The opponents of the Higher Criticism have much to say in reply. Sayce, Early History of the Hebrews, holds that the early chapters of Genesis were copied from Babylonian sources, but he insists upon a Mosaic or pre-Mosaic date for the copying. Hilprecht however declares that the monotheistic faith of Israel could never have proceeded “from the Babylonian mountain of gods—that charnel-house full of corruption and dead men's bones.” Bissell, Genesis Printed in Colors, Introd., iv—“It is improbable that so many documentary histories existed so early, or if existing that the compiler should have attempted to combine them. Strange that the earlier should be J and should use the word ‘Jehovah,’ while the later P should use the word ‘Elohim,’when ‘Jehovah’ would have far better suited the Priests' Code.... xiii—The Babylonian tablets contain in a continuous narrative the more prominent facts of both the alleged Elohistic and Jehovistic sections of Genesis, and present them mainly in the Biblical order. Several hundred years before Moses what the critics call two were already one. It is absurd to say that the unity was due to a redactor at the period of the exile, 444 B. C. He who believes that God revealed himself to primitive man as one God, will see in the Akkadian story a polytheistic corruption of the original monotheistic account.” We must not estimate the antiquity of a pair of boots by the last patch which the cobbler has added; nor must we estimate the antiquity of a Scripture book by the glosses and explanations added by later editors. As the London Spectator remarks on the Homeric problem: “It is as impossible that a first-rate poem or work of art should be produced without a great master-mind which first conceives the whole, as that a fine living bull should be developed out of beef-sausages.” As we shall proceed to show, however, these utterances overestimate the unity of the Pentateuch and ignore some striking evidences of its gradual growth and composite structure.
The Authorship of the Pentateuch in particular. Recent critics, especially Kuenen and Robertson Smith, have maintained that the Pentateuch is Mosaic only in the sense of being a gradually growing body of traditional law, which was codified as late as the time of Ezekiel, and, as the development of the spirit and teachings of the great law-giver, was called by a legal fiction after the name of Moses and was attributed to him. The actual order of composition is therefore: (1) Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20-23); (2) Deuteronomy; (3) Leviticus. Among the reasons assigned for this view are the facts (a) that Deuteronomy ends with an account of Moses' death, and therefore could not have been written by Moses; (b) that in Leviticus Levites are mere servants to the priests, while in Deuteronomy the priests are officiating Levites, or, in other words, all the Levites are priests; (c) that the books of Judges and of 1 Samuel, with their record of sacrifices offered in many places, give no evidence that either Samuel or the nation of Israel had any knowledge of a law confining worship to a local sanctuary. See [pg 171]Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel; Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels, Band 1; and art.: Israel, in Encyc. Brit., 13:398, 399, 415; W. Robertson Smith, O. T. in Jewish Church, 306, 386, and Prophets of Israel; Hastings, Bible Dict., arts.: Deuteronomy, Hexateuch, and Canon of the O. T.
It has been urged in reply, (1) that Moses may have written, not autographically, but through a scribe (perhaps Joshua), and that this scribe may have completed the history in Deuteronomy with the account of Moses' death; (2) that Ezra or subsequent prophets may have subjected the whole Pentateuch to recension, and may have added explanatory notes; (3) that documents of previous ages may have been incorporated, in course of its composition by Moses, or subsequently by his successors; (4) that the apparent lack of distinction between the different classes of Levites in Deuteronomy may be explained by the fact that, while Leviticus was written with exact detail for the priests, Deuteronomy is the record of a brief general and oral summary of the law, addressed to the people at large and therefore naturally mentioning the clergy as a whole; (5) that the silence of the book of Judges as to the Mosaic ritual may be explained by the design of the book to describe only general history, and by the probability that at the tabernacle a ritual was observed of which the people in general were ignorant. Sacrifices in other places only accompanied special divine manifestations which made the recipient temporarily a priest. Even if it were proved that the law with regard to a central sanctuary was not observed, it would not show that the law did not exist, any more than violation of the second commandment by Solomon proves his ignorance of the decalogue, or the mediæval neglect of the N. T. by the Roman church proves that the N. T. did not then exist. We cannot argue that “where there was transgression, there was no law” (Watts, New Apologetic, 83, and The Newer Criticism).
In the light of recent research, however, we cannot regard these replies as satisfactory. Woods, in his article on the Hexateuch, Hastings' Dictionary, 2:365, presents a moderate statement of the results of the higher criticism which commends itself to us as more trustworthy. He calls it a theory of stratification, and holds that “certain more or less independent documents, dealing largely with the same series of events, were composed at different periods, or, at any rate, under different auspices, and were afterwards combined, so that our present Hexateuch, which means our Pentateuch with the addition of Joshua, contains these several different literary strata.... The main grounds for accepting this hypothesis of stratification are (1) that the various literary pieces, with very few exceptions, will be found on examination to arrange themselves by common characteristics into comparatively few groups; (2) that an original consecution of narrative may be frequently traced between what in their present form are isolated fragments.
