The Ancient Scripture by Dr. J. A. Smith

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 12.

The Ancient Scripture.

By Dr. J. A. Smith

No CURRENT questions have, in late years, more commanded attention than those which concern the literature and the interpretation of the Old Testament. The interest of these questions has almost pushed the physical scientists from their stools. Instead of Tyndall, and Darwin, and Huxley, and Haeckel, and Virchow, we have now Robertson Smith, Delitzsch, Kuenen, and Wellhausen. The date of an Old Testament book is now a more absorbing issue than that of the origin of species, while keener optics than those which lately were scrutinizing flint hatchets and old bones, are now searching the Messianic psalms and the statues of Leviticus. Naturally, one is led to ask what may be the significance of all this, and how it shall be interpreted.

In part, it must be said, the interest in Old Testament study, now so manifest, is simply critical and archæological. We ought not to be surprised that there should be scholars who study our ancient Scripture not as theologians, but only as scholars. Their customary work has been largely in the line of other archæological literature. They have studied, with the zeal of explorers, both Egyptology and Assyriology. That old buried world, which now after so many centuries is having a resurrection, absorbs them in the revelations made of the life, and thought, and worship of what are in a somewhat strict sense pre-historic times. During the ages in which that old world was the living world our ancient Scripture was written. Of this fact these explorers and scholars are constantly reminded. They turn from the tablet and the papyrus to the familiar pages of the printed Bible. As they read this page they are still archæologists and critics. They have not the doctrinal interest there which some of the rest of us have. That their conclusions on many points should be different from ours, is not surprising. Of two things we need to be aware, as we take note of the claimed results of their investigations: (1) that critics are apt to be over-critical; (2) that the studies in which these scholars habitually engage are such in their nature and the discipline they afford, as to justify the expectation that there must be value, of some kind, in the results.

Naturally, this form of the prevailing interest in Old Testament study prepares the way for another. Those who have been accustomed to regard the date and order of the books in our ancient Scripture as settled beyond all possibility of question, also the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the integrity of Isaiah's prophecy and the Messianic character of certain psalms, are surprised to find all these points treated as still open to dispute, while the confident tone of conclusions announced regarding them excites uneasiness. What does it mean? Are these conclusions sound? If so, what does it all import? Is faith in the Old Testament about to part from its moorings, and are we soon to be afloat? Must even the inspiration of these ancient books be virtually given up? When such issues as these are present to the mind, whether really involved in the questions under debate or not, one feels that he must look into the matter. And doubtless he should, remembering, meanwhile, that the critics are apt to be over-critical, and that zeal for discovery often makes one on the outlook imagine that he sees land, while what he does see is a cloud in the horizon, or a fog-bank far away under the blue.

Once more, it would seem that very many of us are coming to be conscious that there is an interest and value in our ancient Scripture of which we had grown in a measure inappreciative. It is not very long ago that many, believing the Old Testament to belong to a dispensation wholly past, had almost come to regard it as no longer of interest for a Christian.

Some, even, doubted if it were well for ministers to take texts from it for their sermons. The Christianity of the Puritans had a strong Old Testament cast; that of their children seemed in danger of reaching an opposite extreme even more mistaken. We find, now, that its relation to the New Testament, in its exhibition of a most interesting and momentous stage in the steady growth of divine revelation and the kingdom of God on earth; as an ancient literature, some of it perhaps the oldest in the world; as running parallel with those other ancient literatures now coming to light and yet in most wonderful contrast with them; as a repertory of primitive thought and faith, preserved by special divine interposition from the corruption and darkness into which all in the world beside was plunged; as a memorial of ancient genius, plumed for fight by divine inspiration and guided on its way by attending divine ministries—we are now awakening to the fact that, as all this, our Old Testament is a most wonderful book, or, rather library of books. The infidel has done his worst in assailing it. Possibly we had consented in some measure to his disparagement. We now see that what he found in it as peculiar, and therefore open to attack, is peculiar just because it is old; and that what he did not find in it is a treasure of knowledge and faith worth more than all the wisdom of the world beside.—Dr. J. A. Smith, in Chicago Standard.