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] NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS.
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exactness has been more and more developed on all hands ; the services of Meyer and Weiss to exegesis are everywhere acknowledged. A tribute should also be paid to Weiss's Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, as a work of pre-eminent scientific soundness, containing copious matter arranged with exemplary clearness, and surpassing all others in practical utility as a textbook for students.
The Tubingen school was not behindhand in replying to these numerous and serious attacks. Besides Baur and Zeller, Hilgenfeld, in numerous books and essays (in the Zeitschrift
fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie), distinguished
himself as the ready champion of the right of scientific criticism. Fond of
emphasising his independence of Baur, he still, in all impor tant points, followed in the footsteps of the master ; his method, which he is wont to contrast as Literarkritik with
Baur's Tendenzkritik, is nevertheless essentially the same as
? Baur's. In his view of the fourth
Gospel, Hilgenfeld goes even further than Baur, making it altogether dependent upon Gnosticism. In the Synoptic question he leaves Baur's view
Mark between Matthew and Luke. He modifies somewhat the criticism of Paul's epistles, restoring Philippians and 1 Thessalonians to Paul. Volkmar differs decidedly from the other Tubingen critics
only on the question of the Synoptists ; he follows Wilke and
Weisse in regarding Mark as the earliest Gospel, which was
followed by Luke immediately, and only subsequently by Matthew, the last being dependent upon both the others, and a gospel harmony from the point of view of the Catholic Church, with its reconciliation of differences. This un doubtedly correct view Volkmar has exaggerated, after the fashion of Bruno Bauer, by making Mark the author of a "didactic epic," intended to illustrate the Pauline gospel. Though this seemed to do away with all historical foundations, Volkmar, in his Religion Jesu, and still more in his Jesus Nazarenus und die erste christliche Zeit (1882), tries to separate and establish a kernel of historical facts as the basis of the gospels. In his interpretation of the Apocalypse, he follows Tubingen principles, and refers the Apocalyptic imagery in the boldest manner to the party struggles of
essentially unchanged, only placing
The book is now somewhat out of date, since Volter has shown that the Apocalypse is composed of elements belonging to different authors and times, and
primitive Christianity.
? ? ? 24O BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
Vischer has made a Jewish basis with Christian revisions very probable. With Hilgenfeld and Volkmar, we must mention Holsten as a strict adherent of Baur in his line of criticism. In his commentary on Galatians, and in several works on Paul, he has discussed the Apostle's peculiar teaching with great acumen, though often with too great subtlety and exaggerated
dialectic ; his long-promised review of the entire Pauline theo
logy has not yet appeared. The question of the Synop- tists has also latterly engaged Holsten's attention : he tries very hard, but with doubtful success, to defend Hilgenfeld's view (Matthew-Mark-Luke). On this question, Holtzmann is the exponent of the view now most generally accepted. In his book on die synoptischen Evangelien, he maintains the priority of Mark ; our Matthew he derives from Mark and Matthew's original "collection of sayings" (the \6yia of Papias), and finally Luke from our Matthew and Mark. Besides numerous essays, Holtzmann has furnished valuable contributions to New Testament exegesis and criticism in his works on the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles ; and his Einleitung in das Neue Testa ment gives an excellent summary of the present position of all the questions concerned. Whilst most critics were thus working at questions of detail, Hausrath was led by his natural love of artistic form, and his position as ecclesiastical historian, to combine details into a vivid account of the time as a whole. In particular his neutestamentliche
? Zeitgeschichte has the merit of showing the place of the development of primitive Christianity in the history of the world, and of
describing the connexion, too much neglected, between the evolution of the Christian Church and the condition of the Gra:co- Roman world. As this work is further distinguished by a beauty of style rare in German theolo gians, it has attracted attention even among the laity, and contributed much to the diffusion of the results of modern research.
At the commencement of the sixth decade of the century, after Baur's death, the labours of Bible critics were so much confined to literary questions of detail that these purely learned controversies seemed to have put an end to the interest in the great fundamental questions. This interest was, however, revived in the same field in which a generation before the whole movement had originated. The appearance in quick
? ? ? Ch. I. ] NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 24 1
succession of the works of Renan l and Strauss on the life of Jesus, which were followed by several other books on the same subject, brought this question afresh to the front. The difference between Strauss's new book, Leben Jesu fiir das deutsche Volk (1864), and his earlier one, was that he intended
not for theologians only, but for the nation at large, es pecially for the educated men of Germany. Accordingly, thrown into a different form the place of learned
discussions of details we have a summary of the results of
criticism with regard to the gospel history, popular the best sense of the word. In this new work Strauss seeks to obviate the objections often brought against his earlier work, that gave a critique of the gospel history without a critique of the authorities, and led merely to the negative result of the unhistorical character of what was previously regarded as historical, not to the ascertainment of a positive historical kernel. He now prefixes a tolerably thorough criticism of the authorities, though adhering too strictly to Baur's views on all questions, even with regard to Matthew and Mark,
Renan's Vie de Jesus (1863) belongs, neither its origin nor in its effects, to the history of German theology, but its international importance demands the following remarks. It evident that book which in short time attained world-wide celebrity must have had some special excellence. Not to do injustice to we must be careful not to judge by wrong standard. Such would be, in this instance, the standard of strictly scientific historical inquiry. If Renan's object had been to ascertain the actual ultimate founda tion of the gospel narratives, he would, of course, have had to begin with careful investigation of the sources --their composition, date, trustworthiness, and mutual relations, which would doubtless have led him to conclusions in particular with regard to the Fourth Gospel which would have made impos sible for him to make use of the contents of this Gospel unconditionally, and to co-ordinate with the others. doubt not that Renan's subtle historical insight would have enabled him without difficulty to arrive, by means of this criticism of the authorities, calm comparison of the texts, and careful weighing of the various probabilities, at collection of data giving the most probable view we can form on these matters. A book of this kind would have possessed greater value as an historical treatise, but would have lacked all the merits and charm which make Renan's Vie de Jesus so unusually attractive. These merits are, in word, not scientific, but poetical. With faculty of poetical imagination, which paints characters, states of mind and feeling, and scenery with equal vividness, Renan has composed from the gospel stories religious epic, which brings forth the Saviour from the unap proachable darkness of dogma into the midst of the life of his people, first as the idyllic national leader, then as the contending and erring hero, always aiming at the highest, but doomed to tragic failure from the resistance offered by the reality to his ideal. Even those who may disapprove of such
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? 242 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Rk. III.
