One of the greatest obstructions to an intelligent, rational, and systematic interpretation and understanding of the Bible has been, and is yet. indeed, for many people, the hard and fast notions which have been entertained on the subject of the literal or verbal inspiration of the Bible, its absolute inerrancy, and the almost superstitious veneration and awe with which the book has been regarded merely as a book, a feeling which, in some instances, seems to fall little short of fetishism. There are those who appear to take it for granted that our good King James version, with its division into books, chapters, verses, etc., must have been received from God pretty much as we received it from our ancestors. Most of us, however, are more or less familiar with the history of our English version. We know how it was first translated from foreign and dead languages into the English of the common people by Wycliffe and his associates, by Tyndale and others; with what fidelity and consecration of purpose these heroic men labored, against almost incredible difficulties, and at the imminent risk of their liberty and even their lives, in_ order that Englishmen everywhere might enjoy the privilege of reading the Word of God in their native tongue and around their own firesides. But with the earlier history of the sacred text and its gradual formation into our present Bible it is quite different. Not so many of us are aware, for instance, that so far from the books of the Old Testament having been dictated at one time to their ostensible authors by the Holy Spirit, as is commonly supposed, probably not one of its historic books was wholly written by the author whose name it bears, and many of its books bear evident marks of having been composed by many authors at different and greatly divergent periods of Hebrew development. Prof. S. R. Driver (An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, p. 3) says, —
"The historic books of the Old Testament form two series; ... no entire book in either series consists of a single original work; but older writings or sources have been combined by a compiler in such a manner that the points of juncture are often plainly discernible, and the sources are in consequence capable of being separated from one another. . . . The authors of the Hebrew historical books—except the shorter, as Ruth and Esther—do not rewrite the matter in their own language; they excerpt from the sources at their disposal such passages as are suitable to their purpose, and incorporate them in their work, sometimes adding matter of their own, but often (as it seems) introducing only such modifications of form as are necessary for the purpose of fitting them together, or accommodating them to their place. The Hebrew historiographer, as we know him, is essentially a compiler or arranger of pre-existent documents, he is not himself an original author."
The book of Genesis is an example in point. It and the Hexateuch of which it is a part are now clearly discerned to be composed of three great divisions, each contributed by different writers. The first embraces the first chapter of Genesis and to verse four inclusive of the second chapter, and other portions of the Hexateuch. It is known as the Elohistic division because it uses the word Elohim for God; and it is also designated by the letter P, which stands for Priest Code, because it prescribes certain ceremonial regulations, rituals, etc. Then there is the Jahvistic division, in which God is always addressed as Jahve, Jehovah, which is designated by the letter J; then the second Elohistic division, which, while using the name Elohim, yet resembles the Jahvistic writings, with which it became combined at an early date, and the two are designated by the letters JE. Inasmuch as the first Elohistic or P narrative embraces the first chapter of Genesis, which describes man as created in the image and likeness of God, and God as pronouncing "very good" all that He had created; and, on the other hand, the Jahvistic or JE narrative includes all that portion which represents man as created out of dust, and the equally crude and materialistic concept of a garden of Eden and man's expulsion therefrom, it cannot fail to be a matter of interest to Christian Scientists to observe the relative estimate in which the two narratives are held by learned men of our times who have written critically on the subject. Professor Driver thinks the two chapters of Genesis "contain a double narrative of the origin of man upon earth," which are conflicting and irreconcilable. So with Dillmann (Dillmann on Genesis) who says,—
"Genesis, like the rest of the Hexateuch, notwithstanding that in it a distinct literary plan is carried out, is not the uniform work of a single author, but is a combination of several works which at one time circulated independently. . . . There are found in it all sorts of seemingly needless repetitions; . . . also two or more accounts of the same thing, not merely such as might, with a stretch, be explained by supposing that the author actually assumed different occurrences, or wished to indicate the wavering of tradition, . . . but also such as mutually exclude one another, because the thing can have happened only once, or in one way (e.g., on the course of creation, chs. i. and ii.; on the number of animals taken into> the ark, etc.)..."
