BIBLICAL STUDY.*
THE third volume of the Encyclopaedia Biblica shows us Pro- fessor W. C. van Manen, a Dutch critic of a very advanced school, going on with the work with which Professor Schmiedel, of Zurich, was so busy in the seoond. If their conclusions are to be accepted, the whole structure of popular belief about the New Testament must disappear. Professor Schmiedel, it will be remembered, reduced the authentic say- ings of Christ to the very narrowest compass. He left, if we were to follow his teaching, practically nothing of the Gospels; now Professor van Manen abolishes the Epistles. Surely it is a strange position in which the editor and his two contributors find themselves. He professes the "Interpretation of Holy Scripture," they "New Testament Exegesis." But they have left, if their conclusions are to be accepted, no Holy Scripture to interpret. We use no hard words such as forgery and im- posture, but if the Gospels do not contain the words and acts of Christ, and the Epistles were not written by the early teachers of the Church, these books are not worth the labour which is spent upon them. What is the profit of endless prelections on writings which have no claim to authority or reverence ?
Let us examine Professor van Manen's article "Paul" a little in detail. First, what is known as the Tubingen view of
• (1.) Encyclopaedia Biblica. Edited by the Bev. T. K. Cheyne, D.D.. and J. Sutherland Black, N.A. Vol. III., "L—P." London: A. and C. Black. [208.]—(2.) A Dactionary of the Bible. Edited by James ilastinp, D.D. Vol. IV., " Plesonia—Zuziin." London : T. and T. Clark. [222.1 the Pauline Epistles, contributed by the late Dr. Edwin Hatch to the Ensyclopaedia Britannica (ninth edition), is given. This, put briefly, accepted the general narrative of the Acts and received as authentic four of the Epistles,—i.e., Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians (First and Second). Then we have Professor van Manen's own view set forth with a confidence, it would not be too much to say a self-assertion, which is not easily to be matched even in the history of Biblical criticism. He gives a picture of what he is pleased to call the "historical Paul." He was "probably a Jew by birth," and took "one great journey" (from Prose to Rome). That is about all that is to be said. "It does not appear that he had emancipated himself from Judaism." Why ? the reader may ask. Because the writer of the Acts " gives his dates by the Jewish Calendar." So, by parity of reasoning, every one who talks of Christmas and Easter is an orthodox believer. The "legendary Paul," to whom we are next introduced, is the Paul of Christendom. The Epistles do not express, we are told, the theology of the historical Paul; they express the belief of a school of progressive believers who named themselves after Paul, and placed themselves, as it were, under his aegis. The other canonical Epistles are to be regarded, we are given to understand, as post-Pauline. James, for example, is "an instance of a seriously meant imitation of a Pauline Epistle." Surely it is enough, if we would dispose of these preposterous suggestions, to read again Galatians and Corinthians. The vehement personal feeling of the one, the wealth of detail in the others, things which it is inconceivable that any one not writing to a real community could have invented, carry conviction with them to any one not possessed by this destructive frenzy. One thing, indeed, is quite certain, that, whether Professor van Manen is right or wrong in classing all the Epistles as pseudepigrapha, his assump- tion that of course this "does not imply any depreciation of their contents" is absurd. The real crux of the whole matter is here. The literary value of the documents may remain unaffected ; their authoritative value is gone, and with this all that makes them of utility for faith or conduct. To Paul with his high commission we listen; what are we to say of a "circle of Paulinists," writing no one 'mows when or where ?
It is worth observing that other contributors to the Encyclo- paedia do not hold by this theory that substitutes Paulinism for Paul. Professor Schmiedel, for instance, who is almost as destructive in dealing with the Gospels as is his colleague with the Epistles, in his article " Luke " argues from passages in Colossians, Philemon, and 2 Timothy, mentioning without re- pudiation that even where 2 Timothy is not held to be genuine, it is often supposed that iv. 9-18 along with iv. 19-22 are a genuine note (or two notes) written in captivity. The same contributor's article on the " Ministry " loses much if all the arguments drawn from the Epistles have their foundation thus removed.
