A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology 67 – White · Verses Across
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A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology 67Beginnings of Scientific Interpretation
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Freethought · History of freethought
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology 67
Beginnings of Scientific Interpretation
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At the base of the vast structure of the older scriptural interpretation were certain ideas regarding the first five books of the Old Testament. It was taken for granted that they had been dictated by the Almighty to Moses about fifteen hundred years before our era; that some parts of them, indeed, had been written by the corporeal finger of Jehovah, and that all parts gave not merely his thoughts but his exact phraseology. It was also held, virtually by the universal Church, that while every narrative or statement in these books is a precise statement of historical or scientific fact, yet that the entire text contains vast hidden meanings. Such was the rule: the exceptions made by a few interpreters here and there only confirmed it. Even the indifference of St. Jerome to the doctrine of Mosaic authorship did not prevent its ripening into a dogma.
The book of Genesis was universally held to be an account, not only divinely comprehensive but miraculously exact, of the creation and of the beginnings of life on the earth; an account to which all discoveries in every branch of science must, under pains and penalties, be made to conform. In English-speaking lands this has lasted until our own time: the most eminent of recent English biologists has told us how in every path of natural science he has, at some stage in his career, come across a barrier labelled "No thoroughfare Moses."
A favourite subject of theological eloquence was the perfection of the Pentateuch, and especially of Genesis, not only as a record of the past, but as a revelation of the future.
The culmination of this view in the Protestant Church was the Pansophia Mosaica of Pfeiffer, a Lutheran general superintendent, or bishop, in northern Germany, near the beginning of the seventeenth century. He declared that the text of Genesis "must be received strictly"; that "it contains all knowledge, human and divine"; that "twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Confession are to be found in it"; that "it is an arsenal of arguments against all sects and sorts of atheists, pagans, Jews, Turks, Tartars, papists, Calvinists, Socinians, and Baptists"; "the source of all sciences and arts, including law, medicine, philosophy, and rhetoric"; "the source and essence of all histories and of all professions, trades, and works"; "an exhibition of all virtues and vices"; "the origin of all consolation."
This utterance resounded through Germany from pulpit to pulpit, growing in strength and volume, until a century later it was echoed back by Huet, the eminent bishop and commentator of France. He cited a hundred authors, sacred and profane, to prove that Moses wrote the Pentateuch; and not only this, but that from the Jewish lawgiver came the heathen theology--that Moses was, in fact, nearly the whole pagan pantheon rolled into one, and really the being worshipped under such names as Bacchus, Adonis, and Apollo.(472)
(472) For the passage from Huxley regarding Mosaic barriers to modern thought, see his Essays, recently published. For Pfeiffer, see Zoeckler, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. i, pp. 688, 689. For St. Jerome's indifference as to the Mosaic authorship, see the first of the excellent Sketches of the Pentateuch Criticism, by the Rev. S. J. Curtiss, in the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1884. For Huet, see also Curtiss, ibid.
About the middle of the twelfth century came, so far as the world now knows, the first gainsayer of this general theory. Then it was that Aben Ezra, the greatest biblical scholar of the Middle Ages, ventured very discreetly to call attention to certain points in the Pentateuch incompatible with the belief that the whole of it had been written by Moses and handed down in its original form. His opinion was based upon the well-known texts which have turned all really eminent biblical scholars in the nineteenth century from the old view by showing the Mosaic authorship of the five books in their present form to be clearly disproved by the books themselves; and, among these texts, accounts of Moses' own death and burial, as well as statements based on names, events, and conditions which only came into being ages after the time of Moses.
But Aben Ezra had evidently no aspirations for martyrdom; he fathered the idea upon a rabbi of a previous generation, and, having veiled his statement in an enigma, added the caution, "Let him who understands hold his tongue."(473)
(473) For the texts referred to by Aben Ezra as incompatible with the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, see Meyer, Geschichte der Exegese, vol. i, pp. 85-88; and for a pithy short account, Moore's introduction to The Genesis of Genesis, by B. W. Bacon, Hartford, 1893, p. 23; also Curtiss, as above. For a full exhibition of the absolute incompatibility of these texts with the Mosaic authorship, etc., see The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, by C. A. Briggs, D. D., New York, 1893, especially chap. iv; also Robertson Smith, art. Bible, in Encycl. Brit.
For about four centuries the learned world followed the prudent rabbi's advice, and then two noted scholars, one of them a Protestant, the other a Catholic, revived his idea. The first of these, Carlstadt, insisted that the authorship of the Pentateuch was unknown and unknowable; the other, Andreas Maes, expressed his opinion in terms which would not now offend the most orthodox, that the Pentateuch had been edited by Ezra, and had received in the process sundry divinely inspired words and phrases to clear the meaning. Both these innovators were dealt with promptly: Carlstadt was, for this and other troublesome ideas, suppressed with the applause of the Protestant Church; and the book of Maes was placed by the older Church on the Index.