without doing justice to the grounds of the opposite views. Strauss, as he himself remarks in the preface, is not interested in these questions. "What we really want to know is whether the gospel history is true as a whole and in its details or not, and such preliminary questions can only excite general interest in proportion as they are connected with this fundamental problem. In this respect the criticism of the Gospels has undeniably in the last twenty years somewhat run to seed. New hypotheses, particularly with regard to the first three Gospels, their sources, aims, composition, and mutual relations, crop up in such numbers, and are both maintained and at tacked with as much zeal as if these were the only questions, while the resulting controversy is of such proportions that we have almost to despair of ever settling the principal question, if its solution has to wait for the conclusion of this contro versy. " We must indeed, Strauss says, have made up our minds as to the Fourth Gospel before we can enter into the discussion of these matters ; but the mutual relation of the Synoptic Gospels is not of the same importance. Moreover,
poetical treatment of a subject sacred to Christendom, must admit that it has brought the human figure of Jesus nearer to countless men who had long lost all appreciative feeling and care for the Christ of dogma, and has made him the object of their sympathetic appreciation and reverent admiration. And if offence was given by Renan's bringing out shadows and weaknesses in his picture of Jesus, we might in general, without wishing at all to defend him in detail, reply by way of excuse, that shadows in a bright picture might appear expedient to make the human figure more life-like and his story more dramatic. Finally, it must be said for this religious epic, as for other historical romances, that, without teaching us history in detail, it enables us to realise an historical event or period as a whole by means of the poet's comprehensive and divin ing intuition better than the scanty accounts of the strict historian can ever do. The further volumes of Renan's great work on the genesis of Chris tianity, the scientific value of which cannot be denied, still leave something to be desired as regards critical rigour in the investigation and use of authori ties. But this defect is counterbalanced by the merits of vivid description of the local and social environment of events and fine delineation of character. Renan always places before his readers real human beings of flesh and blood, with noble and base passions and motives, not mere ideal pictures upon a golden background. Of special interest is his description of the Apostle Paul. But he has too little sympathy with this Apostle of faith to be alto gether just to him ; he places him with Luther, as one of the historical men of power, but fails in the case of both men to appreciate the depth of their religious feeling and far-seeing speculation. The theological side of religion is indeed always neglected by Renan, while he has a true eye for its practical social side. He thus serves to supplement the German historians.
? ? ? ? Ch. NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS.
243
without deciding all those endless critical questions, we can
at least arrive at the negative result, that in the person and
work of Jesus there nothing supernatural, nothing that need oppress mankind with the leaden weight of an infallible authority demanding blind belief. " And this negative result
for our purpose, which not solely historical, but looks rather towards the future than the past, an important, not the most important, point. " Of the positive correlative to this negative result we can say nothing for certain but summing up of what in the present position of research must be con sidered probable both permissible and desirable. " All those engaged in these researches are thus reminded of the real point at issue, and such reminding, such recall from the circumference to the centre, has always been profitable to science. " in fact by such a balancing of the accounts that Strauss now, as in his former works, gave useful impulse to the advance of science. The first of the two books into which this Life divided gives the outline of the historical life of
This account has been called dry and meagre, and indeed so in comparison with Renan's richly coloured poetry but who can blame the historian, his authorities are of such a nature that, on critical examination, they fail to furnish him with sufficient material Besides, must be admitted that on the main questions as to the religious and Messianic consciousness of Jesus, and his relation to the Law, Strauss carefully weighs the various indications, and with subtle insight determines the most probable account. Like Schleiermacher and Renan, Strauss assumes that the religious
consciousness of Jesus was the source of his consciousness of himself as the Messiah but he expressly declines to accept the idea (with Renan) that in the latter Jesus made use of
"accommodation" or "played a part"; since the case of a personality of such immeasurable historical influence every inch must have been conviction this conviction was the more natural the case of Jesus, as the Messianic expec tation had a religious and ethical as well as a political side, and the former side would appear to him of prime importance in proportion as the latter had always hitherto proved itself disastrous. The fundamental characteristic of the piety of Jesus, Strauss holds to be his transference of the indiscrimi nate kindness towards good and evil alike, which was the
fundamental principle of his own nature, to God as the deter
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mining principle of his nature also. " By fully developing in himself this glad spirit, which was at one with God and embraced all men as brothers, Jesus had realised the pro phetic ideal of a new covenant, with the law written in the heart; he had, to use Schiller's language, " Die Gottheit in seinen Willen aufgenommen" identified his will with God's, and hence for him God, in Schiller's words, ' had descended from the throne of the universe, the abyss had been filled up, and the terror had fled,' in him man had passed from slavery to freedom. This gladness and integrity ( Ungebrochene), this action from the delight and joy of a beautiful soul, we may call the Hellenic element in Jesus. But the fact that this impulse of his heart, and, in harmony therewith, his conception of God, were purely spiritual and ethical -- this attainment, which the Greek could only attain to by philosophy, was in his case the dowry granted to him by his education according to the Mosaic law, and his instruction in the writings of the