It would be useless as well as painful to give more examples of this kind of criticism. Happily there are many subjects of a neutral kind, historical, archaeological, or connected with natural history, when the Encyclopaedia Biblica gives us all that we could desire. Professor C. C. Torrey, writing on the "Maccabees," gives an excellent summary of the history, and in his article on the books which bear that name shows a sound and sober criticism. Even 1 Maccabees has not been spared by the destructives, though there is really as little reason for doubting its authenticity and homogeneous character as there would be were the object of attack the almost contemporary history of Polybius. It has been sought to bring it down to the early part of the first century B.C., to divide the book between two authors, to trace interpolations in various places, in fact to deal out to it the treatment which any writing within the Bible covers seems necessarily to pro- voke. Professor Torrey, on the contrary, sees in it an uncor- rupted record, put together by one who had probably borne a part in the events which he records, and who was certainly a contemporary. In fact, he ranges it in the very first class of histories, with Thucydides and Caesar. The other Maccabaean books, as Professor Torrey finds no difficulty in acknowledg- ing, stand on a very different level We may also mention
the articles on "Music' (Professor Prince) with its frequent illustrations, " Meals " (A. R. S. Kennedy), " Medicine "
(Dr. C. Creighton), "Palestine" (the late Professor Socin, Professor W. M. Muller, H. H. W. Pearson, and A. E. Shipley), " Penny " (G. F. Hill), "Ptolemais" and " Moab " (Professor G. A. Smith).
Dr. Hastings's new Dictionary of the Bible is brought by the fourth volume to the conclusion originally proposed. It is intended, however, to publish a supplementary volume with indexes and "subsidiary articles of importance." In one im- portant respect the Dictionary differs, it will be remembered, from the Encyclopaedia. It deals with "Biblical Theology," which is excluded, at least as far as direct treatment is con. cerned, from the other work. "Predestination," accordingly, "is discussed at considerable length by Professor Warfield (Princeton, U.S.) It is a remarkable article, stating with what seems uncompromising severity the leading formulae of Calvinism, the "absolute sovereignty of the elective choice," "the particularity of the Divine election," "a corresponding doctrine of praeterition,"—the elect are chosen out of a mass in which they would otherwise be found. But, after all this, we come to the following:—
" As the broader lines of God's gracious dealings with the world lying in its iniquity are more and more fully drawn out for us, we are enabled ultimately to perceive that the Father of Spirits has not distributed His elective grace with niggard hand, but from the beginning has had in view the restoration to Himself of the whole world, and through whatever slow approaches (as men count slowness) He has made thereto has ever been conducting the world in His loving wisdom and His wise love to its destined goal of salvation—now and again, indeed, shutting up this or that element of it unto disobedience, but never merely in order that it might fall, but that in the end He might have mercy upon all."
The universalist will not object to being repudiated, when he
is allowed to reach so large and happy a conclusion. "Pro. phets and Prophecy," by the late A. B. Davidson (to whom
Dr. Hastings pays an affectionate tribute), is an admirable article. The second section, "Messianic Prophecy," where a distinction is made between the wider and the narrower sense, and the discussion on prophecy in its predictive aspect are especially worthy of study. After all, we have not really got much beyond what St. Jerome meant when he said that "some predictions were made not that they might, but that they might not be fulfilled?' The prophet does not depart from his function as a moral teacher. If he has to threaten, it is because he knows that fear sometimes moves where love fails. But this is a very different thing from the prediction of remote events which are to take place wholly without respect for all the operations of divine grace and human answerings thereto in the meanwhile. It is interesting to note the conclusion at which the writer of the article "Psalms" (Professor W. T. Davison) has arrived. "It cannot certainly be
proved that David wrote any Psalm ; the probability is that he wrote many; it is not likely that all these were lost;
external evidence assigns the 18th Psalm to David, and if it be his, it is probable that others also should be attributed to him." Professor Cheyne, it will be remembered, will not allow that any Psalm is pre-Exilic ; but then he founds his critical dicta on evidence which may hold good in Hebrew, but would go nowhere in Latin and Greek. We may mention the article on the "Temple," by Professor T. W. Davies, with its numerous illustrations; "Text of the New Testament," by Professor Eb. Nestle, with its guarded adhesion to Westcott and Hort; "Vulgate," by Mr. N. I. D. White; and "Writing," by Dr. F. G. Kenyon, with illustrations. The Dictionary of the Bible can hardly be said to be free from faults, but it can be used with confidence and, for the most part, with good results.
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