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Chapter 20 - From the Divine Oracles to the Higher Criticism
Reconstructive Force of Scientific Criticism
For all this dissolving away of
traditional opinions regarding our sacred literature, there has been a cause
far more general and powerful than any which has been given, for it is a cause
surrounding and permeating all. This is simply the atmosphere of thought
engendered by the development of all sciences during the last three centuries.
Vast masses of myth, legend, marvel, and dogmatic assertion, coming into this
atmosphere, have been dissolved and are now dissolving quietly away like
icebergs drifted into the Gulf Stream. In earlier days, when some critic in
advance of his time insisted that Moses could not have written an account
embracing the circumstances of his own death, it was sufficient to answer that
Moses was a prophet; if attention was called to the fact that the great early
prophets, by all which they did and did not do, showed that there could not
have existed in their time any "Levitical code," a sufficient answer
was "mystery"; and if the discrepancy was noted between the two
accounts of creation in Genesis, or between the genealogies or the dates of the
crucifixion in the Gospels, the cogent reply was "infidelity." But
the thinking world has at last been borne by the general development of a
scientific atmosphere beyond that kind of refutation.
If, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed sciences, the older
growths of biblical interpretation have drooped and withered and are evidently
perishing, new and better growths have arisen with roots running down into the
newer sciences. Comparative Anthropology in general, by showing that various
early stages of belief and observance, once supposed to be derived from direct
revelation from heaven to the Hebrews, are still found as arrested developments
among various savage and barbarous tribes; Comparative Mythology and Folklore,
by showing that ideas and beliefs regarding the Supreme Power in the universe
are progressive, and not less in Judea than in other parts of the world;
Comparative Religion and Literature, by searching out and laying side by side
those main facts in the upward struggle of humanity which show that the
Israelites, like other gifted peoples, rose gradually, through ghost worship,
fetichism, and polytheism, to higher theological levels; and that, as they thus
rose, their conceptions and statements regarding the God they worshipped became
nobler and better - all these sciences are giving a new solution to those
problems which dogmatic theology has so long laboured in vain to solve. While
researches in these sciences have established the fact that accounts formerly
supposed to be special revelations to Jews and Christians are but repetitions
of widespread legends dating from far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs
formerly thought fundamental to Judaism and Christianity are simply based on
ancient myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intellect and
conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious and moral truths
thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend are all the more
venerable and authoritative, and that all individual or national life of any
value must be vitalized by them.
If, then, modern science in general has acted powerfully to dissolve away the
theories and dogmas of the older theologic interpretation, it has also been
active in a reconstruction and recrystallization of truth; and very powerful in
this reconstruction have been the evolution doctrines which have grown out of
the thought and work of men like Darwin and Spencer.
In the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed: out of the old
chaos has come order; out of the old welter of hopelessly conflicting
statements in religion and morals has come, in obedience to this new conception
of development, the idea of a sacred literature which mirrors the most striking
evolution of morals and religion in the history of our race. Of all the sacred
writings of the world, it shows us our own as the most beautiful and the most
precious; exhibiting to us the most complete religious development to which
humanity has attained, and holding before us the loftiest ideals which our race
has known. Thus it is that, with the keys furnished by this new race of
biblical scholars, the way has been opened to treasures of thought which have
been inaccessible to theologians for two thousand years.
As to the Divine Power in the universe: these interpreter's have shown how,
beginning with the tribal god of the Hebrews - one among many jealous, fitful,
unseen, local sovereigns of Asia Minor - the higher races have been borne on to
the idea of the just Ruler of the whole earth, as revealed by the later and
greater prophets of Israel, and finally to the belief in the Universal Father,
as best revealed in the New Testament. As to man: beginning with men after
Jehovah's own heart - cruel, treacherous, revengeful - we are borne on to an
ideal of men who do right for right's sake; who search and speak the truth for
truth's sake; who love others as themselves. As to the world at large: the
races dominant in religion and morals have been lifted from the idea of a
"chosen people" stimulated and abetted by their tribal god in every
sort of cruelty and injustice, to the conception of a vast community in which
the fatherhood of God overarches all, and the brotherhood of man permeates all.
Thus, at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a collection of
oracles - a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in wrangling
interpretations, which have given to the world long and weary ages of
"hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"; of fetichism, subtlety,
and pomp; of tyranny bloodshed, and solemnly constituted imposture; of
everything which the Lord Jesus Christ most abhorred - has been gradually
developed through the centuries, by the labours, sacrifices, and even the
martyrdom of a long succession of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred
literature - a growth only possible under that divine light which the various
orbs of science have done so much to bring into the mind and heart and soul of
man - a revelation, not of the Fall of Man, but of the Ascent of Man - an
exposition, not of temporary dogmas and observances, but of the Eternal Law of
Righteousness - the one upward path for individuals and for nations. No longer
an oracle, good for the "lower orders" to accept, but to be quietly
sneered at by "the enlightened" - no longer a fetich, whose defenders
must be persecuters, or reconcilers, or "apologists"; but a most
fruitful fact, which religion and science may accept as a source of strength to
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