The Evolution of Old Testament Religion

The Evolution of Old Testament Religion

It is a matter of common knowledge that within the last few decades a tremendous change has come over our estimate of the value of the Old Testament, and that this change is of the gravest importance for our understanding of religion. But what the exact nature of the change is, and what we are to deduce from it, is a matter of debate, for the facts are only known to professional students and to a few others who may have been led to interest themselves in the subject. With some, for instance, the idea prevails that the Old Testament has been so discredited by modern research that its religious significance is now practically worthless. Others believe that the results arrived at are untrue, and regard them as the outcome of wicked attacks made upon the veracity of the Word of God by men whose scholarship is a cloak for their sinister designs or a mask of their incapacity to comprehend its spiritual message. There is perhaps a middle course open to some who have found a message of God to their souls in the Old Testament, and who, on hearing that the authorship of this book has been questioned or the historicity of that passage assailed, are unmoved, because they believe that itviii does not matter who wrote the Pentateuch or the Psalms so long as through these documents they hear the voice of the living Word of God. Here then is a subject on which there exists a distressing confusion, and, moreover, a subject in which ignorance plays no small part. Save with a few devout souls who have made a long and continuous study of the Scriptures, it may be doubted whether there is any widespread knowledge of the actual message of the Old Testament, even among Christian people. There are certainly many people willing to defend the authority of the Bible who spend very little time in reading it. The favourite Psalms and the evangelical passages of Isaiah are probably well known, and beyond this there is but the knowledge gained in early days, from which stand out in the memory the personalities of Samson and Saul, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the lion's den, together with the impressive stories of the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the fall of Jericho. A very little is probably carried away from the public reading of the Scriptures in places of worship. It cannot be said that this acquaintance conveys any real impression of the magnificent message that lies embedded in these thirty-nine books which go to make up the Old Testament. Now whatever harm may be charged to the modern methods, it can at least be claimed thatix neglected portions have been carefully studied, the meaning of obscure passages discovered, and much of importance and interest brought to light; but more than this, it has been discovered that the essential message of the Old Testament lies largely apart from those narratives and personalities that impress the superficial reader, and rather in the record of a gradual development of the conception of God and of His purpose in calling Israel to be the recipient of His self-disclosure. It has been found that the striking figures of the landscape are of less importance than the road that winds among them along which revelation moves to its final goal. It may be objected that the new inspiration, which so many who have studied the Scriptures by these methods claim to have felt, throws quite a new emphasis on our conception of the Old Testament and is revolutionary of all that we have been accustomed to believe concerning it; that the methods are such as could not legitimately be applied to the Word of God, and are the products of a criticism which is puffed up with a sense of its own superiority; and that the results are discreditable to the Old Testament, since they allege that some of the narratives are unhistorical, some passages and even whole books unauthentic, and traditions on which the gravest issues have been staked shown to have nothing more than a legendary basis. There is much in thesex objections that is natural, but much that is misunderstanding. It is true that the contribution which the Old Testament makes to religion is estimated differently from what it was fifty years ago, and it must be allowed that this brings a charge of having misunderstood the Scriptures against generations of scholars and saints. But it is admitted that all matters of knowledge are open to misunderstanding. It is no argument against the conception that the earth moves round the sun, that the contrary idea was held in other ages. We know that the understanding of the Old Testament has been obscured, often by those who ought to have been the greatest authorities on its meaning. Jesus read into the Scriptures a meaning unrecognised by the authorities of His day, and dealt with them in a fashion that was regarded as revolutionary. To some of the Scriptures He appealed as to a final authority, but others He regarded as imperfect and only suited to the time in which they were written. The Jews of His day venerated every letter of the sacred writings, and regarded the very copies of the Law as sacred to the touch, and yet on their understanding of the Scriptures they rejected the mission and message of Jesus. Christian scholarship has undoubtedly followed rather after the Rabbis than after Christ. The message of the Old Testament that the new methods have made clear certainly appears to be more in conformity with thexi Spirit of Christ than with that of His opponents, and if this is revolutionary then it is no new thing; religion always moves along such lines. Great offence has been caused and insuperable prejudice aroused among many by the name under which these methods have become known. The name, "higher criticism," conveys to most people a suggestion of carping fault-finding and an assumption of superiority. This is due to an entire misunderstanding of a technical term. Criticism is nothing more than the exercise of the faculty of judgment, and, moreover, judgment that ought to be perfectly fair. The sinister suggestion that is conveyed in the word is due to the fact that our criticisms are so often biassed by personal prejudices. But this only condemns our faults, and not the method. "Higher" criticism does not mean any assumption of superiority, but is simply a term used to distinguish it from "lower" criticism. The criticism that endeavours to ascertain the original text by a comparison of the various documents available is called lower, and that which deals with matters higher up the stream of descent by which the writings have been conveyed to us, namely, matters of date and authorship, is called higher criticism. It might well be called literary and historical criticism, in distinction from textual criticism. It employs historical methods, and uses the simplexii tests of comparison and contemporaneity. For the understanding of a particular age, it prefers those documents that describe the times in which they were written, and give indirect evidence, rather than those histories which were written long after the event and which reveal a purpose other than the strictly historical. Fortunately, we have in the Old Testament many such contemporary and indirect witnesses in the writings of the Prophets. They are not consciously writing history, but they tell us indirectly what the practices of their day were, and especially what religious ideas were prevalent; for it is these things that they feel called upon to attack. With these reliable standards we can compare the regular histories, which were necessarily written at a much later age, and very often to serve some religious purpose. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 45952
Author: Orchard, W. E. (William Edwin)
Release Date: Jun 12, 2014
Format: eBook
Language: English