Higher Criticism by Earle Albert Rowell

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 10, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 18.

Higher Criticism

By Earle Albert Rowell

By Earle Albert Rowell

I. The Rise of the Movement

While it is well known that there is a movement in the churches called Higher Criticism, or New Theology, many, unaware of its real nature, think that because it is fathered by theologians, believed and taught by ministers, it must be new light; and without examining its history or testing its fruits, have been led by it to the brink of the dismal abyss of skepticism and infidelity.

It is an appalling fact that most of the scholarly volumes on the Bible coming from the presses to-day are the products of Higher Critics. Most of the contributors to the leading theological magazines of Europe and America write from the critical standpoint. This New Theology is the basis of the two greatest Bible dictionaries in the English language, “Hastings’s Bible Dictionary” and the “Encyclopedia Biblica.” The movement is insidious, wide-spread, and its results are alarming. A rapid survey of its history will put the reader in possession of the means by which to judge it. A knowledge of the tree will indicate its fruit.

Do Not Confound

Higher Criticism must not be confounded with Lower or Textual Criticism, which has to do solely with ascertaining the exact text of Scripture, while Higher Criticism devotes itself to considering the “integrity, authenticity, literary form, and reliability” of the Bible. (Briggs, in “Study of Holy Scripture,” page 92.) This sounds innocent enough; but when the results of this method are to destroy its integrity, deny its authority, alter its literary form, and evaporate its reliability, an investigation is seriously demanded.

Richard Simon, a Roman Catholic priest, is called the “father of Higher Criticism.” In 1678 he advanced the new theory that only the ordinances and commands of the books of Moses were written by him, while the history was the product of various other writers. This view was immediately attacked and demolished.

It was nearly a hundred years before Higher Criticism again raised its head from the dust. In 1753 another Roman Catholic, Jean Astruc, by the publication of his “Conjectures,” inaugurated the real movement which for a hundred and fifty years has been growing with accelerating power and permeating influence, until to-day it is the dominant theological conception in the religious world. In these “Conjectures” Astruc called attention to the fact that in Genesis the word for the Creator was sometimes “God” (Elohim) and sometimes “Lord” (Jehovah). For instance, in Gen. 1:1 we read that “God created the heavens and the earth;” and in Gen. 4:9, “The Lord said unto Cain.” Now strange and absurd as it may seem, yet it is a fact that the use of “God” in one place and “Lord” in another was adduced as proof that the accounts in which these words were found were uniformly written by different men at widely different times! This is the beginning and the foundation of that top-heavy structure of Higher Criticism that overshadows everything else in the religious world to-day and is casting its black shadow of doubt across every page of Holy Writ. Thus in the Catholic Church was conceived, born, and nursed the child of doubt, that has been adopted by Protestantism, as many another child of error born of Catholicism, and is eagerly heralded as the child of light.

Human Productions

The next step was taken in 1780, by J. G. Eichhorn, who combined in one work the results of previous critics, claimed in addition to see other differences than in the divine name between the two “sections,” extended the theory over the whole of the Old Testament, laid down the rule now universally accepted by Higher Critics, Bible “writings are to be read as human productions and tested in human ways,” and for the first time gave to the process the name of Higher Criticism.

Another Roman Catholic divine, Dr. Geddes, in 1792 advanced the movement by promulgation of the “fragmentary hypothesis,” which resolved the first six books into an agglomeration of longer and shorter

fragments between which no threads of continuous connection existed, put together in the reign of Solomon. All this, however, was mild compared with what was soon to follow.

With De Wette’s essays in 1805 began the bold unbelief of Higher Criticism proper. He flatly refused to find anything in the books of Moses but legend and poetry—history there was none. He advanced the theory that the date of the discovery of the book of Deuteronomy in the temple in 624 B. C. was also the date of its composition. It was claimed to be a pious fraud perpetrated by the priests to establish their power, and hid by them in the temple to be discovered by one of themselves. That ministers of the Gospel believe and teach such a thing, is an astounding fact.

A Long Stride

While the distinction of the divine names failed after Exodus 6, the lynx-eyed critics claimed to detect other linguistic phenomena which served as well. So Bleek in 1822, Ewald in 1831, and Stahelin in 1835, developed the new theories. In the last-mentioned year a long stride was taken in Higher Criticism. It saw the publication of Vatke’s “Old Testament Theology,” Baur’s “Pastoral Epistles,” and Strauss’s “Life of Jesus.” The violent religious controversy arising from these productions, lasted till 1853, when Hupfeld superceeded the “fragment hypothesis” with the “document hypothesis,” which found three main documents instead of two.

The final stages and finishing touches were now given in rapid succession. The “document hypothesis,” however, soon gave way to the present prevailing theory, the “development hypothesis,” formulated by Reuss, and made public in 1866 by Graf, who took a critical somersault by advancing the theory that Leviticus was written two hundred years after Deuteronomy. Since 1883 Wellhausen has been elaborating this theory, till his views dominate Higher Criticism everywhere.

There were now four sources recognized in the first half of the Old Testament, designated by the capitals J, E, D, and P. But this is by no means all. These four sources were found inadequate to account for all the contents of these books; so the critics found that in the endeavor to make their theory stand upright they must make a further division and subdivision. Hence the original J and E of Astruc dissolved into this nebulous series: J1, J2, J3, J4; E1, E2, E3; P1, P2, P3, P4; D1, D2, D3, etc., or equivalents, all of which are now part of the recognized critical apparatus of Higher Critical books.

A Masterpiece

But the end is not yet. The heights of absurdity might seem to have been reached; but no, the masterpiece of absurdity was yet to come. Having gotten themselves entangled in the critical cogs, it was impossible to stop. So we find Budde in “Judges,” page 14, saying, “J and E throughout are not to me persons, but extensive schools of writers, running their course alongside of each other.” Says Gunkel, “J and E are not individual writers, . . . but rather schools of narrators.”—“Genesis,” page 58. Dr. Cheyne, in his “Founders of Criticism,” page 39, and Dr. Driver, in his “Genesis,” page 16, take the same position. McFadyen says that these schools of writers range “over a considerable period.”—“Messages of Prophecy and Priestly Historians,” page 22. And Dr. Briggs takes a similar position: “There were groups of earlier Ephraimitic (E) and Judaic (J) writers, and they were followed by groups of Deuteronomic (D) and Priestly (P) writers.”—“Study of Holy Scripture,” page 290.

So at last we have arrived by the critical route to the present position of the New Theology, that whole “schools of writers” were continuously engaged for centuries in patching, revising, tessellating, resetting, altering, and embellishing the work of their predecessors.

The theories concerning the New Testament are similar, and the havoc wrought even greater. In the next articles we will briefly consider the processes, tendencies, fruits, and real significance of Higher Criticism; and they will make abundantly clear that, in the words of McIntosh, Higher Criticism “would bury an expired Christianity with an incredible Bible beside a dead Christ in a hopeless grave from which there is no resurrection; and bury along with them the only consolation of a sorrowful humanity amid the desolations of death and the darkness of futurity, without one ray of hope to alleviate the eternal gloom; and would turn mankind backward millenniums, and convert the dawn of a new century into a midnight darkness and a world’s despair.”