But as we now look back over the Revival of Learning, the Age of Discovery, and the Reformation, we can see clearly that powerful as the older Church then was, and powerful as the Reformed Church was to be, there was at work something far more mighty than either or than both; and this was a great law of nature--the law of evolution through differentiation. Obedient to this law there now began to arise, both within the Church and without it, a new body of scholars--not so much theologians as searchers for truth by scientific methods. Some, like Cusa, were ecclesiastics; some, like Valla, Erasmus, and the Scaligers, were not such in any real sense; but whether in holy orders, really, nominally, or not at all, they were, first of all, literary and scientific investigators.
During the sixteenth century a strong impulse was given to more thorough research by several very remarkable triumphs of the critical method as developed by this new class of men, and two of these ought here to receive attention on account of their influence upon the whole after course of human thought.
For many centuries the Decretals bearing the great name of Isidore had been cherished as among the most valued muniments of the Church. They contained what claimed to be a mass of canons, letters of popes, decrees of councils, and the like, from the days of the apostles down to the eighth century--all supporting at important points the doctrine, the discipline, the ceremonial, and various high claims of the Church and its hierarchy.
But in the fifteenth century that sturdy German thinker, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, insisted on examining these documents and on applying to them the same thorough research and patient thought which led him, even before Copernicus, to detect the error of the Ptolemaic astronomy.
As a result, he avowed his scepticism regarding this pious literature; other close thinkers followed him in investigating it, and it was soon found a tissue of absurd anachronisms, with endless clashing and confusion of events and persons.
For a time heroic attempts were made by Church authorities to cover up these facts. Scholars revealing them were frowned upon, even persecuted, and their works placed upon the Index; scholars explaining them away--the "apologists" or "reconcilers" of that day--were rewarded with Church preferment, one of them securing for a very feeble treatise a cardinal's hat. But all in vain; these writings were at length acknowledged by all scholars of note, Catholic and Protestant, to be mainly a mass of devoutly cunning forgeries.
While the eyes of scholars were thus opened as never before to the skill of early Church zealots in forging documents useful to ecclesiasticism, another discovery revealed their equal skill in forging documents useful to theology.
For more than a thousand years great stress had been laid by theologians upon the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of St. Paul. Claiming to come from one so near the great apostle, they were prized as a most precious supplement to Holy Writ. A belief was developed that when St. Paul had returned to earth, after having been "caught up to the third heaven," he had revealed to Dionysius the things he had seen. Hence it was that the varied pictures given in these writings of the heavenly hierarchy and the angelic ministers of the Almighty took strong hold upon the imagination of the universal Church: their theological statements sank deeply into the hearts and minds of the Mystics of the twelfth century and the Platonists of the fifteenth; and the ten epistles they contained, addressed to St. John, to Titus, to Polycarp, and others of the earliest period, were considered treasures of sacred history. An Emperor of the East had sent these writings to an Emperor of the West as the most precious of imperial gifts. Scotus Erigena had translated them; St. Thomas Aquinas had expounded them; Dante had glorified them; Albert the Great had claimed that they were virtually given by St. Paul and inspired by the Holy Ghost. Their authenticity was taken for granted by fathers, doctors, popes, councils, and the universal Church.
But now, in the glow of the Renascence, all this treasure was found to be but dross. Investigators in the old Church and in the new joined in proving that the great mass of it was spurious.
To say nothing of other evidences, it failed to stand the simplest of all tests, for these writings constantly presupposed institutions and referred to events of much later date than the time of Dionysius; they were at length acknowledged by all authorities worthy of the name, Catholic as well as Protestant, to be simply--like the Isidorian Decretals--pious frauds.
Thus arose an atmosphere of criticism very different from the atmosphere of literary docility and acquiescence of the "Ages of Faith"; thus it came that great scholars in all parts of Europe began to realize, as never before, the part which theological skill and ecclesiastical zeal had taken in the development of spurious sacred literature; thus was stimulated a new energy in research into all ancient documents, no matter what their claims. To strengthen this feeling and to intensify the stimulating qualities of this new atmosphere came, as we have seen, the researches and revelations of Valla regarding the forged Letter of Christ to Abgarus, the fraudulent Donation of Constantine, and the late date of the Apostles' Creed; and, to give this feeling direction toward the Hebrew and Christian sacred books, came the example of Erasmus.(474)
(474) For very fair statements regarding the great forged documents of the Middle Ages, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, articles Dionysius the Areopagite and False Decretals, and in the latter the curious acknowledgment that the mass of pseudo-Isidorian Decretals "is what we now call a forgery."
For the derivation of Dionysius's ideas from St. Paul, and for the idea of inspiration attributed to him, see Albertus Magnus, Opera Omnia, vol. xiii, early chapters and chap. vi. For very interesting details on this general subject, see Dollinger, Das Papstthum, chap. ii; also his Fables respecting the Popes of the Middle Ages, translated by Plummer and H. B. Smith, part i, chap. v. Of the exposure of these works, see Farrar, as above, pp. 254, 255; also Beard, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 4, 354. For the False Decretals, see Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. ii, pp. 373 et seq. For the great work of the pseudo-Dionysius, see ibid., vol. iii, p. 352, and vol. vi, pp. 402 et seq., and Canon Westcott's article on Dionysius the Areopagite in vol. v of the Contemporary Review; also the chapters on Astronomy in this work.