prophets. " Jesus had not, like Paul, to pass through an agitating conflict and conversion, but was from the first a beau tiful nature, his development went on in general uniformly, if not without great effort yet without violent crises ; " this is the only living sense of the dogma of the sinlessness of Jesus, of which, in its rigid ecclesiastical form, as a purely negative idea, we can make absolutely nothing. " After the first book has given a description of the conjectural historical kernel of the history of Jesus, the second book treats of his mythical history, which had formed the sole subject of the earlier work. But while it had there been treated analytically, it is here treated genetically. It is assumed as the result of the former work that the supernatural element in the gospel narratives is mythical ; but the question now arises as to how we are to conceive the origin and development of this mythical history. As the first effect of the life and character of Jesus, we find the belief of his disciples in his resurrection ; and thus we find their ideas of him transplanted into a temperature in which a luxuriant growth of unhistorical seedlings was bound to spring up, each more miraculous than the other. The inspired Son of David comes to be the Son of God without human father ; the Son of God grows into the incarnate creative Word ; the humane, thaumaturgic physician becomes the resuscitator from the dead, the absolute lord of nature and its laws ; the wise popular teacher, the prophet reading the hearts
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of men, becomes omniscient, God's alter ego, his life on earth an episode in his eternal existence with God. This process, by which the various strata in the development of the conceptions of Christ were formed one after the other, as the expression of the Christian feeling prevalent in a given circle at a given time, worked out in the second book. thus both supplements and confirms the results of the previous work. For "if any one denies the historical validity of a story universally believed, we have a right to demand from him not only the grounds of his opinion, but also an explanation of the process by which the unhistori- cal narrative has come into existence. " This explanation here given with such thoroughness and perspicuity that the scientific value of the new work, in spite of its popular form,
decidedly superior to that of the earlier one. The fact that nevertheless, did not produce anything like the same sensa
tion only proves that in the intervening generation the world had become accustomed to receive the results of scientific re search even religious matters much more calmly than had previously been the case.
The two works of Renan and Strauss were followed
vast stream of literature on the life of Jesus, which, however, grew shallower as increased in breadth. Most of the works of this class produced in the last twenty years have paid less and less serious attention to both literary and material criti cism, and have almost retrograded to the position of pre-critical apologies and harmonies. Inasmuch as this branch of theology has thus completed its revolution, theologians ought without doubt to deduce the conclusion that a scientifically certain life
of Jesus impossible with the existing authorities. However
painful may be thus to resign ourselves, this might still be
attended by the advantage of leading theology away from devotion to small details and the attempt to trace the steps of Jesus in Galilee and Judea, and to combine the mosaic of evangelical tradition, now in one way, now in another, to the study once more of history on large scale, which would look for the sources of Christianity in the life of expiring antiquity as a whole, and see the triumphant progress of Christ's spirit through the earth the proof of his divine mission, proof drawn from the wide history of the world, and independent of the ever problematical results of the detailed investiga tion of his earthly life. From the mass of this literature
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BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
I will call attention to three works as the most important, Schenkel's Charakterbild Jesu, Keim's Geschichte Jesu von
Nazara, and Weizsacker's Evangelische Untersuchungen. SChenkel's Charakterbild Jesu, which appeared almost
simultaneously with Strauss's " Life of Jesus for the German People," provoked an outburst of opposition among German theologians, the reason of which it is hard to discover in the book assailed. This is so far from having an irreligious tendency, or being a frivolous treatment of sacred history,
that on the contrary it is full of a passionate enthusiasm for the character of Jesus, such as satisfies the demands of the heart much more than those of strict scientific research. In its estimate of the value of the sources, Schenkel's book, it is true, excels all other works here mentioned ; the priority of Mark is maintained with great decision, and all connection of the Fourth Gospel with the Apostle John, who did not live in Ephesus, denied with equal emphasis (so at least in the 4th ed. , 1873). But in his use of the authorities, the author is far from deducing the necessary consequences from this correct conclusion. Instead of attending to the peculiarities of each Gospel, and seeing in them the influence of a later time and
development of doctrine, all the Gospels are really used as if
? of equal value, and from their narratives and speeches
the Johannine), by means of artificial harmonising and arbitrary interpretation, a life of Christ is constructed, which, with all its
ideality, produces rather the impression of a modern reformer and champion of liberty and truth than of the real historical founder of the Church. Even those who are far from over estimating the historical value of Renan' s life of Jesus, can scarcely avoid ranking it higher than Schenkel's representa tion of Jesus. Compare, for instance, Renan's keen insight into the social side of the work of Jesus with Schenkel's
recasting of all the language of the passages of the Gospels in question, to bring them into conformity with modern ethics. Or let us hear Schenkel's description of the significance of the death of Jesus. " In order to kill the bondage to the letter of religion, Jesus, the inspired representative of the spirit of religion, had to die. The sanguinary law condemning free dom of belief was sentenced by his death ; by his sacrificial blood he bought freedom of belief and through it liberation from the bondage of the letter and of sin. Thus his death became a victory of freedom and love, and thereby the source
(even
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of a new religion, which overcame evil the inmost core of personality, a ransom for the captives in Israel and the heathen world. " Schenkel did not consider that "personal freedom of faith and of conscience " are ideals of very recent
which cannot without a serious anachronism be carried back to the rise of Christianity, and actually made the pivot of the whole work of Jesus. Indeed, Schenkel's own character was of such vigorous and yet one-sided subjec tivity that he altogether lacked the impartiality of objective historical insight.
