In studying the book of Genesis, the “higher critics” claim to have discovered three sources from which the book has been compiled. Their manner of looking at it is like this: In one verse, for instance, the author, in speaking of God, uses the Hebrew word “Jahweh;” a little way from this, perhaps, God will be designated by the Hebrew word “El Shaddai;” and farther on, He is called by the Hebrew title “Elohim,” as in Gen. 17: 1–3: “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Jahweh appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be thou perfect. . . . And Abram fell on his face: and Elohim talked with him, saying:”
Now the critics have decided that one writer did not call God by three different names, but that three men must have written three accounts of this event, and afterward three accounts were all placed together by a fourth person, to make the complete narrative. But this is but an example of their view of the entire book of Genesis.
Those portions of Genesis which contain the word “Jahweh” they claim were written by one whom, for want of a better name, they call the Jahwist; those portions containing the word “Elohim” were written by the Elohist; and those containing the word “El Shaddai” were written by the priest.
Besides the names of the Supreme Being, there are, they say, other finger-marks of these three different writers; but this one basis of division is sufficient, and the one upon which nearly all of them are in agreement.
But such a principle of criticism will not stay within bounds. Some may say, “It matters not who wrote it; so long as it is the truth, it is from God.” But a principle either of truth or error is sure, like a seed, to develop, and as it does so, it shows its true quality and tendency.
Having criticised those parts of the Bible which are called historical, they attack even the signed epistles of the apostle Paul himself; in fact, say they, not more than four of these epistles were written by him. “The writer of Hebrews was not only not St. Paul, but not even a disciple of St. Paul.” Even the genuineness of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians has been attacked by some of the most radical of the higher critics, and here is an example of some of their logic: “The inviting of attention to the large letters in which Paul writes [Gal. 6:11] is a manifest attempt to palm off the epistle as Pauline.” Even the milder of the critics are in some doubt as to whether Paul wrote the book of Ephesians. They compare one part of the epistle with another, and then affirm that the last part could not have been written by the author of the first part, because the words, style, and theme are different. “So the Epistle to the Ephesians could not have been written by the author of the one to the Romans, because the character of Christ is treated with a more majestic sweetness in Ephesians than in Romans.”
As to the quality of this sort of criticism, I quote the good words of Bishop Warren: “I wish to emphatically declare that the methods of this so-called higher criticism, applied to any writings, would discredit their genuineness. . . . The same treatment, applied to a letter from a husband, would show that no one person ever wrote it all.”
“Notice how clear the demonstration is. The first part is terse, businesslike, deals with railroads, times of departure and arrival, questions of health, sleep, etc. You therein see the man’s turn of mind. He is practical, solid, exact, unemotional.
“But the last of the letter is by some one else, and altogether different. It is affectionate, poetic, outrageously exaggerative; talks like a lover, of an impossible number of kisses; says he cannot bear to397be away, when evidently he does bear it, or else how would he live to write it?
“You see clearly that two men wrote the letter: one a lover, and the other only a husband. Ah, some women know it is possible to have a husband and a lover in one man. But to critics every man is wooden; in great variety it is true; some of heart wood and some of sap wood; some of pine, easy to flash into flame; some of oak; some of mahogany, and some of upas. But they never mix woods.
“That is not our idea of man. He is complex,—a lover and a mathematician in one; a poet and a man of business like Tennyson; a warrior and a statesman, like Washington; a hard fighter and deeply religious, like Stonewall Jackson; nay, a little, a great deal, of all in every ideal man.
“Then, too, these critics allow no man to have a different purpose at different times. We think at one time a man might expound the law to the Romans, and four years after might expound grace to the Ephesians. They allow no room for a man to grow in the knowledge and love of God. The stupendous views of Christ, and of the possible glory of man, highest in language or thought, may have come to Paul in the interval after Romans was written. Christians believe in growth as rapid and a revelation as lofty as that in one who goes on from grace to grace and glory to glory.”
And so higher criticism runs itself into absurdities. And this is our third and last argument against the higher criticism, so called.
And so the faithful hearer of the word of God must reject higher criticism; first, because it attempts to weaken the authority of the one only standard of truth by striking a blow at its divine origin; second, it exalts human judgment to be the only standard of belief, and thus in these two steps dethrones the standard of truth and exalts human judgment in its place; but third, its methods when fairly tried, in any line of investigation, lead to such matter-of-fact absurdities as to forfeit for it all warrant of acceptance.