Naturally, then, in this new atmosphere the bolder scholars of Europe soon began to push more vigorously the researches begun centuries before by Aben Ezra, and the next efforts of these men were seen about the middle of the seventeenth century, when Hobbes, in his Leviathan, and La Pevrere, in his Preadamites, took them up and developed them still further. The result came speedily. Hobbes, for this and other sins, was put under the ban, even by the political party which sorely needed him, and was regarded generally as an outcast; while La Peyrere, for this and other heresies, was thrown into prison by the Grand Vicar of Mechlin, and kept there until he fully retracted: his book was refuted by seven theologians within a year after its appearance, and within a generation thirty-six elaborate answers to it had appeared: the Parliament of Paris ordered it to be burned by the hangman.
In 1670 came an utterance vastly more important, by a man far greater than any of these--the Tractatus Thrologico-Politicus of Spinoza. Reverently but firmly he went much more deeply into the subject. Suggesting new arguments and recasting the old, he summed up all with judicial fairness, and showed that Moses could not have been the author of the Pentateuch in the form then existing; that there had been glosses and revisions; that the biblical books had grown up as a literature; that, though great truths are to be found in them, and they are to be regarded as a divine revelation, the old claims of inerrancy for them can not be maintained; that in studying them men had been misled by mistaking human conceptions for divine meanings; that, while prophets have been inspired, the prophetic faculty has not been the dowry of the Jewish people alone; that to look for exact knowledge of natural and spiritual phenomena in the sacred books is an utter mistake; and that the narratives of the Old and New Testaments, while they surpass those of profane history, differ among themselves not only in literary merit, but in the value of the doctrines they inculcate. As to the authorship of the Pentateuch, he arrived at the conclusion that it was written long after Moses, but that Moses may have written some books from which it was compiled--as, for example, those which are mentioned in the Scriptures, the Book of the Wars of God, the Book of the Covenant, and the like--and that the many repetitions and contradictions in the various books show a lack of careful editing as well as a variety of original sources. Spinoza then went on to throw light into some other books of the Old and New Testaments, and added two general statements which have proved exceedingly serviceable, for they contain the germs of all modern broad churchmanship; and the first of them gave the formula which was destined in our own time to save to the Anglican Church a large number of her noblest sons: this was, that "sacred Scripture CONTAINS the Word of God, and in so far as it contains it is incorruptible"; the second was, that "error in speculative doctrine is not impious."
Though published in various editions, the book seemed to produce little effect upon the world at that time; but its result to Spinoza himself was none the less serious. Though so deeply religious that Novalis spoke of him as "a God-intoxicated man," and Schleiermacher called him a "saint," he had been, for the earlier expression of some of the opinions it contained, abhorred as a heretic both by Jews and Christians: from the synagogue he was cut off by a public curse, and by the Church he was now regarded as in some sort a forerunner of Antichrist. For all this, he showed no resentment, but devoted himself quietly to his studies, and to the simple manual labour by which he supported himself; declined all proffered honours, among them a professorship at Heidelberg; found pleasure only in the society of a few friends as gentle and affectionate as himself; and died contentedly, without seeing any widespread effect of his doctrine other than the prevailing abhorrence of himself.
Perhaps in all the seventeenth century there was no man whom Jesus of Nazareth would have more deeply loved, and no life which he would have more warmly approved; yet down to a very recent period this hatred for Spinoza has continued. When, about 1880, it was proposed to erect a monument to him at Amsterdam, discourses were given in churches and synagogues prophesying the wrath of Heaven upon the city for such a profanation; and when the monument was finished, the police were obliged to exert themselves to prevent injury to the statue and to the eminent scholars who unveiled it.
But the ideas of Spinoza at last secured recognition. They had sunk deeply into the hearts and minds of various leaders of thought, and, most important of all, into the heart and mind of Lessing; he brought them to bear in his treatise on the Education of the World, as well as in his drama, Nathan the Wise, and both these works have spoken with power to every generation since.
In France, also, came the same healthful evolution of thought. For generations scholars had known that multitudes of errors had crept into the sacred text. Robert Stephens had found over two thousand variations in the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament, and in 1633 Jean Morin, a priest of the Oratory, pointed out clearly many of the most glaring of these. Seventeen years later, in spite of the most earnest Protestant efforts to suppress his work, Cappellus gave forth his Critica Sacra, demonstrating not only that the vowel pointing of Scripture was not divinely inspired, but that the Hebrew text itself, from which the modern translations were made, is full of errors due to the carelessness, ignorance, and doctrinal zeal of early scribes, and that there had clearly been no miraculous preservation of the "original autographs" of the sacred books.
While orthodox France was under the uneasiness and alarm thus caused, appeared a Critical History of the Old Testament by Richard Simon, a priest of the Oratory. He was a thoroughly religious man and an acute scholar, whose whole purpose was to develop truths which he believed healthful to the Church and to mankind. But he denied that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, and exhibited the internal evidence, now so well known, that the books were composed much later by various persons, and edited later still. He also showed that other parts of the Old Testament had been compiled from older sources, and attacked the time-honoured theory that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind. The whole character of his book was such that in these days it would pass, on the whole, as conservative and orthodox; it had been approved by the censor in 1678, and printed, when the table of contents and a page of the preface were shown to Bossuet. The great bishop and theologian was instantly aroused; he pronounced the work "a mass of impieties and a bulwark of irreligion"; his biographer tells us that, although it was Holy Thursday, the bishop, in spite of the solemnity of the day, hastened at once to the Chancellor Le Tellier, and secured an order to stop the publication of the book and to burn the whole edition of it. Fortunately, a few copies were rescued, and a few years later the work found a new publisher in Holland; yet not until there had been attached to it, evidently by some Protestant divine of authority, an essay warning the reader against its dangerous doctrines. Two years later a translation was published in England.
