IV. There is also an apparent discrepancy between the whole and part, between the concise and the detailed narratives of the same events. This is closely connected with what we have just discussed as discrepancy arising from diverse points of view—in fact, as will appear from our illustrations, is the same under another phase. Sometimes one writer sketches what another paints—as the second chapter of Genesis fills out a sketch given in two verses of the first; as Mark adds graphic touches and warm colorings to the bare outline of Matthew; as Luke, in the book of Acts, draws out into minute narrative incidents just alluded to in the Pauline epistles. Events are grouped together in single verses or lines of the Psalms and the prophets, which, in the Old Testament narratives, are painted in full historical perspective. Under this head are to be explained most of the diversities in the genealogical tables of Scripture. As these records of lineage furnished the framework for the most cherished hopes of the Hebrew people, they are preserved with exceeding care. The prerogatives and privileges of the priesthood, the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies and of historic promises, and especially the splendid Messianic hopes of the nation, all were guarded and guaranteed by these genealogical catalogues. Yet, where the ancestors of the same individual are several times given, comparison shows that some links in the chain are frequently dropped; it is not necessary in the mind of the author always to unroll it at full length; it is enough to mention several selected ancestors scattered along the line, and thus a man may be styled the son of an ancestor of the third or fourth generation. Ezra, the scribe, who had complete access to all these records, gives his priestly lineage up to Aaron, the founder of the priesthood, and yet omits several generations that are given in the first book of Chronicles. So when Matthew, for mnemonic purposes, as well as to set forth the three great epochs of Hebrew history—its patriarchal childhood, its royal maturity, and its provincial decline—groups the ancestors of the Saviour in three fourteens, or double sevens, headed respectively by Abraham, the patriarch, by David, the royal minstrel, and Jechonias, the exiled monarch, he drops out, for the sake of symmetry, three generations. Yet that these three omitted names were perfectly familiar to him is evident from the fact that they were well-known historic names, the names of kings of Judah, the events of whose reigns were fully recorded in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Every Jew, with the Old Testament in his hand, knew the names of Amaziah, Joash, and Ahaziah; had these been the names of obscure or unknown individuals, the case would have been very different. But no objector at this day doubts that Matthew had the Old Testament history before him, in Hebrew and Greek, substantially the same as we have it to-day. It was not, then, through ignorance that these historic names were omitted, but by design, because their insertion would not agree with the author's plan in the presentation of his subject. Objectors may criticise this plan, that it is not according to classic models; they may object to the Hebrew conception of the object and character of history, and may complain that these records are imperfect and unsatisfactory when judged by the rules of composition that have been drawn from heathen histories. But all this does not prove that these authors are inconsistent with themselves or each other, and does not in the least impeach their reliability when their real stand-point is found. And in this respect no more is demanded for them than for any heathen authors; for no author can be understood and seem to be consistent with himself and with truth, until we fully understand his point of view. In this respect, every author is a law unto himself, and so every school of authors and every literature has its own laws, which are to be candidly and thoroughly studied as facts, before any theory of the subject can properly be constructed. A man has no right to dogmatize about the Hebrew histories who is willfully blind to the principles on which those writers looked at all historical events. Everything is viewed by them in its relation to the divine government and purposes. Events are selected and grouped, set in the foreground or background, according to this plan. Thus, in the passage before us, generations are so selected from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, to Joseph, the last descendant of Judah's royal line, as to set forth, in three corresponding and symmetrical pictures, the successive phases of Hebrew history till God's purposes concerning that wonderful people ripen into fulfillment. When the long-promised Seed of Abraham, the Branch from the stem of Jesse, the King of all kings, appeared in this royal line, the nation, having fulfilled its mission, sank from human history.
The same law of Hebrew composition is also seen in the Apocalyptic vision of the hundred and forty-four thousand that were sealed of the twelve tribes of Israel. Dan is omitted from the list, probably because of its idolatrous apostasy, and Joseph is inserted instead of Ephraim, his son, who is regarded as joined to his idols. No one will pretend that the author of Revelation was ignorant on so familiar a subject as the names of the tribes.
This habit of compressing a genealogical series, dropping out intermediate links, thus giving part for the whole, when it is not the author's design to spread out the whole family history of an individual, but simply to show the relation to some remote ancestor—as when Ezra is shown to be the son of Aaron by the mention of several intermediate generations, and in like manner Christ is set forth as the son of David, the son of Abraham—this habit of representation should be considered in calculating chronology from genealogical series. Much more time may have elapsed than would be inferred from supposing the series before us to be complete.
Thus, an event which is just sketched in one narrative, may be fully painted in the parallel narrative, and the contrast may easily be magnified into a discrepancy.
