‘Now, sir, you have surprised me. I did not know that there was such a place as Jerusalem in the world. I had always thought that Jerusalem was only a Bible word.’
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE HISTORICAL METHOD OF INTERPRETATION.
God who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in times past to the Fathers.—Epistle to the Hebrews.
It belongs very closely to our subject to determine in what sense the Hebrew Scriptures are to be interpreted, because, if the popular interpretation is to be maintained at every point, Egyptology, and a great deal more of what eventually must, and now ought to be, used in the construction of religious thought, will continue for a time to be deemed in popular opinion, and to be represented by its guides, as hostile to religion. I would, then, submit that, if universal history is to be aided at all by the Hebrew Scriptures, or if they are to be applied to any historical purpose whatever, they must be interpreted according to the received canons of historical criticism.
Those who deny this accept, in so doing—if they are logical and consistent—one or other of two alternative consequences: either that all contemporary and antecedent history is contained in the interpretation they put upon the sacred records—that is, in what at present happens to be the popular interpretation—so that nothing that is not contained in, or deducible from, or in harmony with, that interpretation is to be received as history; or else that history has nothing at all to do with the documents, or the documents with history.
There are, however, other people, not less learned nor less desirous of attaining to the truth, who are completely incapable of accepting either of these two alternatives. They value the Holy Scriptures too highly to treat them in this way. They believe that, though their primary object was not historical, they contain much history of many kinds, and of great value. History of events, of the human mind, of conscience, of religion—much of the history, in one word, of man, or of humanity; but, furthermore, they believe—and in this lies the gist of the controversy—that what they contain on any one, and on all of these subjects, is to be ascertained only by critical investigation. The single historical question with them is, when the documents have been rightly interpreted, what do they really contain?
They believe that the purpose, the character, and the contents of the documents, alike, preclude the idea of fraud and deception. The thought of the existence of any thing of the kind in them had its birth, naturally and unavoidably, in the popular interpretation. A false and ignorant interpretation was met by a false and ignorant attack. It could not have been otherwise; for both belong to the same age. No one, then, can be deceived by these documents, excepting those who interpret them ignorantly and wrongly. It is a question of interpretation. A false interpretation has surrounded them with difficulties, and in a great measure destroyed with multitudes their utility and their credit. The true interpretation will remove these difficulties; and where mischief has been done, restore their credit and utility.
But there appears to some a preliminary question: that of the right of interpretation. About this there, however, can be no real question at all, even among those who support what we call the popular interpretation. How can they deny to others the right they claim for themselves, of adopting the interpretation that appears to them most in accordance with truth and fact? The third, the twelfth, the sixteenth, and all other centuries, had a right to interpret the document in the way which at the time seemed true. The nineteenth century has the same right. The men of other times interpreted it according to the combination of knowledge, and of ignorance, that was in them. We must do the same.
Let us see, then, what is the difference between the popular, and the historical methods of interpretation. Proximately we shall find it very great; ultimately not much. But the point before us will not be fully understood until it be seen in a distinct concrete instance. The popular method goes on the assumption that the modes of thought, and the modes of expression of early ages, and of other races of men, must be accepted by us in the sense in which we must take anything addressed to ourselves by a contemporary author. This, the historical method tells us, is an impossibility. It has been rendered impossible by subsequent advances in knowledge, in the generalization of ideas, and in language through a larger use of general and abstract terms. The historical method says that archaic modes of thought, and modes of expression, must be translated into our modes of thought, and our modes of expression.