This first work of Simon was followed by others, in which he sought, in the interest of scriptural truth, to throw a new and purer light upon our sacred literature; but Bossuet proved implacable. Although unable to suppress all of Simon's works, he was able to drive him from the Oratory, and to bring him into disrepute among the very men who ought to have been proud of him as Frenchmen and thankful to him as Christians.
But other scholars of eminence were now working in this field, and chief among them Le Clerc. Virtually driven out of Geneva, he took refuge at Amsterdam, and there published a series of works upon the Hebrew language, the interpretation of Scripture, and the like. In these he combated the prevalent idea that Hebrew was the primitive tongue, expressed the opinion that in the plural form of the word used in Genesis for God, "Elohim," there is a trace of Chaldean polytheism, and, in his discussion on the serpent who tempted Eve, curiously anticipated modern geological and zoological ideas by quietly confessing his inability to see how depriving the serpent of feet and compelling him to go on his belly could be punishment--since all this was natural to the animal. He also ventured quasi-scientific explanations of the confusion of tongues at Babel, the destruction of Sodom, the conversion of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, and the dividing of the Red Sea. As to the Pentateuch in general, he completely rejected the idea that it was written by Moses. But his most permanent gift to the thinking world was his answer to those who insisted upon the reference by Christ and his apostles to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. The answer became a formula which has proved effective from his day to ours: "Our Lord and his apostles did not come into this world to teach criticism to the Jews, and hence spoke according to the common opinion."
Against all these scholars came a theological storm, but it raged most pitilessly against Le Clerc. Such renowned theologians as Carpzov in Germany, Witsius in Holland, and Huet in France berated him unmercifully and overwhelmed him with assertions which still fill us with wonder. That of Huet, attributing the origin of pagan as well as Christian theology to Moses, we have already seen; but Carpzov showed that Protestantism could not be outdone by Catholicism when he declared, in the face of all modern knowledge, that not only the matter but the exact form and words of the Bible had been divinely transmitted to the modern world free from all error.
At this Le Clerc stood aghast, and finally stammered out a sort of half recantation.(475)
(475) For Carlstadt, and Luther's dealings with him on various accounts, see Meyer, Geschichte der exegese, vol. ii, pp. 373, 397. As to the value of Maes's work in general, see Meyer, vol. ii, p. 125; and as to the sort of work in question, ibid., vol. iii, p. 425, note. For Carlstadt, see also Farrar, History of Interpretation, and Moore's introduction, as above. For Hobbes's view that the Pentateuch was written long after Moses's day, see the Leviathan, vol. iii, p. 33. For La Peyrere's view, see especially his Prae-Adamitae, lib. iv, chap. ii, also lib. ii, passim; also Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p. 294; also interesting points in Bayle's Dictionary. For Spinoza's view, see the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, chaps. ii and iii, and for the persecution, see the various biographies. Details regarding the demonstration against the unveiling of his statue were given to the present writer at the time by Berthold Auerbach, who took part in the ceremony. For Morinus and Cappellus, see Farrar, as above, p. 387 and note. For Richard Simon, see his Histoire Critique de l'Ancien Testament, liv. i, chaps. ii, iii, iv, v, and xiii. For his denial of the prevailing theory regarding Hebrew, see liv. i, chap. iv. For Morinus (Morin) and his work, see the Biog. Univ. and Nouvelle Biog. Generale; also Curtiss. For Bousset's opposition to Simon, see the Histoire de Bousser in the Oeuvres de Bousset, Paris, 1846, tome xii, pp. 330, 331; also t. x, p. 378; also sundry attacks in various volumes. It is interesting to note that among the chief instigators of the persecution were the Port-Royalists, upon whose persecution afterward by the Jesuits so much sympathy has been lavished by the Protestant world. For Le Clerc, see especially his Pentateuchus, Prolegom, dissertat. i; also Com. in Genes., cap. vi-viii. For a translation of selected passages on the points noted, see Twelve Dissertations out of Monsieur LeClerc's Genesis, done out of Latin by Mr. Brown, London, 1696; also Le Clerc's Sentiments de Quelques Theologiens de Hollande, passim; also his work on Inspiration, English translation, Boston, 1820, pp. 47-50, also 57-67. For Witsius and Carpzov, see Curtiss, as above. For some subordinate points in the earlier growth of the opinion at present dominant, see Briggs, The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, New York, 1893, chap. iv.
During the eighteenth century constant additions were made to the enormous structure of orthodox scriptural interpretation, some of them gaining the applause of the Christian world then, though nearly all are utterly discredited now. But in 1753 appeared two contributions of permanent influence, though differing vastly in value. In the comparative estimate of these two works the world has seen a remarkable reversal of public opinion.