Referring to the writing P, the Elohistic narrative designated A by Dillmann, he continues,—
"Its treatment of the material is pre-eminently of an erudite character, resting upon research, calculation, and reflection, and turning to account various stores of knowledge, but with a strong tendency to systematize. Its manner of speaking of God is austere and worthy, and makes no use even of the belief in angels, still less of that strongly anthropomorphic style of thinking and speaking which came so near to being mythological, and which poets and popular speech delight in."
Speaking of the author of this narrative, Professor Driver says,—
"His representations of God are less anthropomorphic than those of J or even of E. No angels or dreams are mentioned by him. ... He speaks of God as appearing to men but gives no description of His appearance, and God reveals himself to men simply by speaking to them."
On the other hand, compare what the scholars say of JE, the second Elohistic division,—thus (Dillmann):—
"Section 4. Representations and legends current among his fellow-countrymen undoubtedly supplied our author with the material substratum for the presentation of his thoughts. . . . But further, the conception also of a garden of God, and of what belonged to it, undoubtedly preceded and was adopted by our author. From the Old Testament, certainly, this cannot be proved directly, since the references elsewhere to the garden of God are dependent upon the present narrative. But the description of our author indirectly shows that the conception can neither be his own idea, nor could it have developed originally on Israelitish soil. A garden on earth, into and out of which God goes as in His own proper dwelling, and where divine blessings (good things) are bestowed in the fruits of the trees, diverges seriously from the strict way in which the Bible elsewhere speaks about God and divine things. . . . We feel ourselves thereby involuntarily transported into the circle of ideas of 'the nations,' with whom such mixture of the spiritual and the material is quite current. . . .
"Most nearly approaching this narrative is the fable of Prometheus, who out of clay forms the human body, and gives life to it by means of a spark stolen from the gods."
Continuing generally, our author (Dillmann, pp. 100, 106) says, —
"There exists in the spirit of man, so soon as he attains a certain maturity, an unavoidable necessity which compels the formation of opinions regarding regions and themes on which experience sheds no light. One of these themes concerns the beginnings and primitive history of his race. Man's thoughts regarding this and similar subjects, because concerned with past events, take narrative shape, and spread and are communicated in narrative form. Among all ancient civilized nations, narratives concerning the beginnings of mankind are to be found. That also now before us is not to be understood otherwise. It likewise rests fundamentally on thoughts which the reflection of the Hebrew people, or of its wise men, constructed in regard to these primeval matters. In so far it stands upon a level with the corresponding 'myths' of the ancient people (see sec. 4). And yet between it and them there is an essential difference. In such narratives as go beyond common experience, everything depends upon the grounds and presuppositions upon which they are planned and based. When God is apprehended according to His true nature, it is possible and inevitable that right thoughts about the original nature of man be formed. On the sure foundation of that knowledge are reared not mere ingenious myths, but truths which approve themselves to faith (belief) and turn for acceptance to faith. What the author here presents are truths of faith in the form of narrative, and the chief importance lies in the thought contained in the narrative, not in the externalities of the circumstances and occurrences. Only because and in so far as these thoughts have their inner necessity and truth, is the history also true; not conversely. . . .
"If the connection of thought in the narrative be examined, we find its starting-point to be the mysterious fact, that man, although related to God, capable of attaining that which is highest, and advancing even farther in the domination and penetration of all things outside of himself, is nevertheless subject to innumerable sufferings, evils, and hardships. . . .
"The contradiction which is involved in this has in all ages led men to the surmise that such could not have been the original state of things. It was easy also to observe that those evils, in the course of history, rather increased than diminished, and that men were happier when the conditions of life were simpler. From this starting-point there arose among the peoples in general the belief in a Golden Age in the early times of man, the particulars in each of them being developed in various ways, according to their particular genius. But in the Mosaic religion new elements of knowledge were added, to result in giving to such surmises a firmer foundation. One is the knowledge of the one good and holy God, who can have created everything, therefore also man, good only. ... A second is the conception of the evils of life as the consequences and punishments of human sin, — a conception which as a feeling more or less clear pervades the peoples generally, but among the Israelites forms a central pillar of their whole religious system."