Theodor Keim became known about the year i860 by his lectures on the human development and historical rank of Jesus (in the 2nd edition, together published under the title Der geschichtliche Chrishis, 1865) as an able writer on the life of Jesus, distinguished alike by his insight and religious feel ing. When his extensive work Geschichte Jesu von Nazara
vols. , 1867-1872) appeared, was recognised even by antagonists as of first-rate scientific importance. In there collected and skilfully digested such a mass of learned mate rial, that this alone suffices to render lasting storehouse of information for all students of the subject. The investigation of the authorities, too, more thorough than in similar works (with the possible exception of Weizsacker's). And yet
here that the great error of the book lies. The discussion of the Fourth Gospel indeed excellent, and Keim as decided as Strauss with regard to its unhistorical character. But on the question of the Synoptists Keim has not got beyond the view of Griesbach and Baur, that Matthew the original Gospel, and Mark a compilation from and Luke. His advocacy of this totally erroneous view feeble the evident signs of the derivative character of Matthew are overlooked or attributed to later revision his account of Mark full of the strongest prejudices. This erroneous estimate of the authorities places the whole work from the beginning upon a false and unstable basis, the effects of which naturally disturb all that follows. The strangest thing that Keim himself, the course of his history, often deserts his critical canon and finds himself obliged to give Mark or Luke the preference over Matthew. To this uncertainty as to the relation of the Gospels to each other must be added Keim's failure sufficiently to appreciate the influence of apostolic and post-apostolic teaching on the
gospel accounts, as well as of the personal influence of the
growth,
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writers themselves. When we further consider that Keim regards the Easter stories in the Gospels as historical accounts of actual Christophanies, and thus at the close of his book quits strictly historical ground altogether, we shall be justified in saying that his work, in spite of its great learning, fails to satisfy the rigorous demands of critical historical inquiry. Keim's style, too, lacks, according to my taste, the simplicity and sobriety appropriate to historical investigations. It is quite true that the lofty subject of this history demands a corresponding dignity of tone and language. But this does not cancel the difference between an historical inquiry and a sermon. When the emotional style of the pulpit is employed, as it is by Keim, in historical narrative, it is almost inevitable that emotion should substitute its language for that of the sober
understanding, and the weight of high-sounding phrases take the place of material facts and arguments. Keim in this respect closely resembles Ewald.
Of all the writers on the life of Jesus, Carl We1zsaCker has most carefully discussed the question of the authorities ; this forms the first half of his book, Untersuchungen ilber die evangelisc he Geschichte, ihre Quellen und den Ga? 1g ihrer Entwickelung (1864). He comes to the conclusion that the three Synoptic gospels are based upon a common original, the synoptische Grundschrift, most closely followed by our Gospel of Mark, and that the speeches contained in the two other Gospels, and not in Mark, are derived from a second source, the " collection of sayings," incorporated in different ways by Matthew and Luke with the Grundschrift, Matthew giving the purer form of it. The Fourth Gospel he holds has a two-fold aspect, it has an ideal and also an historical side ; it is not indeed composed of different elements capable of being externally distinguished, but its two-fold character pervades the whole work, which is on the one hand based upon great theological ideas, and on the other guided by quite definite historical motives. For the latter Weizsacker appeals in particular to the small incidental remarks, such as definite notes of time or place, which in his opinion bear traces of personal recollection. Such traces he thinks he finds even in the Johannine speeches, his strongest argument, besides the hostility to the Jews, being the circumstance that the evan gelist does not introduce his personal doctrinal view into the speeches of Jesus (an opinion which necessitates a very forced
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interpretation of many unambiguous utterances in the speeches of the Johannine Christ). Weizsacker' explanation of this two-fold character of the Gospel that was founded upon personal recollections and communications of the aged
Apostle John, and composed by one of his disciples towards the close of the first century. This intermediate position on the Johannine question, which Weizsacker shares with Renan, Hase, and many more, after all a great concession to Tubingen criticism but allowable to ask whether this position tenable, and not a halting-place merely on the retreat which must end in the complete surrender of all apostolic connexion with the Fourth Gospel. hold Keim's
view the more correct one, and that these scholars have
been influenced to some extent, not by ordinary apolo-
getical motives, yet by their dogmatic predilection for an ideal of Christ, which may be gathered from the Fourth Gospel,
though only by a free interpretation of the speeches, and with which moderns have a good deal of emotional sympathy.
A valuable continuation of his book on the Gospels has lately been given by Weizsacker in his work, Das apostolische Zeitalter der christlichen Kirche (1886). He first describes the formation of the primitive community by the appearances of Christ (which, like all critical theologians, he conceives as subjective experiences, or visions, of the Apostles), and its original condition before the activity of Paul, who forms the subject of the remainder of the first half of the book. Paul's conversion first related and explained by its psychological conditions then his first missionary journey, the form of his doctrine and theology are described this followed by the detailed consideration of the relations of the Apostle of the Gentiles to the Churches in Jerusalem and Antioch, and a
comparison of the accounts of Galatians and Acts xv. And most noteworthy that in all the chief questions here involved, in particular in his unfavourable view of the historical charac
ter of the Acts, Weizsacker in surprising agreement with the theory of Baur. Subsequently the Apostle Paul's mis sionary journeys, and the condition of the Churches founded by him, are described, under the guidance of the genuine Epistles, in a very thorough and instructive manner.
