THE CRITICS OF THE REV. MR J. CHISHOLM.

Southland Times, Issue 20209, 21 June 1927, Page 10

THE CRITICS OF THE REV. MR J. CHISHOLM.

To the Editor. Sir,—Mr Chisholm’s sermon as reported in the Times of June 13 evoked considerable correspondence in antagonism to that sermon. Those correspondents are evidently unaware or ’unacquainted with what is known as “Higher Criticism.” For their information I will quote some statements made by Archibald Duff, D.D., LL.D. At the outset he says it is a benumbing and

an entirely mistaken fancy to regard the Scriptures as sacred in the sense of being unalterable. Criticism of the Scriptures had its beginning in the discussions of the early Christian Fathers —Drigen, Jerome, Jreneaus—as to the number and the order of the Gospels, and the admission of certain books into the “canon” of Scriptures. In the Middle Ages the name of Rabbi Ben Ezra towers above all others. Indeed, he may be called the father of Pentateuchal criticism, for his commentary

on the first five Books of the Old Testament, published at Toledo, Spain, towards the middle of the Twelfth Century. The work was taken up later by two other Jews, Baruch Spinoza, of Amsterdam. His epoch-making work, which he called his

“Theological and Political Tract,” was published in 1670. Bitter attacks have been made on Spinoza all along the two centuries since he died. It shook the orthodoxies of Catholic, of Jew, and of Protestant. “But surely now the day has arrived when Spinoza too shall come to his own and shall be honoured as he always deserved to be,” writes Dr Duff. In twenty chapters Spinoza defines the order of examination of the Scriptures, which unfortunately there is no room in this letter to describe; but in chapter XV. he says, “Theology is not the servant of reason, nor is reason the servant of Theology.” In 1753 Dr Jean Astruc of Paris published a valuable work on the analysis of Genesis. He recognised thirteen different documents from which Moses had drawn his material or paragraphs. Astruc saw and pointed out that in Genesis there are two different names used for the Deity. “Elohim” and “Jahweh.” The latter is the older expression. We find the writers of 900 B.C. used their judgment in culling from earlier sources whatever suited them for newer purposes, and so exercised criticism. Again two hundred years later, about 700 8.C., another set of narrators, known to us as “Elohists,” deliberately set aside the older narrative and substituted in its place matter different, both in its account of events and new ideas of duty and the conception and nature of the national Deity. Hebrews in those far away days examined, judged, criticised, rejected, and altered this or that in the writings that lay before them as inheritances from the past. They laid aside what they did not approve of, they replaced the rejected material by what seemed to them the better; they wrote entirely new works of opinions, entirely different from those of their predecessors on all sorts of topics. “This altering and criticising of the Old Testament went on all along,” writes Dr Duff, “right to now.” It was, however, in the time of the Prophet Amos that extraordinary changes took place. That Prophet condemned the old cruel tribal God of their forefathers and preached a new morality, the preservation of life, chastity, individual possessions, and justice between man and man, and from man towards woman, and reverence towards all honourable persons and things. This Prophet preached an entirely new God when he introduced a new morality. He practically said to his people, “You worshipped a Jahweh; I worship a Jahweh too, but my Jahweh is not the same as the old Jahweh. The true Jahweh was not known before.” And from this time a new Old Testament was preached. Again later on students of the Bible in recent years have seen how Deuteronomy had provided that all Levites should be priests; but the Prophet Ezekiel 856 years after flatly opposed this Deuteronomic principle, and demanded that only the Zadokites among the Levites should hold priestly office. This was criticism in a very real sense, since it denied all dominant authority of the Deuteronomic book and of its writers and even its royal patron King Josiah. Ezekiel denied even the authority of the whole Hebrew nation, who with the King had proclaimed Deuteronomy to be the new Royal and national charter for State and worship. “It is, however, when we reach the middle of the eighteenth century,” writes Dr Duff, “that the immense work of scientific men upon the ancient literature begins, and then it rolls on with tremendous force, startling the dreams of souls who clutched the great book and held every word true, inviolable and holy. The Bible is free from the clutch now, yet the dreamers are slow in stirring from their torpor.” This torpor applies to your correspondents, Mr Editor, who criticise Mr Chisholm’s Sermon, unless they can refute the following—Professors of Theology: Paul De Lagarde (Gottingen), Julius Willhousen (Gottingen), Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke (Berlin), Bernhard Stade (Giessen), Herman Hupfeld (Halle), De Wette (Berlin), Karl David Jlofen (Jena), Karl Budde (Marburg), Heinerich Ewald (Gottingen). All . the above belong to Germany. Abraham Kuenen (Leyden, Holland), Bernhard Duhn (Basle, Switzerland), whose work Dr Duff calls monumental, Benjamin Winner Bacon, D.D. (Yale, U.S.A.), the Rev. Canon T. K. Cheyne (Oxford). Cheyne devoted fifty to dissecting the Book of Isaiah. De Wette gave twenty-two years dissecting the Pentateuch. And not omitting Dr Duff and the Right Rev. John William Colenso, former Anglican Bishop of Natal, who wrote volumes on the Exodus alone. I think it is wrong for any Protestant clergyman not to inform his people on these findings and leave sincere earnest believers, as your correspondents undoubtedly are, in ignorance of what is taking place.—l am, N. A. NIEDERER.