The first of these was Bishop Lowth's Prelections upon the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. In this was well brought out that characteristic of Hebrew poetry to which it owes so much of its peculiar charm--its parallelism.
The second of these books was Astruc's Conjectures on the Original Memoirs which Moses used in composing the Book of Genesis. In this was for the first time clearly revealed the fact that, amid various fragments of old writings, at least two main narratives enter into the composition of Genesis; that in the first of these is generally used as an appellation of the Almighty the word "Elohim," and in the second the word "Yahveh" (Jehovah); that each narrative has characteristics of its own, in thought and expression, which distinguish it from the other; that, by separating these, two clear and distinct narratives may be obtained, each consistent with itself, and that thus, and thus alone, can be explained the repetitions, discrepancies, and contradictions in Genesis which so long baffled the ingenuity of commentators, especially the two accounts of the creation, so utterly inconsistent with each other.
Interesting as was Lowth's book, this work by Astruc was, as the thinking world now acknowledges, infinitely more important; it was, indeed, the most valuable single contribution ever made to biblical study. But such was not the judgment of the world THEN. While Lowth's book was covered with honour and its author promoted from the bishopric of St. David's to that of London, and even offered the primacy, Astruc and his book were covered with reproach. Though, as an orthodox Catholic, he had mainly desired to reassert the authorship of Moses against the argument of Spinoza, he received no thanks on that account. Theologians of all creeds sneered at him as a doctor of medicine who had blundered beyond his province; his fellow-Catholics in France bitterly denounced him as a heretic; and in Germany the great Protestant theologian, Michaelis, who had edited and exalted Lowth's work, poured contempt over Astruc as an ignoramus.
The case of Astruc is one of the many which show the wonderful power of the older theological reasoning to close the strongest minds against the clearest truths. The fact which he discovered is now as definitely established as any in the whole range of literature or science. It has become as clear as the day, and yet for two thousand years the minds of professional theologians, Jewish and Christian, were unable to detect it. Not until this eminent physician applied to the subject a mind trained in making scientific distinctions was it given to the world.
It was, of course, not possible even for so eminent a scholar as Michaelis to pooh-pooh down a discovery so pregnant; and, curiously enough, it was one of Michaelis's own scholars, Eichhorn, who did the main work in bringing the new truth to bear upon the world. He, with others, developed out of it the theory that Genesis, and indeed the Pentateuch, is made up entirely of fragments of old writings, mainly disjointed. But they did far more than this: they impressed upon the thinking part of Christendom the fact that the Bible is not a BOOK, but a LITERATURE; that the style is not supernatural and unique, but simply the Oriental style of the lands and times in which its various parts were written; and that these must be studied in the light of the modes of thought and statement and the literary habits generally of Oriental peoples. From Eichhorn's time the process which, by historical, philological, and textual research, brings out the truth regarding this literature has been known as "the higher criticism."
He was a deeply religious man, and the mainspring of his efforts was the desire to bring back to the Church the educated classes, who had been repelled by the stiff Lutheran orthodoxy; but this only increased hostility to him. Opposition met him in Germany at every turn; and in England, Lloyd, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, who sought patronage for a translation of Eichhorn's work, was met generally with contempt and frequently with insult.
Throughout Catholic Germany it was even worse. In 1774 Isenbiehl, a priest at Mayence who had distinguished himself as a Greek and Hebrew scholar, happened to question the usual interpretation of the passage in Isaiah which refers to the virgin-born Immanuel, and showed then--what every competent critic knows now--that it had reference to events looked for in older Jewish history. The censorship and faculty of theology attacked him at once and brought him before the elector. Luckily, this potentate was one of the old easy-going prince-bishops, and contented himself with telling the priest that, though his contention was perhaps true, he "must remain in the old paths, and avoid everything likely to make trouble."
But at the elector's death, soon afterward, the theologians renewed the attack, threw Isenbiehl out of his professorship and degraded him. One insult deserves mention for its ingenuity. It was declared that he--the successful and brilliant professor--showed by the obnoxious interpretation that he had not yet rightly learned the Scriptures; he was therefore sent back to the benches of the theological school, and made to take his seat among the ingenuous youth who were conning the rudiments of theology. At this he made a new statement, so carefully guarded that it disarmed many of his enemies, and his high scholarship soon won for him a new professorship of Greek--the condition being that he should cease writing upon Scripture. But a crafty bookseller having republished his former book, and having protected himself by keeping the place and date of publication secret, a new storm fell upon the author; he was again removed from his professorship and thrown into prison; his book was forbidden, and all copies of it in that part of Germany were confiscated. In 1778, having escaped from prison, he sought refuge with another of the minor rulers who in blissful unconsciousness were doing their worst while awaiting the French Revolution, but was at once delivered up to the Mayence authorities and again thrown into prison.
The Pope, Pius VI, now intervened with a brief on Isenbiehl's book, declaring it "horrible, false, perverse, destructive, tainted with heresy," and excommunicating all who should read it. At this, Isenbiehl, declaring that he had written it in the hope of doing a service to the Church, recanted, and vegetated in obscurity until his death in 1818.