A second part describes the further development of affairs from Paul's imprisonment down to the end of the first or begin
ning of the second century (1) Jerusalem, with an account
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of the Epistle of James and the origin of the Synoptic Gospels ; (2) in Rome, with the discussion of the Epistles to the Romans and Philippians, the legend of Peter, and the
Epistles of Clement and the Hebrews ; (3) in Ephesus, with the consideration of the Johannine literature and the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians. The two questions as to the presence of Peter in Rome and John in Ephesus are both answered by Weizsacker, like Renan, in the affirmative, the first with more assurance than the second ; the chief evidence in the latter case being the Apocalypse, which he holds to have been composed not by the Apostle John himself, but by one of his disciples, who appealed to his authority. Weiz sacker' s analysis of the Apocalypse is subtle and ingenious, but not sufficiently thorough ; it is superseded by the researches of Volter and Vischer, who have shown the probability of a plurality of authors and a Jewish work as
the basis of the Apocalypse. The final portion of the book treats of the Church of the first century, its assemblies and worship, its constitution and its life. The historian's skill is everywhere shown in discovering the most important and characteristic facts, and in producing, from minute and apparently unimportant indications, by skilful grouping and ingenious inferences, a vivid picture of the earliest state of the Christian Church and its natural evolution from small beginnings. Much of course, only conjecture of which the truth may be disputed but even when fails to produce complete conviction, Weizsacker' account so clearly con ceived, and the reasons for so carefully given, that
in the highest degree attractive and suggestive. Since Baur's Christenthum der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, nothing has appeared on the earliest times of the Christian Church superior to the "Apostolic Age" by Weizsacker, the worthy occupant of Baur's chair.
In conclusion, may here refer to my own book, Das Urchristenthum, seine Schriften und Lehren, in geschicht- lichem Zusammenhang beschrieben (1887). based on the
Hibbert Lectures, delivered England in 1885, on "The Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christi
anity," and forms an extension and continuation of my earlier
work on Paulinismus (1873). In have tried to show
that the development of primitive Christianity into the Catholic Church must not be conceived as continued
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struggle and gradual reconciliation between Paulinism and Jew ish Christianity, as Baur had thought nor (with Ritschl) as a falling away from the apostolical religion and a degeneration of Paulinism but as the natural evolution of the Christian Hellenism introduced by Paul, which soon cast off the Pharisaic elements in Paul's doctrines, and developed, on the one hand, in a speculative direction, into the Johannine theology of Asia Minor on the other, in a practical direc tion, into the Church life of Rome (Epistle of James). But notwithstanding my difference from Baur, both in my general view and in my estimate of individual books (especially the Apocalypse, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, the Acts and
others), shall never forget how much with all our genera tion, owe to the epoch-making achievements of the great Tubingen Master.
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? CHAPTER II.
OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS.
In the same year with Strauss's Life of Jesus, which intro duced the new era of New Testament research, appeared Vatke's book, Die Religion des Alten Testaments nach den kanonischen Biichern entwickelt, which contained the be ginning of a not less important revolution in the views held regarding the Old Testament. The book met with a strange fate. The able and original theories it contained were re ceived with such universal disapprobation that it was scarcely considered worth while even to consider them with any thoroughness ; for a generation they remained practically unnoticed, and it was only between 1865 and 1870 that the same critical views were again advanced in a different form, and evoked ever growing interest. To Vatke's book itself
its unfortunate history was partly due. As a disciple of Hegel, Vatke had a keen eye for the laws of the mental development and religious consciousness of nations ; approaching Old Testament research with his insight thus quickened by phi losophy, he saw the impossibility of resting content with the traditional or even with the semi-critical views of the history of the religion of the Old Testament then in vogue. But this very philosophical training, which was Vatke's strength, con stituted the weakness of his book in the eyes of the public. After the then prevailing fashion of his school, Vatke had prefaced his historical inquiry by philosophical prolegomena, enunciating in the most abstract form propositions concerning the idea and phenomenon of religion, which could only be understood by those initiated into the mysteries of Hegelian terminology ; and even in the course of his history he em ployed this terminology much too freely. No wonder that this unfortunate form of the book had on many the deterrent effect described by Reuss ' in his own case. " On the ap
1 Gesch. der h. Schrijten Allen Testaments. Preface, p. ix. 2JJ
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS.
253
pearance of the book, the table of contents, with its Hegelian
formulae, of itself terrified me to such an extent that I re
mained at the time unacquainted with A speculative treatment of history trust no further than can see. Since then indeed have seen that theory and formula in this book were really only an addition which might be dispensed with, and that my inquiries might have been materially assisted
had not let myself be deterred by them. " Since one of the pleasantest duties of the historian to place misjudged merit its proper light, will here give a short account of Vatke's little known book, not of its philosophical super fluities, but of its valuable, historical, and critical essence.
