Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/411

Rh defended, and in spirit the skeptics were as much theologians as their opponents. But science has very much changed all this, and what was long an exasperating controversy is now becoming a quiet and rational investigation. While in the disputatious era it was maintained, on the one side, that the Bible is an exceptional and supernatural book—the plenary inspiration of God, and all its parts perfect and infallible—on the other hand, it was asserted to be a fabrication and an imposture. We have now pretty much passed out of that phase, and entered into the phase of calm and critical inquiry as to the origin and history of the various books which appeared at different times, and were at length collected to form the Christian Scriptures. The inquiry should be candid and dispassionate, but conducted with inexorable reference simply to the establishment of truth.

Much has been done in recent years, by scholars of various countries, to throw light on the historic origin of the Biblical books, and Mr. Chadwick has done the public an invaluable service in presenting, in a compendious form, the main results of this most interesting research. Of his treatment of the subject the author says:

"My object is to condense into a single volume, modest in size and cost, the principal results of the best historical and scientific criticism of the separate books of the Bible, and of their mutual relations. I am not aware of any other volume which has made exactly this attempt, and it is high time that somebody should make it. The truth of these results, if truth it be, is scattered up and down through scores of volumes, which few public libraries, even in our great cities, have upon their shelves, and which it would cost the individual reader hundreds of dollars to procure. Nevertheless, I shall be disappointed if one effect of these lectures is not to impel the reader to procure for himself some of the books which I have found most helpful and inspiring. Much, however, that has been written is not only costly and inaccessible, but is so laboriously and minutely critical in its form as to repel the average reader. I dare not hope that my own treatment will be entertaining, but for busy men and women I trust it will have some advantage over that of the great Biblical scholars in that it is at once compact and comprehensive."

Mr. Chadwick's volume consists of eight lectures, which were first delivered to his own people in Brooklyn—four on the Old Testament, one on the Apocrypha, and three on the New Testament. The first is on the Prophets, and is preceded by a brief history of the Old Testament canon. The arrangement of the lectures is intended to be simply chronological, and the prophets are considered first because it was evidently Mr. Chadwick's idea that, with some inconsiderable exceptions, we have in the prophets the earliest writers of the Old Testament. The Histories are next considered, because these are believed to have been written, for the most part, before the "Law."

The "Psalms and other writings" come last, as being written after the "Law." The Prophets are first taken in the order of our common version, and the date and authorship and character of each discussed. An inquiry is instituted as to the nature of prophetism, and reasons are assigned for the belief that the early prophets were not monotheists; the writing prophets of the eighth century being probably the first monotheists.

In his lecture on the Histories Mr. Chadwick finds them not to be histories in the ordinary sense of the word, but didactic compositions. In his lecture on the Pentateuch Mr. Chadwick considers it as a stratified series. The oldest or bottom layer, richest in narration, is a prophetic one, dating from the eighth century before Christ. The next layer he designates as priestly prophetic, and which includes the whole of Deuteronomy. Its date is fixed at 621 The next and topmost layer is altogether priestly, and includes all of Leviticus, a good deal of Numbers, and much besides. This upper stratum is what critics call the Book of Origins, and its date is the crucial question of Old Testament criticism. And Mr. Chadwick, following Kuenen, assigns it to the fifth century and 800 years after the time of Moses. By this mode of treatment he apprehends the entire history of Israel as an evolution from a simple to a complex worship, from the spontaneity of prophetism to fixity and formalism, from fetichism and Nature-worship up through monolatry to monotheism.

In the fourth lecture these principles are applied to the Psalms and other writings. In regard to the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, etc., the old interpretations are