But, despite theological faculties, prince-bishops, and even popes, the new current of thought increased in strength and volume, and into it at the end of the eighteenth century came important contributions from two sources widely separated and most dissimilar.
The first of these, which gave a stimulus not yet exhausted, was the work of Herder. By a remarkable intuition he had anticipated some of those ideas of an evolutionary process in nature and in literature which first gained full recognition nearly three quarters of a century after him; but his greatest service in the field of biblical study was his work, at once profound and brilliant, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry. In this field he eclipsed Bishop Lowth. Among other things of importance, he showed that the Psalms were by different authors and of different periods--the bloom of a great poetic literature.
Until his time no one had so clearly done justice to their sublimity and beauty; but most striking of all was his discussion of Solomon's Song. For over twenty centuries it had been customary to attribute to it mystical meanings. If here and there some man saw the truth, he was careful, like Aben Ezra, to speak with bated breath.
The penalty for any more honest interpretation was seen, among Protestants, when Calvin and Beza persecuted Castellio, covered him with obloquy, and finally drove him to starvation and death, for throwing light upon the real character of the Song of Songs; and among Catholics it was seen when Philip II allowed the pious and gifted Luis de Leon, for a similar offence, to be thrown into a dungeon of the Inquisition and kept there for five years, until his health was utterly shattered and his spirit so broken that he consented to publish a new commentary on the song, "as theological and obscure as the most orthodox could desire."
Here, too, we have an example of the efficiency of the older biblical theology in fettering the stronger minds and in stupefying the weaker. Just as the book of Genesis had to wait over two thousand years for a physician to reveal the simplest fact regarding its structure, so the Song of Songs had to wait even longer for a poet to reveal not only its beauty but its character. Commentators innumerable had interpreted it; St. Bernard had preached over eighty sermons on its first two chapters; Palestrina had set its most erotic parts to sacred music; Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants, from Origen to Aben Ezra and from Luther to Bossuet, had uncovered its deep meanings and had demonstrated it to be anything and everything save that which it really is. Among scores of these strange imaginations it was declared to represent the love of Jehovah for Israel; the love of Christ for the Church; the praises of the Blessed Virgin; the union of the soul with the body; sacred history from the Exodus to the Messiah; Church history from the Crucifixion to the Reformation; and some of the more acute Protestant divines found in it references even to the religious wars in Germany and to the Peace of Passau. In these days it seems hard to imagine how really competent reasoners could thus argue without laughing in each other's faces, after the manner of Cicero's augurs. Herder showed Solomon's Song to be what the whole thinking world now knows it to be--simply an Oriental love-poem.
But his frankness brought him into trouble: he was bitterly assailed. Neither his noble character nor his genius availed him. Obliged to flee from one pastorate to another, he at last found a happy refuge at Weimar in the society of Goethe, Wieland, and Jean Paul, and thence he exercised a powerful influence in removing noxious and parasitic growths from religious thought.
It would hardly be possible to imagine a man more different from Herder than was the other of the two who most influenced biblical interpretation at the end of the eighteenth century. This was Alexander Geddes--a Roman Catholic priest and a Scotchman. Having at an early period attracted much attention by his scholarship, and having received the very rare distinction, for a Catholic, of a doctorate from the University of Aberdeen, he began publishing in 1792 a new translation of the Old Testament, and followed this in 1800 with a volume of critical remarks. In these he supported mainly three views: first, that the Pentateuch in its present form could not have been written by Moses; secondly, that it was the work of various hands; and, thirdly, that it could not have been written before the time of David. Although there was a fringe of doubtful theories about them, these main conclusions, supported as they were by deep research and cogent reasoning, are now recognised as of great value. But such was not the orthodox opinion then. Though a man of sincere piety, who throughout his entire life remained firm in the faith of his fathers, he and his work were at once condemned: he was suspended by the Catholic authorities as a misbeliever, denounced by Protestants as an infidel, and taunted by both as "a would-be corrector of the Holy Ghost." Of course, by this taunt was meant nothing more than that he dissented from sundry ideas inherited from less enlightened times by the men who just then happened to wield ecclesiastical power.
But not all the opposition to him could check the evolution of his thought. A line of great men followed in these paths opened by Astruc and Eichhorn, and broadened by Herder and Geddes. Of these was De Wette, whose various works, especially his Introduction to the Old Testament, gave a new impulse early in the nineteenth century to fruitful thought throughout Christendom. In these writings, while showing how largely myths and legends had entered into the Hebrew sacred books, he threw especial light into the books Deuteronomy and Chronicles. The former he showed to be, in the main, a late priestly summary of law, and the latter a very late priestly recast of early history. He had, indeed, to pay a penalty for thus aiding the world in its march toward more truth, for he was driven out of Germany, and obliged to take refuge in a Swiss professorship; while Theodore Parker, who published an English translation of his work, was, for this and similar sins, virtually rejected by what claimed to be the most liberal of all Christian bodies in the United States.
But contributions to the new thought continued from quarters whence least was expected. Gesenius, by his Hebrew Grammar, and Ewald, by his historical studies, greatly advanced it.