Vatke starts from the indisputable fact that the sources for the earlier history of the Old Testament religion are derived from later legends, and are therefore incomplete and un certain. Accordingly he not only passes over the whole history of the patriarchs as prehistoric legend, as others had done before him, but he also subjects the traditional account of Moses to a more searching criticism than any one had pre viously ventured to do. He finds that the notion of Moses having given the people its civil law and pure belief in God irreconcilable with later history. For he holds to be impossible that whole nation should suddenly sink from a high stage of religious development to a lower one, as asserted to have been so often the case in the times of the
judges and kings and equally impossible for an individual to rise all at once from lower to a higher stage, and raise a whole nation with him with the same rapidity. We must not separate individuals from the general life around them, and must therefore often supply connecting links omitted in the legend, or reduce our conception" of the individuals question to the standard of their age. This particularly the case with Moses, since on the assumption of the truth even of only the greater part of this tradition as to his work, both his own person and the whole course of Hebrew history become inexplicable he would have come when the time was not fulfilled, and would thus be far more miraculous than Christ himself. The profound idea of the New Testament, that the law was introduced between the promises and their fulfil ment, may after aH be justified, since the Pentateuch its completed form truth later than the promises of most of the prophets. " From indications in later history, and
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it
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;
is ; in
is
in
a a
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is
if
is
in
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? >>54 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
from isolated statements of the prophets (Amos v. 25 sq. \ Vatke infers that the Hebrews in the time of Moses shared the universal worship of the stars. With regard to the work of Moses, a critical examination of the tradition, in conjunction with the condition of the country under the judges, makes it certain in the first place that Moses did not found a state, since the main condition of this was wanting, viz. the estab lishment of a legislative and executive authority, which did not exist in Israel until the times of the kings. With the conception of actual sovereignty the Mosaic state lacked also all higher unity and all that belongs to the sphere of public justice. The legislation of the Pentateuch did not found a
constitution, and was not intended to do so ; its object was the partial development of certain relations of the community, and it must therefore have originated within a state already constituted, and may be compared to canon law.
With regard to the sacrificial and sacerdotal ordinances of the Pentateuch, the history of the times of the judges and earlier kings proves that the simple patriarchal method of worship was then in force, --a plurality of sacred places, the priesthood not confined to a single tribe, the forms of worship still very simple. Only in the later kingdom of Judah did the system of the Pentateuch become possible ; it was then by degrees actually realised, and became the fixed ritual after the Babylonian exile. Composite ceremonies, such as those of the " Mosaic " ritual, are in general only comprehensible as the products of a lengthy development, and become, in their stereotyped permanence, the dead shells of a previous or a parallel spiritual growth ; the rigid mechanism of form is never the original and direct product. That the laws con cerning ritual in the Pentateuch are not derived from Moses, and do not belong to the early pre-prophetic period at all, is confirmed by the protests of the prophets against the ceremonial worship, which they regard as not a revelation from God, but an invention of godless and deceitful men ; which would have been quite impossible if the Pentateuch had existed. But if Moses was thus neither a political nor ecclesiastical legislator, nor a sage speculating on the nature
of God, he was still a true prophet, who came forward in consequence of direct inspiration as an ambassador from God, and hallowed the judicial and moral life of the nation by bringing it into relation with the divine will ; he concluded
political
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS.
255
a "covenant" between the people and Jehovah, and thus maintained the dependence of the historical and natural ex istence of the nation upon the sphere of justice and morality ; this indicates that he beheld in Jehovah a holy power, and that he deduced the other attributes of the divine nature from this central idea. We must not however attribute to Moses all the consequences involved in this principle ; for like the con ception of the ideal unity of God, the attributes of his nature were realised in their fulness only in the course of time. The divine holiness was regarded partly as an exclusive principle on the side of natural existence and the service of nature, partly as the standard of a legal and moral life ; in order therefore to separate the elements of the sensible and the higher order of things, and to arouse the moral sentiment from the dream of nature-life, this Power had to appear to men as severity, as a consuming fire and a jealous power ; its instruments had to be full of a like holy zeal, while the abstract nature of their message only increased the necessity for stern ness. For the question at issue was still the recognition of the Lord, of a holy Will, of law and morality in general ; the first abstract stages of a great process of purification were still being passed through, which afterwards the earlier prophets, especially Elijah, similarly fought their way through. The
? principle of mercy and grace could scarcely be represented even in an infinitesimal degree in such a development. Although Moses received the idea of the holy national God, whose will was to guide the whole political and moral life of his people as an original intuition, i. e. as a revelation, we still must not disconnect his appearance and work from its historical conditions. For since natural
religion produces some legal and moral institutions, we must not draw a hard and fast line between the two forms of religion ; it only needed a distinguished personality, in whom were focussed
the various rays of a better spirit, to find and announce the solution of the problem of the national mind, and thus give its development a new direction. But although part of the nation sided with the prophet of the higher spirit and carried on his work, still he was far from being able to lift the whole people up to his higher point of view. The mass of the nation still clung to the old Semitic worship of nature. Later tradition was therefore wrong in representing the people under and after Moses as repeatedly sinking to a lower stage
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BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
from a higher one already attained ; on the contrary, the development was a gradual one in an upward direction amid a constant struggle between the two parties. " Hence the later religion of the Hebrew nation had the Sabaic religion of nature, and particularly the worship of Saturn, as its
and the revelation of the divine ideality and holiness as its higher principle. "
This description of its Mosaic beginnings gives the key to Vatke's whole view of the history of the Hebrew religion. This view, as may be seen, is the outcome of an acute com parative examination of the traditions, and of general ideas on the philosophy of history. The latter indeed will not be a recommendation in the eyes of the public of to-day ; but to me this appears an instructive example of the intuition of a philosophically trained mind showing empirical research the road to its most fruitful discoveries.
