MR. THOMAS HODGKIN ON OLD-TESTAMENT CRITICISM.* Tins seems to us

about the wisest brief estimate we have yet read of the present state of Old-Testament criticism.

Mr. Thomas Hodgkin is well known to all critics as one of the most careful and original of historical investigators. His sagacity is broad, and his learning great; and though he says, no doubt very justly, that on a subject of this nature he must count rather as an amateur than a specialist, yet we are not sure that his authority is at all the worse for that. If an amateur, he is an amateur with a wide knowledge of the greater specialists, and with so large an experience in weighing the kind of arguments with which they deal, that he is, we think, almost more competent to judge between them than he could have been had he himself been identified with a theory of his own, and had lost himself in the mazes of some special inquiry into the origin of the Pentateuch, or the authenticity of the Book of DanieL As it is, we get in this little essay the fruits of a first-rate historical judgment first trained in other fields of inquiry (which is always a security for a certain detachment of mind), and applied to a subject of which the author knows thoroughly, not indeed all the original sources, but the best modern criticism of those original sources which has proceeded from different schools of learning. Let us see first what con- cessions Mr. Hodgkin thinks that the saner conservative critics of the Old Testament will have to make to the newer .criticism. First he concedes "the multiform origin of part at least of the Pentateuch :"—

"One concession which I have no doubt that the defenders of the Old Testament will have to make is the multiform origin, of part at any rate, of the Pentateuch. One may think (as I venture to think) that too much is made of the difference between the

• Old-Testament Crit.ciem. An Essay contributed to the Friends' Quarterly _Examiner, by Thomas Hodgkin, D.O.L., Author of "Italy and her Invaders." London : West, Newman, and Co.

Elohistic and the Jehovistic documents. Especially when it is used as an instrument for ascertaining the date and authorship of the later books of the Hebrew Canon it seems to me extremely untrustworthy ; and I cannot but think that there may have been some reasons, with which we are not yet fully acquainted, which led one prophet to prefer the name Elohim, and another the name Jahveh ; or even the same prophet, in different moods of thought, to favour one designation of the Holy One rather than another. But the bare fact that there are two sources at least in the book of Genesis, one Elohistic and the other Jehovistic, seems to me to be one which only an advocate holding a brief for a theory would deny ; and to my mind there is nothing in this fact inconsistent with the very highest historical value of that book, nor even with its Mosaic authorship."

And next he goes on to concede that a modified view of the inspiration of the historical books,—a view which renders it certain that on some points the history is inaccurate,—may make it easier to reconcile the moral shortcomings of such

rulers as Joshua and Samuel with their recorded impression that in their severe and apparently cruel dealings with the Canaanite peoples, they were acting under the direct guidance of God.

Turning to the points on which Mr. Hodgkin thinks that the New Criticism fails to establish its case, we may mention first the argument from the different stages of the Hebrew language, which he thinks rests on a very dubious and unsafe foundation. He observes that there is no such difference between the language of Genesis and the language of Ezra or Nehemiah, as separates the Anglo-Saxon of " The Traveller's Song" from the early English of Chaucer ; and this would, we believe, be conceded by all Hebrew scholars. But then, it is said, and Professor Robertson Smith evidently believes, that the editors of the Masoretic text so dealt with the various texts of the different books of Scripture as to make " the language of the Old Testament (Aramaic as well as Hebrew) uniform, though they did not carry out their plan thoroughly, and allowed not a few vestiges of older stages of the language to remain." That would account for the language of the older books seeming to us more modern than

it originally was ; but also it leaves nothing for the modern theorists to build upon, except those slight vestiges remaining uncorrected in the Masoretic text of which Professor Robert- son Smith speaks. Whatever may have been the differences

between the Hebrew of the oldest books and the Hebrew of the latest before the Masoretic editing, that difference has now nearly disappeared, and the Hebrew specialist has hardly any better means of judging the issue on that ground, than the reader of the Revised English Version.