To them and to all like them during the middle years of the nineteenth century was sturdily opposed the colossus of orthodoxy--Hengstenberg. In him was combined the haughtiness of a Prussian drill-sergeant, the zeal of a Spanish inquisitor, and the flippant brutality of a French orthodox journalist. Behind him stood the gifted but erratic Frederick William IV--a man admirably fitted for a professorship of aesthetics, but whom an inscrutable fate had made King of Prussia. Both these rulers in the German Israel arrayed all possible opposition against the great scholars labouring in the new paths; but this opposition was vain: the succession of acute and honest scholars continued: Vatke, Bleek, Reuss, Graf, Kayser, Hupfeld, Delitzsch, Kuenen, and others wrought on in Germany and Holland, steadily developing the new truth.
Especially to be mentioned among these is Hupfeld, who published in 1853 his treatise on The Sources of Genesis. Accepting the Conjectures which Astruc had published just a hundred years before, he established what has ever since been recognised by the leading biblical commentators as the true basis of work upon the Pentateuch--the fact that THREE true documents are combined in Genesis, each with its own characteristics. He, too, had to pay a price for letting more light upon the world. A determined attempt was made to punish him. Though deeply religious in his nature and aspirations, he was denounced in 1865 to the Prussian Government as guilty of irreverence; but, to the credit of his noble and true colleagues who trod in the more orthodox paths--men like Tholuck and Julius Muller--the theological faculty of the University of Halle protested against this persecuting effort, and it was brought to naught.
The demonstrations of Hupfeld gave new life to biblical scholarship in all lands. More and more clear became the evidence that throughout the Pentateuch, and indeed in other parts of our sacred books, there had been a fusion of various ideas, a confounding of various epochs, and a compilation of various documents. Thus was opened a new field of thought and work: in sifting out this literature; in rearranging it; and in bringing it into proper connection with the history of the Jewish race and of humanity.
Astruc and Hupfeld having thus found a key to the true character of the "Mosaic" Scriptures, a second key was found which opened the way to the secret of order in all this chaos. For many generations one thing had especially puzzled commentators and given rise to masses of futile "reconciliation": this was the patent fact that such men as Samuel, David, Elijah, Isaiah, and indeed the whole Jewish people down to the Exile, showed in all their utterances and actions that they were utterly ignorant of that vast system of ceremonial law which, according to the accounts attributed to Moses and other parts of our sacred books, was in full force during their time and during nearly a thousand years before the Exile. It was held "always, everywhere, and by all," that in the Old Testament the chronological order of revelation was: first, the law; secondly, the Psalms; thirdly, the prophets. This belief continued unchallenged during more than two thousand years, and until after the middle of the nineteenth century.
Yet, as far back as 1835, Vatke at Berlin had, in his Religion of the Old Testament, expressed his conviction that this belief was unfounded. Reasoning that Jewish thought must have been subject to the laws of development which govern other systems, he arrived at the conclusion that the legislation ascribed to Moses, and especially the elaborate paraphernalia and composite ceremonies of the ritual, could not have come into being at a period so rude as that depicted in the "Mosaic" accounts.
Although Vatke wrapped this statement in a mist of Hegelian metaphysics, a sufficient number of watchmen on the walls of the Prussian Zion saw its meaning, and an alarm was given. The chroniclers tell us that "fear of failing in the examinations, through knowing too much, kept students away from Vatke's lectures." Naturally, while Hengstenberg and Frederick William IV were commanding the forces of orthodoxy, Vatke thought it wise to be silent.
Still, the new idea was in the air; indeed, it had been divined about a year earlier, on the other side of the Rhine, by a scholar well known as acute and thoughtful--Reuss, of Strasburg. Unfortunately, he too was overawed, and he refrained from publishing his thought during more than forty years. But his ideas were caught by some of his most gifted scholars; and, of these, Graf and Kayser developed them and had the courage to publish them.
At the same period this new master key was found and applied by a greater man than any of these--by Kuenen, of Holland; and thus it was that three eminent scholars, working in different parts of Europe and on different lines, in spite of all obstacles, joined in enforcing upon the thinking world the conviction that the complete Levitical law had been established not at the beginning, but at the end, of the Jewish nation--mainly, indeed, after the Jewish nation as an independent political body had ceased to exist; that this code had not been revealed in the childhood of Israel, but that it had come into being in a perfectly natural way during Israel's final decay--during the period when heroes and prophets had been succeeded by priests. Thus was the historical and psychological evolution of Jewish institutions brought into harmony with the natural development of human thought; elaborate ceremonial institutions being shown to have come after the ruder beginnings of religious development instead of before them. Thus came a new impulse to research, and the fruitage was abundant; the older theological interpretation, with its insoluble puzzles, yielded on all sides.