A curious contrast to Vatke's book is presented by Ewald's great work on the History of Israel (1st ed. 1843-52, 3 vols. ; 3rd ed. 1864-68, 7 vols. ). In the former the decisive points are noted with the penetrative glance of genius, and the out lines of an actual historical development are brought clearly before us, with the omission of unimportant particulars ; while in the latter the reader's mind is confused amid an endless mass of details which prevent his ever arriving at a distinct idea of the history as a whole. His criticism of authorities exhibits
Ewald's critical sagacity in its strength and weakness -- keen-
sighted in little things, shortsighted in great. Ewald distin guishes as the main sources of the Pentateuch, the Book of Covenants, the Book of Origins, three Prophetical Narrators, and lastly the Deuteronomist. But though he has much to say about the character of these sources and the determin ation of their date, he pays no attention to those serious objections which Vatke had already urged against the early pre-prophetic origin of the ritualistic and priestly legislation of
Leviticus and Numbers; Ewald does not attribute this legis lation to Moses himself, but he has no difficulty whatever in
dating it (as the Book of Origins) from the time of Solomon.
empirical starting-point,
? Ewald, moreover,
has scarcely the faintest idea of the
development of the religious consciousness, of which Vatke
with so much insight gives a probably true description. He
considers the revelation of the purely spiritual God, in whom love is superior to punitive justice, had been so completely
? ? ? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS.
257
given in Moses, that we can understand neither how such a phenomenon was possible at the time, nor what fresh and higher truth the subsequent prophetical, or even Christian, revelation could add. This is connected with one of Ewald's characteristic peculiarities. He lacked the primary qualifica tion of an historian, the ability to sink his own personality
and mode of thought and identify himself with other and alien
modes of thought and feeling. When any historical figure impresses him (and all impress him which tradition in any respect represents as heroes), he is immediately carried away by his feelings, and ascribes to his heroes, forgetting the re quirements of sober criticism, all the noble moral thoughts and feelings which he, the historian, entertains at the mo ment. We might call his history a didactic romance. His method of treating the Hebrew legends of miracles is more
suitable to the edifying romance than to an historical inquiry. He does not actually believe the miracles, but does not openly
deny them and explain the origin of the legends ; he mani pulates the individual traits of these Biblical narratives in so artificial a manner, and casts over the whole such a cloud of edifying phrases, that each reader may make what he likes out of them, --one a real miracle, another a natural and insignificant event, a third a moral allegory. But this was just what the public wanted in the middle of the century ; the bright light of Tubingen criticism had given pain to weak eyes only just waking from the dreams of centuries ; so it was comforting to have the Biblical history of the Old and New Testaments interpreted by so great a scholar and set in a dim, soft twilight, such as could not hurt the weakest eyes, while at the same time it flattered the cultivated mind with a considerable
degree of Aufkldrung. Thus this excellent philologian, but bad historian and worse theologian, was able to retard by his authority the healthy advance of Biblical criticism for a whole generation. The light of the two stars, Hengstenberg and Ewald, quite eclipsed that of Vatke ; but at last Vatke's bril liant theory has been brought to the front by the labours of more recent inquirers, and made the centre of the Old Testa ment researches of the present day. Not for men only, but
also for books, die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht !
the decades of Ewald's supremacy, when Vatke
? During g. t.
appeared to be forgotten, Reuss in his lecture room at Strass-
burg had given his auditors an account of the Old Testament
s
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BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
literature and religion different from the prevalent one and very similar to that of Vatke. Two of his hearers, while the master himself cautiously deferred the publication of his views, made the theory, by their independent researches, the subject of a controversy which since then has never ceased. H. Graf, in his book, Die geschichtlichen Bilcher des A. Testaments (1866), by an investigation of the history of the Israelite ritual, as given in the more ancient sources (not in Chronicles, which is much later and is coloured by a marked Tendenz), arrived at the result that the priestly legislation in the middle books of the Pentateuch was later than Deuteronomy, and only after the Babylonian exile incorporated as a great interpola tion with the earlier work of the Deuteronomist. He still, how ever, kept to the then usual view, that the Elohistic narratives, in spite of their close connection with the priestly legislation, were part of the " Grundschrift" and regarded them ac
cordingly as the oldest part of the Pentateuch. He had thus divided this Grundschrift into two parts, which, although
perfectly similar in language and thought, were supposed to differ in date by more than 500 years, the one being the oldest and the other the most recent portion of the whole
Pentateuch. It was of course not a difficult task for criticism
to prove the impossibility of such an hypothesis. But while the representatives of the older point of view believed them selves to have thus refuted the whole theory, and to have vindicated the antiquity of the whole Grundschrift, including the priestly code, keener critics considered Grafs error to
consist in want of thoroughness in working out his own theory, and not extending it also to the narrative portions of the Grundschrift. Graf himself recognised this error, and in an essay published shortly before his death on "die soge- nannte Grundschrift des Pentateuchs" drew the necessary in ferences. Still, in spite of the great impression produced by his arguments, German theologians continued to reject the " Grafsche Hypothese" through inability to get rid of the prejudice, supported by the authority of Ewald, that his
theory was contradicted by the ascertained history of the literature of the Old Testament. In these circumstances it was again a former pupil and later colleague of Reuss, Professor Kayser, of Strassburg, who by his book, Das vorexilische Buch der Urgeschichte Israels und seine Erweiterungen ( 1 874),
gave the death blow to this prejudice by proving, by an in
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 259i
vestigation of the literary interdependence of the books, that the Jahvistic book of history, with its naive epic style, is the oldest, that then follows the Deuteronomist, and that lastly the Elohistic legislation was added, with its appropriate framework of narrative ; the order of sequence inferred from the history of the ritual being thus confirmed by the literary evidence. Two years after Kayser's book, appeared Well- hausen's essays on the composition of the Hexateueh (Joshua being taken with the Pentateuch), and then his Geschichte
Israels (1878), in which the arguments for the new hypothe sis, derived from the parallel development of law, ritual, and literature, were exhibited with such cogency that the impres sion produced on German theologians (especially of the
? was almost irresistible ; thenceforward " Graf's hypothesis," the resuscitation of the long-ignored theory of Vatke, was universally regarded as a question de
serving most serious consideration, and by many as an ascer tained fact. It was a special merit in Wellhausen's book to have excited interest in these questions outside the narrow circle of specialists by its skilful handling of the materials and its almost perfect combination of wide historical considerations with the careful investigation of details, and to have thus re moved Old Testament criticism from the rank of a subordinate question to the centre of theological discussion. Personally I welcomed this book of Wellhausen's more than almost any other, for the pressing problem of the history of the religion of the Old Testament appeared to me to have been at last solved
in a manner consonant with the principle of human evolution,
which I am compelled to apply to the history of all religion. It is true, I was better prepared than the majority of German theologians to appreciate Wellhausen's book by my acquaint ance with Kuenen's work, Godsdienst van Israel.