I have quoted thus at length from these learned sources, not because Christian Scientists are supposed to approve all of their conclusions, still less all of the conclusions and speculations of the school of which they are conservative representatives, but because it is interesting and may be highly instructive to know the views of men who have investigated these matters in a profound and scholarly manner, and from a standpoint of unquestionable loyalty to Christianity, however much we may fail to agree with them in some of the conclusions at which they may have arrived; and for the same reason and because no modern writer has gone more deeply into the study of Hebrew character, on its religious side, and the temperament and life of the Hebrew people, and indeed the conditions generally which made Hebrew prophecy possible, and who is better qualified to describe the mental processes by which our prophetic writings and indeed the entire Old Testament have been evolved, than the elder Delitzseh. I add the following from him, as quoted in Fairbairn on Prophecy (p. 195), to wit: —
"With the inspired penman in general, and with the prophets in particular, simply from his being a living member of the spiritual body, there was formed an internal storehouse out of the substance of former revelations, which had entered into the very core of his spiritual life, and became amalgamated with it — revelations which sank so deep into the memory and the heart of every pious Israelite, that he necessarily acted under their influence in the formation of his thoughts, and, when writing also, could not avoid making use of the older expressions, which already bore upon them a divine impress. Besides, the prophet could not otherwise be the organ and bearer of a divine revelation, than by sacrificing everything of a selfish kind, therefore all ambitious strivings after originality, that he might surrender himself to the operation of God."
The process by which certain books came, in course of time, to be recognized as forming the Sacred Canon; viz., that collection of books which we call our Bible, is very kindred to that of the gradual growth or formation of many of the books themselves. All Hebrew literature of any great merit was regarded by the early Christians as sacred and as inspired of God; but they recognized, as Philo says, "that there are degrees of inspiration, and that all portions of the Scripture [Old Testament] are not equally inspired, or at least have not the same depth of inspiration. Moses has the first place."
The fact that certain writings were held in greater esteem than others, which gradually resulted in associating together those of the highest merit into a collection, and finally of assigning to this collection a unique position over other Hebrew literature, does not imply either that there was any divine authority for selecting these particular books to the exclusion of others, or that the books so selected thereby acquired any additional authority as the Word of God. Probably it has never been contended that any individual or body of individuals were especially inspired or deputed to select certain books which should constitute a Bible to the exclusion of other Hebrew literature, or that the books so selected were endowed with any authority or entitled to any respect which had not pertained to them before. The true estimate in which a book in the Bible is to be held must be determined by the inherent merit of the book itself as a treasury of revealed truth, and not to any extent on the fact that it constitutes a part of the Bible. Nor is the question of personal authorship any more concerned; for we have seen that the authors of any book may be many, whose names even it has not been thought important to record. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, for instance, has long been thought to add extraordinary luster to the prophetic spirit of that book and to entitle Isaiah to very high rank among the first prophets because of its wonderful portrayal of the coming Messiah; and yet, it is now conceded that Isaiah was not the author of this chapter at all, but that it and others of like character were added by an unknown author not earlier than post-exilic times. So, the letter to the Hebrews has lost none of its sterling value as a contribution to New Testament literature by the discovery that it was written by an unknown disciple, and not by St. Paul as was confidently supposed until comparatively recent times.
It was the fact of a living, eternally active and therefore eternally communicative Word, that held the sacred Canon open for the admission of New Testament literature, and which forever makes the idea of a closed Canon a logical impossibility. The Jewish Canon was supposed to be closed before the New Testament literature was written and it is altogether improbable that its authors anticipated that this literature would ever become part of the Sacred Canon. Thus (Hast. Bib. Diet.):—
"There was clearly no intention on the part of New Testament writers to make Scripture. The Jewish reverence for the Old Testament, which the apostles inherited, would prevent any such thought from arising. . . .
"It is probable that all the books composing our New Testament were written by the end of the first century of our era. . . . The recognition, however, of New Testament books by the Church as of apostolic authorship and authority was a matter of much longer time. It is not until the fourth century that all the books of the present Canon are found included in any list."
A closed Canon implies a closed era of inspiration, that is, that God has ceased to reveal himself to His people, which is not supported by authority and which, to a Christian, should appear to be absurdly unreasonable. It is the dogmatic as against the scientific reading of God's dealings with the human race, and is incompatible with the view, now almost universally accepted, of a progressive revelation. "So long as inspiration cannot be claimed for the process by which canonicity is determined, canonicity cannot be held to fix the bounds of inspiration." (Hast. Bib. Diet.)
Because of the great veneration in which they were accustomed to hold the law and the ancient prophets, it was perfectly natural that the Jews should contend for a closed Canon, one which included only this ancient literature, and by this signal mark of esteem distinguish the contributions of these ancient worthies from all others. The Jews had a more immediate, if a less worthy reason, however, for making this contention, in the apologetic advantage which it gave them in their struggle with Christianity, by confining Messianic allusions, which the Christian apologists claimed were fulfilled in Jesus, to the smallest possible circle. There are those who maintain that nowhere in the Bible is such abundant Messianic material to be found — Messianic thought so fully developed and clearly defined — as in some of this excluded literature. As for the early Christians, besides being in large part Jews and therefore participating to an extent in the Jewish bias in favor of the more ancient literature, they found it prudent, inasmuch as their arguments were mainly directed against the opposition of their countrymen, to cite as authority the books whose authority was equally conceded by their opponents. In later times new causes operated to incline the Protestant world not only to a more strictly circumscribed Canon but to a more literalistic interpretation of the Scriptures. The dogmatic idea of authority as against the liberty of the Spirit has ever found a convenient instrument in the contention for a literal interpretation of the Bible. From this position to the contention that the meaning of the Scriptures should be authoritatively determined, from time to time, by some ecclesiastical body or potentate, the transition is easy enough, as abundantly appears in the history of religious dogma. Thus (Hast. Bib. Diet., title "Bible"): —
"Protestant orthodoxy, whether in the Lutheran or Calvinistic form, entrenched itself on the foundation of the Bible, identifying inspiration with infallibility, and the record with the revelation it conveyed. The sacred writers were regarded as the passive instruments, the amanuenses, of the Divine Spirit.
"The large majority of inquirers, however, recognized frankly the true inspiration of the Bible, and also that the determination of its nature, degrees, and limits must be the result of an induction from all the available facts.
"On the other hand, while the elements which thus make for the inspiration of the Bible and its unique authority as a spiritual guide are widely and fully recognized, the human element in Scripture has in recent times forced itself upon the attention of the thoughtful. Here it is not merely that by evident signs the Biblical writers show that they were not simply amanuenses writing to the dictation of the Spirit above them; it is not the occurrence of discrepancies and inconsistencies in the Bible itself, or in connection with external history and modern science: it is rather the recognition of a progressive revelation in the Bible, that it contains the history of the struggle between the Divine light and human ignorance and sin, that the revelation is conveyed to us in such measure and manner as each of the writers was able to apprehend it and give it forth."
So in Fairbairn on Prophecy (p. 108):—
"We must here hold fast by the principle which lies at the foundation of all right views of the Divine agency in the soul, and the overlooking of which, more than anything else, has bred perplexity and error on the whole subject of God's inspired communications to men. . . . Grace, in all its acts and provisions, comes not to mar or destroy, but only to quicken, and exalt, and perfect nature."
It is apparent that as spiritual growth goes on in human consciousness, the attainment of a right perception of truth will be attended by the phenomena which logically and historically attend such a perception. To reach, in any degree, that apprehension of Truth which enriched the consciousness of Christ Jesus must insure the re-appearance in corresponding degree of those works— the overcomings of error— which distinguished his life; and this evidence of Truth's re-attainment was presented in Christian Science when through her understanding of the spiritual significance of the Christ teaching. Mrs. Eddy was able to heal the sick in keeping with our Lord's command.
A further evidence of Truth's discovery is found in the fact that sincere truth-seekers are ever reaching conclusions confirmatory of the Scriptural interpretation on which these works of overcoming have been based, and the passages which we have quoted from conservative Christian authorities give a hint of the weight and abundance of this secondary evidence of the truth of the teaching of Christian Science, both as to the nature of the universe and the nature of revelation.