The lead in the new epoch thus opened was taken by Kuenen. Starting with strong prepossessions in favour of the older thought, and even with violent utterances against some of the supporters of the new view, he was borne on by his love of truth, until his great work, The Religion of Israel, published in 1869, attracted the attention of thinking scholars throughout the world by its arguments in favour of the upward movement. From him now came a third master key to the mystery; for he showed that the true opening point for research into the history and literature of Israel is to be found in the utterances of the great prophets of the eighth century before our era. Starting from these, he opened new paths into the periods preceding and following them. Recognising the fact that the religion of Israel was, like other great world religions, a development of higher ideas out of lower, he led men to bring deeper thinking and wider research into the great problem. With ample learning and irresistible logic he proved that Old Testament history is largely mingled with myth and legend; that not only were the laws attributed to Moses in the main a far later development, but that much of their historical setting was an afterthought; also that Old Testament prophecy was never supernaturally predictive, and least of all predictive of events recorded in the New Testament. Thus it was that his genius gave to the thinking world a new point of view, and a masterly exhibition of the true method of study. Justly has one of the most eminent divines of the contemporary Anglican Church indorsed the statement of another eminent scholar, that "Kuenen stood upon his watch-tower, as it were the conscience of Old Testament science"; that his work is characterized "not merely by fine scholarship, critical insight, historical sense, and a religious nature, but also by an incorruptible conscientiousness, and a majestic devotion to the quest of truth."
Thus was established the science of biblical criticism. And now the question was, whether the Church of northern Germany would accept this great gift--the fruit of centuries of devoted toil and self-sacrifice--and take the lead of Christendom in and by it.
The great curse of Theology and Ecclesiasticism has always been their tendency to sacrifice large interests to small--Charity to Creed, Unity to Uniformity, Fact to Tradition, Ethics to Dogma. And now there were symptoms throughout the governing bodies of the Reformed churches indicating a determination to sacrifice leadership in this new thought to ease in orthodoxy. Every revelation of new knowledge encountered outcry, opposition, and repression; and, what was worse, the ill-judged declarations of some unwise workers in the critical field were seized upon and used to discredit all fruitful research. Fortunately, a man now appeared who both met all this opposition successfully, and put aside all the half truths or specious untruths urged by minor critics whose zeal outran their discretion. This was a great constructive scholar--not a destroyer, but a builder--Wellhausen. Reverently, but honestly and courageously, with clearness, fulness, and convicting force, he summed up the conquests of scientific criticism as bearing on Hebrew history and literature. These conquests had reduced the vast structures which theologians had during ages been erecting over the sacred text to shapeless ruin and rubbish: this rubbish he removed, and brought out from beneath it the reality. He showed Jewish history as an evolution obedient to laws at work in all ages, and Jewish literature as a growth out of individual, tribal, and national life. Thus was our sacred history and literature given a beauty and high use which had long been foreign to them. Thereby was a vast service rendered immediately to Germany, and eventually to all mankind; and this service was greatest of all in the domain of religion.(476)
(476) For Lowth, see the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, D. D., Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford, Founders of the Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893, pp. 3, 4. For Astruc's very high character as a medical authority, see the Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, Paris, 1820; it is significant that at first he concealed his authorship of the Conjectures. For a brief statement, see Cheyne; also Moore's introduction to Bacon's Genesis of Genesis; but for a statement remarkably full and interesting, and based on knowledge at first hand of Astruc's very rare book, see Curtiss, as above. For Michaelis and Eichorn, see Meyer, Geschichte der Exegese; also Cheyne and Moore. For Isenbiehl, see Reusch, in Allg. deutsche Biographie. The texts cited against him were Isaiah vii, 14, and Matt. i, 22, 23. For Herder, see various historians of literature and writers in exegesis, and especially Pfleiderer, Development of Theology in Germany, chap. ii. For his influence, as well as that of Lessing, see Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap. x. For a brief comparison of Lowth's work with that of Herder, see Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 377. For examples of interpretations of the Song of Songs, see Farrar, as above, p. 33. For Castellio (Chatillon), his anticipation of Herder's view of Solomon's Song, and his persecution by Calvin and Beza, which drove him to starvation and death, see Lecky, Rationalism, etc., vol. ii, pp. 46-48; also Bayle's Dictionary, article Castalio; also Montaigne's Essais, liv,. i, chap. xxxiv; and especially the new life of him by Buisson. For the persecution of Luis de Leon for a similar offence, see Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, vol. ii, pp. 41, 42, and note. For a remarkably frank acceptance of the consequences flowing from Herder's view of it, see Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 211, 405. For Geddes, see Cheyne, as above. For Theodore Parker, see his various biographies, passim. For Reuss, Graf, and Kuenen, see Cheyne, as above; and for the citations referred to, see the Rev. Dr. Driver, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in The Academy, October 27, 1894; also a note to Wellhausen's article Pentateuch in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For a generous yet weighty tribute to Kuenen's method, see Pfleiderer, as above, book iii, chap. ii. For the view of leading Christian critics on the book of Chronicles, see especially Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 495 et seq.; also Wellhausen, as above; also Hooykaas, Oort, and Kuenen, Bible for Learners. For many of the foregoing, see also the writings of Prof. W. Robertson Smith; also Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap. x. For Hupfield and his discovery, see Cheyne, Founders, etc., as above, chap. vii; also Moore's Introduction. For a justly indignant judgment of Hengstenberg and his school, see Canon Farrar, as above, p. 417, note; and for a few words throwing a bright light into his character and career, see C. A. Briggs, D. D., Authority of Holy Scripture, p. 93. For Wellhausen, see Pfleiderer, as above, book iii, chap. ii. For an excellent popular statement of the general results of German criticism, see J. T. Sunderland, The Bible, Its Origin, Growth, and Character, New York and London, 1893.
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A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology 68
