’ and he saw it and was glad.” The exigencies of a false system can alone account for so devout and sensible a man’s identifying himself with such profane folly as this.^
ress of Doctrine in the New Testament,” being the Bampton Lectures for 1864.
’ p. ix. The italics are mine.
Underlying it there lurks the fallacy of supposing that God has a name in the sense in which men have names. The Dieu of the French Christian is the same God whom the ‘^ Log-rolling” prevails among the pseudo-Critics. Some one of them starts a theory of this kind, and the others at once take it up. And the folly of it all becomes positively grotesque when we remember that, according to their own hypothesis, the books from which they derive these theories about the Patriarchs and their religion were all forgeries of the days of the Kingdom or of the Exile!
This last remark .applies with full force to the Critics’ use of Exodus vi. 3: “I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty, but as to My name Jehovah I was not known to them.” Moreover, the ordinary reader will find in these words a complete refutation of the “tribal deity” theory (unless “God Almighty” be a tribal deity), and he will certainly not read it as if it were a newspaper ‘’ agony column” announcement that God Almighty was changing His tiame! Its meaning is simple and obvious. Jehovah was the covenant name, and God was now about to prove to His people by practical deliverance and blessing what it meant to have a covenant God.
The reverence with which Christians regard every part of the Bible often leads them to give a forced meaning or a false prominence to isolated texts. But the Critics are incomparably the worst offenders in
English Christian worships. And the God of the Patriarchs differed from the “Marduk” of Babylon, not because of the name, but because, in contrast with all mere tribal deities, He was the true and living God, “the God of glory” (Acts vii. 2), the God who made the heavens and the earth. R. V. margin.
this respect. They disparage the Bible and disregard much of its plainest teaching, and yet they have a stock selection of perverted texts which they revere with the blind devotion of fetish-worshippers.
The passage last quoted is an instance of thisj Deuteronomy iv. 19 is another. We have seen the use made of it in “Babel and Bible,” and here it is paraded again. Here are the words: “Lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.” Upon which Dr. Smith writes: “‘Even so monotheistic a book as Deuteronomy speaks (iv. 19) of the heathen gods allotted or assigned to their various peoples by Jehovah Himself — a statement of which the only possible explanation is that the writer has arrived at a stage of belief or conception intermediate between that o£ the reality of heathen deities and that of their unreality.”
“The only possible explanation,” mark. And yet it may be doubted whether anyone except a Critic with a hobby would deem the suggested explanation “Possible.” Possible it might be, perhaps, if the text read “to all other peoples.” But the plain words are that God distributed the heavenly luminaries to give light to ‘’all the peoples [Israel included] under the whole heaven.”
Here is another; in David’s appeal to Saul he said, “They have driven me out this day that I should not cleave unto the inheritance of Jehovah, saying, Go, serve other gods.” Upon which Professor Smith’s gloss is that the worship of Jehovah “was regarded even by a national leader like David as confined to His people’s territory.”- Let the reader judge. Possibly the words will rather suggest to him the indignant answer which Professor Smith himself might have made if the General Assembly had expelled him and told him to go over to the Rationalists.
I might make many additions to this list of misread texts, but the most flagrantly ignorant one of all shall be my last. Some of the principal heresies of the Critics depend on the assumption that the Pentateuch is authentic; and yet when the exigencies of their theories require it, they quote Jeremiah vii. 22 to prove “that Jehovah did not give directions to the nation when they were brought out of Egypt concerning sacrifices.”
The Prophet’s words are: “I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices.” But this merely recites a fact which is as plainly recorded on the open page of the book of Exodus as is the Exodus itself. The ritual of the law had nothing to do with Israel’s redemption; it was given to a people already redeemed and brought into covenant relationship with God.
I Sam. xxvi. 19.
‘Pamphlet, p. 10. He goes on to quote i Sam. xix. 13 as further proving his point. That passage merely indicates the notorious fact that the Israelites were given to idolatry, and the further fact that Michal regarded her “teraphim” as a mere doll. Fancy a devout Roman Catholic using an image of the Virgin Mary for such a purpose!
The spiritual Christian sees a deep significance in this; but the fact is patent to any intelHgent reader. Here was the announcement entrusted to Moses at the Exodus: ‘’ If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant ... ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.” And in the passage already cited Jeremiah was merely quoting this. Here are his words: “I spake not unto your fathers... concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices; but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God and ye shall be My people.”
But what concerns us here is not so much Professor Smith’s book as the official pamphlet on which the Assembly’s decision was taken. For the question is not the heresies of an individual, but the apostasy of a Church. That “the receiver is as bad as the thief” is not the view of Scotland Yard. The thief may steal under the pressure of poverty or strong temptation; the receiver acts deliberately, and is therefore very much worse than the thief. Professor Smith’s lapse recalls the dictum of Coleridge: “Call no man heretic because his creed is heretical “; but the Assembly’s action admits of no palliation or excuse. To reprint the pamphlet here is of course impracticable, but the following extracts will suffice.
The first deals with the opening chapter of Genesis: —
“Whether the ultimate source of the materials employed in Genesis i.-xi. be Babylonian or not there is agreement
Exod. xix. 5, 6.
amongst scholars that they are drawn from early Semitic folk-lore — for the contents of which ’ myth and legend ’ are in oixr language the most proper terms. In such stories early peoples expressed their intellectual conceptions of the creation of the world and of its Divine government.”
“There is agreement amongst scholars.” A more monstrous misstatement was never uttered, for scholarship is not the monopoly of the pseudo-Critics. Let that pass, however, for the General Assembly of the United Free Church accepted it. But has that Church lost the truth which we used to be taught in Sunday School, that the Old Testament is the history, not of man, but of the Abrahamic race; and that its first eleven chapters are not history in any true sense, but the preface to the history — the Divine record of certain facts on which the history is based?’
The paragraph from which the foregoing extract is taken, closes as follows: —
“If, as everybody admits, the Spirit of God conveys truth to us through such forms, am I to be blamed for asserting that He conveyed truth to us, in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, through kindred conceptions of Nature and its structure? “^
This is simply astounding. These words are prefaced by noticing that” Revelation speaks of the sun
p. 12.
This disposes of Dr. Smith’s argument from the date of the Tower of Babel (book, p. 91; pamphlet, p. 12). Biblical chronology begins with Abraham; and while there is evidently a mystic scheme of chronology covering the whole, there is no certainty as to the actual period between Adam and Abraham. (See “Bible and Modern Criticism,” pp. 163, 164.)
p. 12.
moving round the earth,” and that “the earth is conceived as founded upon the seas,” etc., etc. All which is perplexing and distressing to the Critics, though it weighs nothing in the court of common-sense. Here, however, we learn that the Genesis legends have a Divine sanction! But surely if “God conveyed truth to us” in and by legends, they must be true, as legends sometimes are. And, moreover, the level-headed man of the world will here be of the same opinion as the spiritual Christian, that if God is responsible for Genesis i.-xi., we may be sure that in those chapters we have, not legends at all, but facts on which the legends were founded.
We now come to the “Patriarchal narratives,” and here we read: —
“What I have tried to show with regard to them is this. The documents which contain these stories were written manycenturies after the age of the Patriarchs; they reflect much of the religious experience and conception of Israel during the period of the Double Kingdom and even later ages. The discoveries of Egyptian and Mesopotamian archaeology provide us with evidence of the possibility (or even credibility) only of the main outlines of the Patriarchal narratives, but do not verify any of the detailed events nor furnish a single proof of the personal existence of the Patriarchs themselves. If the memorialists can prove criticism to be wrong in any of its conclusions relevant to this point; if they can cite any archaeological evidence for the personal reality of Abraham Isaac, or Jacob, nobody will be more glad than myself. My whole prejudice and bias have been in favour of the historical accuracy of the Patriarchal stories. But years of research and study have convinced me, that in the present state of human knowledge such a line of proof is impossible.
“I have, however, admitted in the volume (p. io6) that it is extremely probable that the stories of the Patriarchs have at the heart of them historical elements.”
And again: —
“The traditions of the life and work of Moses have come down to us in the same documents which contain the Patriarchal narratives — with the addition of course of the book of Deuteronomy — that is to say, in documents written from four to seven centuries after the Mosaic period itself (if we take this to have been the thirteenth century B.C.). The Pentateuchal history of Moses is therefore in need of the same criticism as the Patriarchal narratives.”
Under English law the testimony of informers is always received with caution, and unless it be corroborated in some material respect by independent evidence it is entirely ignored. And the Bible is here treated precisely as an informer’s evidence is treated in our courts of justice. The Old Testament has obtained sufficient confirmation from pagan sources to entitle it to a hearing; but yet its testimony must be received with caution and reserve. And if at any point it clashes, or seems to clash, with pagan inscriptions, the Bible, and not the inscriptions, must give way.
Judicial experience and skill are needed to direct a jury what they may accept and what they should refuse. And here too we need a counsellor to guide us. Men of the highest eminence as scholars tell us that the Patriarchs were only lunar myths; but we have the authority of Professor George Adam Smith of the Glasgow College for believing, notwithstanding the
‘p. 13. ‘fi. 14.
absence of pagan corroboration, that Abraham and Moses really existed!
And it is not the Bible only that is thus disparaged. [The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is here treated like “a common informer.” His testimony counts for nothing. From the first sentence of this pamphlet to the last. He is absolutely ignored.
A lawyer has sometimes to advise his client that judgment must go against him unless the evidence of some important witness on the other side can be discredited or explained away. And so it is here. If “the assured results of modern criticism” are to hold their ground, there is one witness who must be got rid of. And that witness is no other than the Master Himself.