Abstract
The criticism of the Old Testament is at this moment in a very interesting situation, both in England and German. As usual, the movement of German thought on the subject is ahead of that of England. The leading English scholars appear perfectly contented with what they have for some time designated the "assured results" of the criticism of the last half of the nineteenth century, and have created a new conservatism in the recognition, as a final achievement, of the documents into which the Pentateuch has been dissected out. At Oxford and Cambridge, manuals are published, like those of the Cambridge Bible for Schools and colleges, which treat the Jehovist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly Code as settled realities, as much as the books of the Pentateuch themselves were to our fathers; and Dr. McNeile in defending the critical theory of Deuteronomy against the able essay of Mr. Griffiths, lately published by the S.P.C.K., expresses a condescending regret that so "great and useful a Society" should have been betrayed into countenancing such a critical heresy. There are indeed some important exceptions among us to this attitude. Canon Girdlestone continues to exhibit as quiet a confidence in the substantial truth of the traditional belief respecting the Old Testament as the critics do in their own hypotheses, and like them he for the most part reserves his fire. A Jewish barrister, Mr. Wiener, has, however, for some years been directing a vehement assault on the whole critical position, and has certainly made some important breaches in its defences. But until the last month or two the leaders of the critical school have maintained a self-satisfied silence, as though the question were finally settled. In Germany the case has been very different. A steady resistance has been maintained by some leading scholars to various parts of the critical theory. Klostermann, in particular, rejects the whole theory of the four sources, and regards the Pentateuch as having, as it were, crystallized by gradual accretion round an original Mosaic and Sinaitic law; and Koenig, while accepting the four sources in the main, assigns to parts of them a far more ancient and historic character than is allowed by the Wellhausen school. But still more radical attacks have been initiated during the last few years. Eerdmans has started an entirely new, and, it must be said, still more improbable, theory of an original polytheistic book; which was subsequently revised in a monotheistic sense. But more serious attacks have been directed by other scholars, especially by Johannes Dahse, against the groundwork of the documentary theory, and at length a leading English critic has thought it necessary to reply to him. In the last two numbers of the Expositor, for April and May, Dr. Skinner of Cambridge has replied fully to Dahse, and perhaps successfully, so far as the efficiency of Dahse's alternative theory is concerned; but he has to make admissions which appear seriously damaging to his own position. Well may it be said by Dr. Sellin, of Rostock, one of the leading members of the moderate critical school, in his recent Introduction: " It will be seen that we are passing through a period of ferment and transition, and in what follows we present our own view as only the hypothesis which appears to us as the best founded."