The Dutch scholar, Abraham Kuenen had even before Graf come to doubt the early date of the priestly Grundschrift, from observing that the impossibilities which Colenso had proved in his criticism of Old Testament history occurred with the greatest frequency in it. When Graf's book ap peared, Kuenen saw at once that its separation of the Grund
into law and history was untenable ; but in consider Iing the further question, whether the historical portions should
follow after the laws, or vice versa, he decided unhesitatingly for the former alternative, perceiving that Graf's arguments
younger generation)
schrift
? ? ? 260 BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. [Bk. III.
for the post-deuteronomic origin of the priestly laws were valid, while his supposition of the early date of the correspond ing historical narrative was neither proved nor to be proved.
Hence he arrived at the conviction that " not only is the priestly legislation chronologically later than the preaching of
the prophets, but the priestly historiography is later than the prophetic (Jahvistic). " From this point of view he composed his great work, masterly alike in form and matter, Godsdienst van Israel (1869-70), which in Holland met with deserved
appreciation, but in Germany, on account of its foreign lan guage, was less known beyond the narrowest circle of special ists than it deserved ; it is all the more a matter for congratu lation that an English translation has facilitated its circulation beyond the narrow limits of the Dutch tongue. The ability and originality of this history strike one at the outset. It had always hitherto been supposed that the history of a na tion or a religion must follow the chronological sequence of events, and therefore begin with the earliest time ; it was not remembered that the earliest history, since there exist no
? authorities for the most uncertain and least adapted to form the secure starting-point of historical inquiry, constituting as does at first only an obscure prob lem, the solution of which, so far as any solution possible, can only be approached from other ascertained facts. If our
historically clearly known (with the 8th century in Hebrew history, the time of the first prophets that left written records). The prophetic authorities for the history of this period directly supply only the conception of Israel's prehistoric life which was entertained in prophetic circles, they contain the national heroic legends as interpreted by the prophetic consciousness of the 8th century. Only by taking account of the alter ations in the form of the legend made by this later time, either by addition or subtraction, can the historical kernel be ap
proximately extracted from the legendary husk, its probability being greater in proportion to the extent to which serves
contemporary
of the earliest times to be more than an arbi
conception
trary hypothesis, to produce the impression of a well- considered conviction, we must first lay its grounds before the reader but since from the nature of the case these can only consist of inferences from later well-attested facts, we must begin with an account of the latter. Hence follows that the proper method to start from some period that
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it
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it, is
? Ch. II. ] OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 26 1
to explain the later development. This method combines the most careful analysis and criticism of the sources with a secure synthesis of the results, thus analytically obtained, in the positive construction of the historical process of evolution. This splendid method of historical research was, so far as I am aware, first applied to the religion of Israel by Kuenen ; it however, exactly parallel to Baur's method of investigat ing the history of primitive Christianity. Baur started with the Apostle Paul, and used the indications as to the conditions of the apostolic age, as supplied by Paul, to explain the historical books produced in those conditions, and then only argued back to the state of Christianity before Paul and in exactly the same way Kuenen starts with the first literary prophets, seeks from the conditions of their time to explain and estimate the his torical books belonging to and thence draws inferences with regard to the previous period, which must be conceived such way as to account for the state of things in the pro phetic age as the natural development from This exact similarity of method in different departments the more
as there no doubt that Kuenen was uninflu enced by Baur's precedent, but worked out his method quite independently, led by his own sound historical instinct. Of the rareness of this fine historical instinct, and of the difficulty most people find in even following an inquiry into intricate questions in this way, we have evidence every day have myself been censured on all hands for beginning my account of Primitive Christianity with Paul and not with Jesus, who, everybody knows, preceded him But Abraham and Moses preceded Amos and Isaiah, and yet Kuenen had good reason to begin with the latter instead of the former. Real historical insight seems as rare as philosophical, and perhaps they are one and the same --an eye for the reality behind phenomena.
was not until after Kuenen and Wellhausen that the early teacher of Biblical criticism and originator of this new movement, Eduard Reuss, gave publicity to the results of half a century's labours in two extensive works, the one in
French (being the third part of his great undertaking, La Bible), Lhistoire sainte et la loi, and the other German, his Geschichte der heiligen Schriften Alten Testaments 88
In the preface to the latter he states that the idea and plan of the work were determined on at the time of his first course of lectures on the subject 1834, but only the shape of an
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