V. VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS.
While this struggle for the new truth was going on in various fields, aid appeared from a quarter whence it was least expected.
The great discoveries by Botta and Layard in Assyria were supplemented by the researches of Rawlinson, George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, Sarzec, Pinches, and others, and thus it was revealed more clearly than ever before that as far back as the time assigned in Genesis to the creation a great civilization was flourishing in Mesopotamia; that long ages, probably two thousand years, before the scriptural date assigned to the migration of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, this Chaldean civilization had bloomed forth in art, science, and literature; that the ancient inscriptions recovered from the sites of this and kindred civilizations presented the Hebrew sacred myths and legends in earlier forms—forms long antedating those given in the Hebrew Scriptures; and that the accounts of the Creation, the Tree of Life in Eden, the institution and even the name of the Sabbath, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, and much else in the Pentateuch, were simply an evolution out of earlier Chaldean myths and legends. So perfect was the proof of this that the most eminent scholars in the foremost seats of Christian learning were obliged to acknowledge it.(494)
(494) As to the revelations of the vast antiquity of Chaldean
civilization, and especially regarding the Nabonidos inscription, see
Records of the Past, vol. i, new series, first article, and especially
pp. 5, 6, where a translation of that inscription is given; also Hommel,
Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, introduction, in which, on page
12, an engraving of the Sargon cylinder is given; also, on the general
subject, especially pp. 116 et seq., 309 et seq.; also Meyer,
Geschichte des Alterthums, pp. 161-163; also Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of
Civilization, p. 555 and note.
For the earlier Chaldean forms of the Hebrew Creation accounts, Tree of Life in Eden, Hebrew Sabbath, both the institution and the name, and various other points of similar interest, see George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, throughout the work, especially p. 308 and chaps. xvi, xvii; also Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier; also Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament; also Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire; also Sayce, The Assyrian Story of Creation, in Records of the Past, new series, vol. i. For a general statement as to earlier sources of much in the Hebrew sacred origins, see Huxley, Essays on Controverted Questions, English edition, p. 525.
The more general conclusions which were thus given to biblical criticism were all the more impressive from the fact that they had been revealed by various groups of earnest Christian scholars working on different lines, by different methods, and in various parts of the world. Very honourable was the full and frank testimony to these results given in 1885 by the Rev. Francis Brown, a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at New York. In his admirable though brief book on Assyriology, starting with the declaration that "it is a great pity to be afraid of facts," he showed how Assyrian research testifies in many ways to the historical value of the Bible record; but at the same time he freely allowed to Chaldean history an antiquity fatal to the sacred chronology of the Hebrews. He also cast aside a mass of doubtful apologetics, and dealt frankly with the fact that very many of the early narratives in Genesis belong to the common stock of ancient tradition, and, mentioning as an example the cuneiform inscriptions which record a story of the Accadian king Sargon—how "he was born in retirement, placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched on a river, rescued and brought up by a stranger, after which he became king"—he did not hesitate to remind his readers that Sargon lived a thousand years and more before Moses; that this story was told of him several hundred years before Moses was born; and that it was told of various other important personages of antiquity. The professor dealt just as honestly with the inscriptions which show sundry statements in the book of Daniel to be unhistorical; candidly making admissions which but a short time before would have filled orthodoxy with horror.
