THE REPLY OF THE MONUMENTS TO THE CRITICS OF THE BIBLE.
The Pentateuch and the Book of Daniel are the two portions of the Old Testament which have suffered most from destructive criticism. They were the portions also in defense of which the friends of revelation were able to bring the least support of profane history. Here the critics had free course. They could assert here with the least chance of contradiction to their self-evolved and inner consciousness. “There could not have been an exodus,” “There never was any Belshazzar,” they exclaimed, and we could bring nothing to corroborate our written record. But it so happens that the Pentateuch and the book of Daniel are just the portions of the Bible on which late discoveries have shed the greatest and a most unexpected light. Especially within the last very few years have students of the monuments of Egypt and Mesopotamia been very busy; and their conclusions are of very great interest. We are about ready to ask these men—who have no preconceptions to serve in their investigations, who simply take the old inscriptions of the kings and scribes of Egypt and Assyria and read them—what they have found out about those ancient kingdoms which the Bible tells us of. It is a fact now beyond all question that, while the weight of subjective criticism has been against the truthfulness of these historical portions of the Old Testament, the monuments have constantly confirmed their general credibility. The results reached by those who read the inscriptions of Egypt and Babylon do not accord with those reached by those who in their studies have been dissecting the biblical records. What the critics told us was impossible, the monuments tell us is true. Take the Pentateuch. The latest Egyptian scholars all find themselves compelled to place implicit reliance on the general history recorded in Genesis and Exodus. They tell us that the story of Abraham’s descent into Egypt, or that of the son of Jacob, is precisely what might have occurred at that time. The color of the story is not only local Egyptian, but, what is much more to the point, it agrees chronologically with actual history. It would not agree with Egyptian history of a later period, and could not have had a later origin. The exodus might have happened just at the time recorded. Here the archæologists distinctly contradict the literary critics. It is now certain that the narrative of the history of Joseph and the sojourn and exodus of the Israelites is substantially, as Reginald Stanley Poole says, not much later than 1300 B. C.; in other words, was written while the memory of the events was fresh. The minute accuracy of the text is inconsistent with any later date. Its knowledge of Egypt is of early Egypt, at the time of the Ramesides, and not of the Pharaohs of the time of Solomon or later. Brugsch and Lepsius and Chabas and Mariette treat the Pentateuch as of prime historical importance. Quite as striking is the parallel fact that is now being developed in reference to the book of Daniel. A few years ago the critics with one voice refused to see in it anything more than an apocalyptic composition of the date of Antiochus Epiphanes. Eichhorn, Bertholdt, Gesenius, De Wette, Lengerke, Ewald, and Hitzig, with the more moderate, as well as the rationalistic critics, agreed in its late date, some being so precise as to fix it at 167 B. C. The replies made to them were feeble and unsatisfactory. But the monuments of the kings of Babylon began to be read a few years ago. It was soon found that there really was a ruler Belshazzar, and that he is no myth. Within the last five or ten years more careful attention has been paid by French, English and German scholars to the study of the history, customs and superstitions of the Chaldean people; and the result has been to produce in the minds of those who have devoted themselves to it a great revulsion of opinion on the subject, though it is not yet time for it to have reached the literary critics. One of the most erudite and competent French students of these inscriptions has lately published his own conclusions on the subject. He does not discuss Daniel’s visions included in the last part of the book which he believes can be equally justified, but, after examining with the greatest care the first six chapters, which are full of local allusions, he declares that they could have been written only while the memory of the time with which they have to do was yet very fresh. He says that for a long time the views of these literary critics seemed to him unrefuted. He accepted them and published them; but has lately been compelled, for reasons simply and exclusively scientific, to revise his opinion, and recur to the old Talmudic view, which referred the composition of Daniel to the time of Ezra and the Great Synagogue. It is true that Daniel is written in two languages, and some of the Greek names of musical instruments were introduced when the translation of a portion was made into Aramaic; but even in this most suspicious portion the very list of instruments is true to the time of Daniel, and would never have been thought of three centuries later. Comparing Daniel with the book of Judith, which is of the date which critics have tried to assign to Daniel, the contrast is remarkable. Every historical or social allusion in Daniel is borne out by the facts discovered. In Judith, however, we have a king of Assyria who never existed, defeated on the territory of an unknown king of the Elamites when Elam had ceased to exist as a nation, in a plain which is at the same time near the Euphrates and the Indian Hydaspes. The Median king then sends on an expedition his general, Holofernes, with a Persian name, who crosses and conquers Syria, in a journey of fantastic geography, and comes to Palestine, which is under a king whose name is not given, whom he besieges in the mythical city of Bethulia, and where he is killed by a woman, whose name is merely Judith, the “Jewess.” What a difference between this accumulation of impossibilities and the absolutely true picturing of Babylon given in Daniel! Of course, archæology cannot be asked to confirm the supernatural of miracles or prophecies. All we ask of it is whether the books which contain the supernatural could have been written at the time they claim to have been written. The monuments buried for thousands of years in the soil of Egypt and Mesopotamia answer, Yes, to the confusion of the critics who said, No. The monuments cannot affirm everything. They cannot fairly be asked for every detail of personal life. They cannot record the revelations of God to his prophets. They do not tell us how accurately the Sacred Books have been brought down to us, nor when or how they have been rewritten or revised by Ezra or a later Synagogue. But they do tell us that the accordance not of Genesis and Exodus and Daniel alone, but of the Kings, and Chronicles, and the prophets, and Ezra, and Esther with the date given by the monuments is such that it is impossible that they should not have been written at or near the time which has been claimed for them from the beginning. The development of this accordance would require a volume. It is our duty to record the fact.—Independent.