A knowledge of this law of the Hebrew narrative furnishes, moreover, valuable aid in studying the events of the creative work. The events which are assigned to successive days need not have succeeded each other in the strict order of time, but may have lapped upon each other in the way already mentioned, like six slides of a telescope partly drawn out. Thus, the creation of the firmament commenced on the second day; but it was a process running through the second, third, and part of the fourth. The separation of land from water—in other words, the upheaval of the continents—was a process which commenced on the third day, but continued through the remainder of the creative week.
V. There are two other kinds of apparent discrepancy that we will mention, arising from the limitations of the human mind, considered as the recipient of revelation. The first is the discrepancy, or rather contrast, between the subjective and the objective, between things as they really are, and things as they appear. Of the essence of things, we know nothing; it is only by the attributes that come within the reach of our faculties that we can judge of things themselves. By these attributes we can learn enough about different natures to answer all life's practical ends; but it would be very shortsighted to suppose that from this source we can learn enough to satisfy all speculative cravings, or can thus imagine how things appear to beings differently constituted. Human perception is not the gauge of the universe. For aught we know, the rose may show to more highly endowed intelligences, or even to the insects that hover over its petals, a hundred other attributes as pleasing as color and odor, for which human language has no names. Objectively, God, the infinite one, is unknown and unknowable to man; “his ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts;” “no man hath seen God at any time.” Yet, subjectively, he reveals himself through these very thoughts and ways of ours in his written word, while the incarnate word makes us see the invisible God. This is a paradox, but it is the paradox, not only of revelation, but of all instruction. The lessons must ever be accommodated to the capacity of the pupil, to be of any advantage whatever. And so there will ever be an antithesis between subjective and objective truth—that is, between truth as it is, and as it is conceived. If we insist on the objective reality, and proudly scorn all subjective aids, our God becomes an inaccessible, icy absolute, the thought of whom freezes every moral impulse into death; but if we allow ourselves to be instructed by God through the same symbolism by which we instruct each other, then can we accept the statements, “They saw the God of Israel,” and, “No man hath seen God at any time,” and feel that there is no contradiction. *
VI. The last kind of discrepancy that we shall mention is that which necessarily arises from progress in revelation. It is the contrast between the sketch and the picture, between the seed and the tree, between the foundations and the temple. The egg would be called dead, most confidently, by him who had never seen the eagle that is folded in the germ; the law is dead to him who has never felt, through the embryonic envelope of precept and ceremony, the quickening of the gospel germ that waits the age-long broodings of the Spirit to bring it into perfect life. Revelation comes in successive stages adapted to advancing man. The patriarchal, Mosaic, prophetic, and Christian revelations are successive stages of the same great process, each intermediate step starting from those which precede, and suggesting those that follow. The lofty ethics and sublime visions of the prophets, both in form and substance, presuppose the Mosaic law and ritual. The psalms of David could never have been sung in a nation that had not been trained for centuries in the statutes of the Pentateuch; the epistle to the Romans requires as its preface, not only the gospel according to the evangelists, but the gospel according to Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah.
As the man sees truths that are hidden from the child, so great doctrines concerning the nature of God and of man, and their mutual relations, of which the race in its childhood had but a shadowy apprehension, are revealed to the mature man. Yet these great truths are outlined in the earliest revelations. The finished picture of the gospel but completes the sketch of the patriarchal age. Those wandering shepherds of Syria, those Egyptian slaves of the age of the Pharaohs, who believed that their ancestor Enoch “walked with God, and was not, because God took him,” had views of immortality far more clear to the intellect and comforting to the heart than Plato taught, a thousand years later, in the groves of the Academy. Yet the splendor that Christ has shed upon immortal life makes the patriarchal faith appear as a twilight gleam. Creation by the divine word, as revealed on the first page of the Scripture, corresponds mysteriously with the profound utterance on the first page of John's gospel: “The word was God;” “all things were made by him.” The Jehovah angel who hears and answers the prayers of the patriarchs, identifying himself with the one only God in whom they so firmly believed, was the Morning Star before the Sun of Righteousness, or rather that Sun himself shining through the mists of the morning. In the blood-sprinkled altars of patriarch and Levite were given the preparatory instructions for the profoundly mysterious lessons of Calvary, which concentrate in one dazzling focus all the manifold rays of revelation.
Recapitulating now these six causes of discrepancy, and analyzing more closely, they fall naturally into two general classes, resulting (1) from difference in form, while yet there is identity in matter; and (2) from difference in the point of sight. Under the second class, we include five kinds of apparent discrepancy.
That arising from difference in the authors' point of sight.
Difference in the hearer's or reader's points of sight.
Difference between the whole and the part.
Difference between subjective and objective.
Difference arising from progress.
By one or more of these formulae we are confident that any problem of Scripture discrepancy can be solved. Theology, like physical science, changes; but the Bible, like nature, endures. The great gospel facts are constellated in eternal beauty. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but these words shall not pass away.