A few years later came another testimony even more striking. Early in the last decade of the nineteenth century it was noised abroad that the Rev. Professor Sayce, of Oxford, the most eminent Assyriologist and Egyptologist of Great Britain, was about to publish a work in which what is known as the "higher criticism" was to be vigorously and probably destructively dealt with in the light afforded by recent research among the monuments of Assyria and Egypt. The book was looked for with eager expectation by the supporters of the traditional view of Scripture; but, when it appeared, the exultation of the traditionalists was speedily changed to dismay. For Prof. Sayce, while showing some severity toward sundry minor assumptions and assertions of biblical critics, confirmed all their more important conclusions which properly fell within his province. While his readers soon realized that these assumptions and assertions of overzealous critics no more disproved the main results of biblical criticism than the wild guesses of Kepler disproved the theory of Copernicus, or the discoveries of Galileo, or even the great laws which bear Kepler's own name, they found new mines sprung under some of the most lofty fortresses of the old dogmatic theology. A few of the statements of this champion of orthodoxy may be noted. He allowed that the week of seven days and the Sabbath rest are of Babylonian origin; indeed, that the very word "Sabbath" is Babylonian; that there are two narratives of Creation on the Babylonian tablets, wonderfully like the two leading Hebrew narratives in Genesis, and that the latter were undoubtedly drawn from the former; that the "garden of Eden" and its mystical tree were known to the inhabitants of Chaldea in pre-Semitic days; that the beliefs that woman was created out of man, and that man by sin fell from a state of innocence, are drawn from very ancient Chaldean-Babylonian texts; that Assyriology confirms the belief that the book Genesis is a compilation; that portions of it are by no means so old as the time of Moses; that the expression in our sacred book, "The Lord smelled a sweet savour" at the sacrifice made by Noah, is "identical with that of the Babylonian poet"; that "it is impossible to believe that the language of the latter was not known to the biblical writer" and that the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife was drawn in part from the old Egyptian tale of The Two Brothers. Finally, after a multitude of other concessions, Prof. Sayce allowed that the book of Jonah, so far from being the work of the prophet himself, can not have been written until the Assyrian Empire was a thing of the past; that the book of Daniel contains serious mistakes; that the so-called historical chapters of that book so conflict with the monuments that the author can not have been a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus; that "the story of Belshazzar's fall is not historical"; that the Belshazzar referred to in it as king, and as the son of Nehuchadnezzar, was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar, and was never king; that "King Darius the Mede," who plays so great a part in the story, never existed; that the book associates persons and events really many years apart, and that it must have been written at a period far later than the time assigned in it for its own origin.
As to the book of Ezra, he tells us that we are confronted by a chronological inconsistency which no amount of ingenuity can explain away. He also acknowledges that the book of Esther "contains many exaggerations and improbabilities, and is simply founded upon one of those same historical tales of which the Persian chronicles seem to have been full." Great was the dissatisfaction of the traditionalists with their expected champion; well might they repeat the words of Balak to Balaam, "I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether blessed them."(495)
(495) For Prof. Brown's discussion, see his Assyriology, its Use and
Abuse in Old Testament Study, New York, 1885, passim. For Prof. Sayce's
views, see The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, third edition,
London, 1894, and especially his own curious anticipation, in the first
lines of the preface, that he must fail to satisfy either side. For the
declaration that the "higher critic" with all his offences is no worse
than the orthodox "apologist," see p. 21. For the important admission
that the same criterion must be applied in researches into our own
sacred books as into others, and even into the mediaeval chronicles, see
p. 26. For justification of critical scepticism regarding the history
given in the book of Daniel, see pp. 27, 28, also chap. ix. For very
full and explicit statements, with proofs, that the "Sabbath," both in
name and nature, was derived by the Hebrews from the Chaldeans, see pp.
74 et seq. For a very full and fair acknowledgment of the "Babylonian
element in Genesis," see chap. iii, including the statement regarding
the statement in our sacred book, "The Lord smelled a sweet savour," at
the sacrifice made by Noah, etc., on p. 119. For an excellent summary of
the work, see Dr. Driver's article in the Contemporary Review for March,
1894. For a pungent but well-deserved rebuke of Prof. Sayce's recent
attempts to propitiate pious subscribers to his archaeological fund, see
Prof. A. A. Bevan, in the Contemporary Review for December, 1895. For
the inscription on the Assyrian tablets relating in detail the exposure
of King Sargon in a basket of rushes, his rescue and rule, see George
Smith, Chaldean account of Genesis, Sayce's edition, London, 1880, pp.
319, 320. For the frequent recurrence of the Sargon and Moses legend
in ancient folklore, see Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of History, p. 598 and
note. For various other points of similar interest, see ibid., passim,
especially chaps. xvi and xvii; also Jensen, Die Kosmologie der
Babylonier, and Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old
Testament; also Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire.