Did Ezra Deceive Christ?
By Wilbur F. Crafts
THAT is the real point of controversy in the debate now going on within the evangelical church. Let not the multitudinous clouds of scholastic discussion about "the Elohist," and "the Jehovist," and "the second Jehovist," and "the redactor," hide the main question. Nor should the unlearned suppose that the vital issue involved is one on which only those who can talk Hebrew are able to form a correct judgment. If it were so it would be cruelty in the Hebraists to bring the subject before the people at all; indeed, it would be cruelty in God to put the evidences of inspiration so high that only a few can see them. The real question at issue, Did Ezra deceive Christ? that is, did a good man deceive the Godman? is not so much a question of learning as of logic. It is not to be decided by uncommon learning, by uncommon sense. It is admitted by Robertson Smith and the advocates of the new criticism generally that Moses is mentioned hundreds of times in the Pentateuch as doing, saying, and writing certain things, but they say that except in a few chapters (Ex. 20-23) Moses did not do, or say, or write those things, but that a good man named Ezra inserted Moses' name as a "legal fiction" into his own codification of laws to make them more impressive. The reason for believing that Moses did not write all the laws he is said to have written, is that some of them were not obeyed until the days of Ezra. Admit that to be so it is a question not of learning but of logic whether the non-enforcement of a law proves its non-existence, and whether Ezra could be a straight saint and a crooked, forging Chatterton at the same time. But it is further claimed by the new criticism that not only the Jews, but Jesus also was deceived by the "legal fiction" of Ezra into believing that Moses really wrote the Pentateuch. We are reminded that Christ, when his deity was veiled in flesh, declared there was one subject on which he could not speak, because he did not know about it. From that it is argued that he might not have known some things which he did say—an inference much too strong for the text. To say that Christ, when incarnate, did not know some of the things of which he did not speak, is vastly less than the claim of the new criticism that he did not know some of the things which he professed to know, and of which he often spoke; for instance, that he was mistaken when he indorsed the general belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. I am aware that some of the critics, by that sort of "forced interpretations" which Dr. Ellis assigns to the Unitarians, reason away the evident meaning of Christ's words; but it is admitted by Robertson Smith and his followers generally that Christ did often speak of the Pentateuch as written by Moses, which statements they declared are proved to be erroneous. The whole question at issue may then be put into four words, Did Ezra deceive Christ? That again is a question of logic rather than learning—turning on the nature of Christ rather than Hebrew words. God had revealed himself to man291first in the Oldest Testament of nature and conscience, then more clearly in the Old Testament. Then he sent men a living Word to explain the written word. It matters little whether in the limitations of his humanity Christ understood all we do of astronomy or geology, which have no close connection with redemption, and of which he said nothing, but what shall we say of the King's Son if he makes misstatements about the very law book he came to explain? If he had no more knowledge of its authorship than the people about him, why should we suppose he had any more knowledge of the laws themselves? It is the old foe with a new face. Could Christ have been either deceived or a deceiver? Can one who is perfectly good and great be base enough to deceive, or weak enough to be deceived? The question is one of reasoning more than of research. Surely he that believeth will not make haste to accept the claim that Jesus made misstatements on the authority of a nebulous criticism, whose results are so uncertain that its experts of equal standing differ a thousand years as to the age of the book of Job, and six hundred years as to Obadiah. While welcoming all the valuable results of critical Bible study, we hardly need to reshape our theology to it until its nebulous hypotheses are cooled into scientific certainties. This is what Delitzsch says of the words of the new criticism:—
"Many of the former results of the critical school are now out of fashion. Its present results contradict each other. In reality we know little and imagine that we know much." On the other hand this is what Jesus said of all his words:—
"He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him; the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I spake not from myself; but the Father which sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak." John 12. 48-50.—Rev. W. F. Crafts.