“This will be better understood by the following illustration. Let us suppose a problem of this kind: Given a patchwork quilt, explain the character of the original pieces out of which the bits of stuff composing the quilt were cut. First, we notice that, however well the colors may blend, however nice and complete the whole may look, many of the adjoining pieces do not agree in material, texture, pattern, color, or the like. Ergo, they have been made up out of very different pieces of stuff.... But suppose we further discover that many of the bits, though now separated, are like one another in material, texture, etc., we may conjecture that these have been cut out of one piece. But we shall prove this beyond reasonable doubt if we find that several bits when unpicked fit together, so that the pattern of one is continued in the other; and, moreover, that if all of like character are sorted out, they form, say, four groups, each of which was evidently once a single piece of stuff, though parts of each are found missing, because, no doubt, they have not been required to make the whole. But we make the analogy of the Hexateuch even closer, if we further suppose that in certain parts of the quilt the bits belonging to, say, two of these groups are so combined as to form a subsidiary pattern within the larger pattern of the whole quilt, and had evidently been sewed together before being connected with other parts of the quilt; and we may make it even closer still, if we suppose that, besides the more important bits of stuff, smaller embellishments, borderings, and the like, had been added so as to improve the general effect of the whole.”
The author of this article goes on to point out three main portions of the Hexateuch which essentially differ from each other. There are three distinct codes: the Covenant code (C—Ex. 20:22 to 23:33, and 24:3-8), the Deuteronomic code (D), and the Priestly code (P). These codes have peculiar relations to the narrative portions of the [pg 172]Hexateuch. In Genesis, for example, “the greater part of the book is divided into groups of longer or shorter pieces, generally paragraphs or chapters, distinguished respectively by the almost exclusive use of Elohim or Jehovah as the name of God.”Let us call these portions J and E. But we find such close affinities between C and JE, that we may regard them as substantially one. “We shall find that the larger part of the narratives, as distinct from the laws, of Exodus and Numbers belong to JE; whereas, with special exceptions, the legal portions belong to P. In the last chapters of Deuteronomy and in the whole of Joshua we find elements of JE. In the latter book we also find elements which connect it with D.
“It should be observed that not only do we find here and there separate pieces in the Hexateuch, shown by their characters to belong to these three sources, JE, D, and P, but the pieces will often be found connected together by an obvious continuity of subject when pieced together, like the bits of patchwork in the illustration with which we started. For example, if we read continuously Gen. 11:27-33; 12:4b, 5; 13:6a, 11b, 12a; 16:1a, 3, 15, 16; 17; 19:29; 21:1a, 2b-5; 23; 25:7-11a—passages mainly, on other grounds, attributed to P, we get an almost continuous and complete, though very concise, account of Abraham's life.” We may concede the substantial correctness of the view thus propounded. It simply shows God's actual method in making up the record of his revelation. We may add that any scholar who grants that Moses did not himself write the account of his own death and burial in the last chapter of Deuteronomy, or who recognizes two differing accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, has already begun an analysis of the Pentateuch and has accepted the essential principles of the higher criticism.
In addition to the literature already referred to mention may also be made of Driver's Introd. to O. T., 118-150, and Deuteronomy, Introd.; W. R. Harper, in Hebraica, Oct.-Dec. 1888, and W. H. Green's reply in Hebraica. Jan.-Apr. 1889; also Green, The Unity of the Book of Genesis, Moses and the Prophets, Hebrew Feasts, and Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch; with articles by Green in Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882 and Oct. 1886; Howard Osgood, in Essays on Pentateuchal Criticism, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1888, and July, 1893; Watts, The Newer Criticism, and New Apologetic, 83; Presb. Rev., arts. by H. P. Smith, April, 1882, and by F. L. Patton, 1883:341-410; Bib. Sac., April, 1882:291-344, and by G. F. Wright, July, 1898:515-525; Brit. Quar., July, 1881:123; Jan. 1884:138-143; Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 373-385; Stebbins, A Study in the Pentateuch; Bissell, Historic Origin of the Bible, 277-342, and The Pentateuch, its Authorship and Structure; Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 180-216, and The Veracity of the Hexateuch; Murray, Origin and Growth of the Psalms, 58; Payne-Smith, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 15; Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Kurtz, Hist. Old Covenant, 1:46; Perowne, in Contemp. Rev., Jan. and Feb. 1888; Chambers, Moses and his Recent Critics; Terry, Moses and the Prophets; Davis, Dictionary of the Bible, art.: Pentateuch; Willis J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the O. T., 326-329.