Next, Mr. Thomas Hodgkin passes to the argument derived, not from the language, but from the substance of the various books ; and first dealing with the two names for God, Elohim and Jehovah, he remarks that while he quite accepts the assumption that, in the Pentateuch at all events, these two different names for God do indicate two distinct sources of the text, he holds that in the later books the two names came to be used without any real distinction, and that it is quite certain that, before the time of the Maccabees at all events, God was called either Elohim or Jehovah without any inten- tion of suggesting a religious difference. And he gives us this excellent illustration of his meaning :—

" I wish that some of the scholars who use this instrument of (imagined) research so freely would consider to what results it would lead them if applied to the twofold name of our Saviour. There is often deep and beautiful meaning in the use of the name Jesus, or the title Christ, in the New Testament itself ; but in later ages, and in popular theology, how much of the sharpness of this distinction has been lost ! It is rather a matter of spiritual habit than of deliberate choice which name we use. Perhaps we might say that the more emotional schools of religionists, both among Roman Catholics and Protestants, use the tenderer, more personal, name Jesus ; and that the more argumentative and logical theologians speak by preference of Christ; but how many excep- tions there would be to any such general rule as this ! How hopeless would be the attempt to assign the date of a hymn or a sermon, still more to reconstruct a whole history of Christian literature, according to the writer's preference for the name `Jesus' or Christ,' in speaking of our Saviour."

Again, Mr. Hodgkin deals with the familiar argument that the Pentateuch mast be a great deal later than it professes to be, because it establishes institutions of which apparently no notice is taken in large portions of the early history of Israel:— "Row is it possible, we are asked, to suppose that the worship on the high places had been forbidden, when it was so constantly practised even by pious Israelites ; that three times in the year all male Israelites were commanded to assemble themselves in the place which the Lord their God should choose, and yet that for

centuries there was no trace of such assemblages ; that the priesthood was strictly confined to the house of Aaron, and yet that in the whole northern kingdom, apparently no son of Aaron ministered in the priest's office ? So with many other commands uttered in the Pentateuch which seem to awake no echo of obedience in the recorded history of Israel prior to the Captivity. The difficulty is a real one, but I cannot but think that more has been made of it than it deserves, and that the wholesale recon- struction of the literary history of the Old Testament, which is the modern expedient for removing it, is a doubtful and dangerous process."

To this Mr. Hodgkin adds that, though the institutions established in the Pentateuch, as we now have it, were really meant to bear witness against idolatry, and to train the people of Israel to strict fidelity to a spiritual God, there was a double influence at work to modify them. In the first place, the idolatry of the neighbouring nations was always under- mining the strict monotheistic worship in one direction ; and in the second place, the Hebrew prophets found the priestly caste so soon falling into a strait-laced external formalism, that even they had to protest against that formalism, and so to weaken to some extent the reverence for the letter of the law as distinguished from its spirit. Thus two perfectly opposite influences were at work, both of them tending to prevent the letter of the law from getting itself stamped upon the outward life of the people of Israel in the manner originally contemplated at the time the law was given, even though it were given as early as the old orthodox view supposes. To illustrate the difficulty of drawing with any confidence the inferences which the modern criticism contends for from the apparent historical indifference to the observance of the law in the history of the Jews, Mr. Hodgkin asks us to consider what would be argued from the ap- parent historical indifference of Christians to Christ's pacific teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, if it happened that we had no manuscript of the New Testament earlier than the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,—i.e., earlier than some sixteen hundred years or more after the events which the New Testament was written to record. This would, indeed, be a hypothesis less unfavourable to the historical character of the New Testament, than the actual facts of the case as regards the Old Testament manuscripts are to the historical character of the Old Testament, as no manuscript of the Old Testament is known to exist which was made before about the date of the Norman Conquest ; so that the critics have plenty of room for their speculations as to the gradual growth of untrustworthy traditions concerning the early history of the people of Israel,

and the embodiment of these untrustworthy traditions in un- trustworthy narratives. The following is Mr. Hodgkin's account of what he supposes the New Criticism would say as to our New Testament, if no manuscript earlier than the six- teenth or seventeenth centuries were recoverable of it :—

"It must be clear to every candid inquirer that the Scriptures of the Christian Church are documents which have taken an immense period of time for their development, and that the New Testament which we now possess is in no sense identical with the New Testament of the Middle Ages, and therefore probably yet more unlike the New Testament of the Apostolic Age, as to which in truth we know little or nothing. Some acute scholars, in- deed, contend that in the Middle Ages only one text of our present Scriptures existed,—' Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my Church.' That, however, is going much too far, since it is clear that the baptismal formula, and the history of the Last Supper were known throughout the Middle Ages, and scarcely less certain that the general outlines of the story of the Nativity and Crucifixion were possessed by the Mediaeval Church (especially the Salutation of the Angel to the Virgin Mary, 'Ave Maria grafi& plena,' &c., was evidently very early known and very widely spread). The same must also be conceded with reference to the Pater Noster,' which may belong to almost the earliest ages of Christian antiquity. But the Sermon on the Mount,' in which the Pater Noster' is now embedded, is evidently an exceedingly late addition. How is it possible to suppose that all the bloody wars of the Middle Ages, especially the wars waged by the great Prelate-Barons on one another and on their Sovereign, could have co-existed with such a document as the Sermon on the Mount,' ostensibly the fundamental law issued by the Founder of Christianity ? If it were worth while to descend to such minutiae we might remark that in the so called First Epistle of Paul to Timothy (iv., 1-3)

the following passage occurs Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving

heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons for- bidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats.' We are gravely asked to believe that this formed one of the Canonical Scriptures of a Church which insisted on the celibacy of its clergy, and praised abstinence from flesh as one of the chief virtues of the monastic state. The critic who can honestly say that he believes this has still to learn the first rudiments of his science. In the stories of the Reformation which have come down to us, great stress is laid on the change wrought in Luther's mind by a sudden remembrance of the words (said to be quoted from the third chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians), The just shall live by faith.' Well may the change wrought by these words, and by the long passages of a similar tenour in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, be strongly insisted on. Read through the De Imitation Christi,' the favourite book of devotion of the Middle Ages, and you will find no trace of the doctrine thus enunciated, from beginning to end of the book. And how is it possible to conceive that the whole medisival system of penances, indulgences, works of supererogation, and so forth, could have grown up if these passages ascribing salvation to a simple act of faith had, during all these ages, formed part of the Christian Canon ? We therefore conclude, without any hesitation, that it was not a remembrance of old truths, but rather a sudden in- tuition of new truth, which took place when Luther uttered the words, 'The just shall live by faith.' The event itself and the consequent Reformation furnish a remarkable parallel to the so- called discovery, which we have decided to be the composition, of the book of Deuteronomy in the reign of Josiah, and the results which flowed from it in the reformation of the Jewish Church and Commonwealth. It is a remarkable confirmation of the views here expressed as to the late date of the composition of a large part of the New Testament that the process of its development ceases somewhere about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Just about that time, as we are informed, the art of printing was in- vented. Copies of the recently completed Scripture Canon were greatly multiplied, to the inestimable benefit of the world at large, but unfortunately with the effect of crystallising the Christian revelation, and arresting that progressive development to which we owe our present New Testament, and which had gone on —not, indeed, without long breaks and intermissions—through the course of fifteen centuries."

Yet we know that such an argument, however plausible it might have been, would have been utterly without foundation, for we know that Christ's teaching as to war and peace is con- tained in manuscripts of the New Testament of a very early date, and that, in spite of that teaching, Christian nations did initiate and carry out the Crusades, and many wars less excusable than the Crusades, with an apparently com- plete unconsciousness of any inconsistency between the law of Christ and the policy of Christians. Our readers will see from this account of Mr. Hodgkin's essay, how clear, candid, and powerful it is, and how much there is to warn us that we should not surrender at discretion to "the newer criticism" without receiving very much better evidence of its solidity than has yet been produced. The essay is so good, so sober, and yet so keen and graphic, that we heartily wish it may be widely read and pondered.