Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/554

 CRITICISM

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CRITICISM

by Julius Wellhausen, professor (in 1908) at the Uni- versity of Gottingen, in works published in 1883 and 1889 ("Prolegomena to the History of Israel" and "Composition of the Ilexateiich and the Historical Books of the O. T. "). and to-day it dominates the critical treatment of the Hexateuch. The shifting of the Priestly Code (formerly calletl the First Elohist) from the earliest to the latest in time, a characteristic of the Grafian system, has had a marked influence on the drift of O. T. criticism in general, notably with regard to the books of Paralipomenon. It has re- versed the chronological order of the prophetical and priestly elements running through the greater part of the O. T.

Only within the last two decades has higher criti- cism made notable progress in English-speaking lands, and this has been rendered possible by the moderation of its leading spokesman there. Foremost among these semi-orthodox critics of the O. T. is Professor Driver of Oxford, whose " Introduction to the Litera- ture of the Old Testament" first appeared in 1891. W. Robertson Smith in "The Old Testament and the Jewish Church" had previously (1880), though less systematically, presented the Grafian hypothesis to the English-speaking world. The results of British conservative criticism are embodied in Hastings' "Dictionary of the Bible", while the radical wing in England is represented by the "Encyclopaedia Bib- lica" edited by Professors Cheyne and Black. In America most of the conclusions of German criticism have found advocates in Professors C. H. Briggs (" The Bible, the Church and Reason ' ', 1892 ; " Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch", 1893), H. P. Smith, and C. H. Toy.

The higher criticism claims to have discerned great inequalities in the value of those portions of the O. T. which are historical in form. In the same book we may find, it asserts, myth, legend, and material of real historical worth, the last of these elements being abimdant in Judges and the Books of I"iangs, though even here a careful sifting must be used. In parts of the Hexateuch, especially in the priestly document and the cognate Paralipomenon writing, history is freely idealized, and existing institutions are projected artificially into the remote past. Esther, Tobias, Judith, Jonas, and portions of II Machabees belong to the class of Jewish Haggadah, or moralizing fictions. The Psalms have few if any compositions by David; they are the religious poetry of Israel. Isaias is a composite, containing messages of prophets widely separated in time and circumstances. The prophets spoke and wrote primarily in view of definite contem- porary situations. Job is an epic, and Canticles a pastoral drama. The book of Daniel is an apocalypse of the Machabean period, describing history of the past and present under the semblance of visions of the future. To conclude this outline of the critical results, the human element in Scripture is given prominence and represented as clothed with the im- perfections, limitations, and errors of the times of its origin ; many books are exhibited as the products of successive literary accretions, excluding any unity of authorship; in fact, for most of the histories, the un- known writers retire into the shadow to give place to the unifying labours of the equally unknown "redac- tor" or "redactors".

(2) The Reaction against Criticism. — This has been aided by the antithesis between the conclusions of certain Assyriologists of note (viz., A. H. Sayce and F. Hommel) and the prevailing school of criticism. Recent discoveries in Egj-pt, Mesopotamia, and Per- sia prove that a developed civilization existed in • Western Asia in times contemporary with Abraham, and earlier. (See Babyloni.^; Assyhia.) The in- ference dnuvn by the above scientists (Suvce, " Higher Criticism and the Vcnlict of the Monuments", 1895; Hommel, "Ancient Hebrew Tradition", tr., 1897) ia

that the elaborate ritual and legal code of the Israelites could well have been framed by Moses. They charge the critics with not taking Oriental discoveries suffi- ciently into account, and argue that, since the monu- ments confirm the substantial truth of some of the historical books, a presumption is raised in favour of the veracity of Hebrew literature in general. The historical character of the narratives is upheld by other considerations of a more minute and technical nature. In America the old views of the Bible were defended with zeal and learning by Dr. William H. Green, of Princeton, author of a series of Biblical works extending from 1863 to 1899; also by E. C. Bissel and W. L. Baxter. In Great Britain the con- servatives have been represented in recent times by Alfred Cave, J. J. Lias, and others. In Germany, J. K. F. Keil, who died in 1888, was the last exegete of international name who stood without compromise for tradition. But a contemporary group of Protes- tant German theologians and Orientalists have cham- pioned the claims of the O. T. as a Divinely inspired literature, whose narratives, on the whole, are worthy of belief. Prominent among these are Dr. F. E. Konig of Bonn ("Neue Prinzipien der alttestament- lichen Kritik", 1902, "Bibel-Babel Frage und die wissenschaftliche Methode", 1904); Julius Bohm, a pastor; Dr. Samuel Oettli, professor at Greifswald. The resistance to the so-called scientific criticism in Germany has been greatly stimulated by the radical positions recently taken by some Assyriologists, be- ginning with a lecture delivered in 1902 before the German court by Friedrich Delitzsch. The still- continuing discussion it provoked is known as the Bibel-Babel controversy. Delitzsch, Jensen, and their followers contend that the Bible stories of the Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, etc. were borrowed by the Hebrews from Babylonia, where they existed in their pure and original form. This school relegates all the events and personages of Genesis to the region of myths and attributes a Chaldean origin to the Jewish conception of Paradise and Sheol, angels and devils. Of still more recent beginning and extrav- agant character is the theory of astral myths de- fended by Stucken, Winckler, and Jeremias, according to which the narrations not only of the Pentateuch, but of large portions of the later books as well, repre- sent in human guise merely the nature and movements of the heavenly bodies.

In replying to the critical systems, conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant, re-enforce the argument from Jewish and Christian traditions by methods bor- rowed from their opponents; linguistic distinctions are coimtered by linguistic arguments, and the tradi- tionists also employ the process of comparing the data of one book with another, in an endeavour to bring all into harmony. Not the method.s so much as the conclusions of criticism are impugned. The difference is largely one of interpretation. However, the con- servatives complain that the critics arbitrarily rule out as interpolations or late comments passages which are unfavourable to their hypotheses. The advocates of tradition also charge the opposite school with being swaycil by purely subjective fancies, and in the case of the more advanced criticism, by philosophico-religious prejudices. Moreover, they assert that such a piece- meal formation of a book by successive strata, as is alleged for many parts of the O. T. is without analogy in the history of literature. The Catholic criticisni of the O. T. will be described in a separate section of this article.

(3) New-Testament Criticism Outside the Church. — Before the eighteenth century N.-T. criticism did not go beyond that of the Latin and Greek texts, if we except the ancient remarks on the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews and the .\pocaIypse al- ready noticed. When the German Rationalism of the eighteenth century, in imitation of the English Deism