* Matthew xix. 7, 8; Mark x. 3, 4; xii. 26; Luke xvi. 29-31;
Luke xx. 37; John v. 45, 46; vii. 19, 22, 23.
"Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John v. 45-47).
The speaker in this instance is Christ himself. It is he, and not the evangelist, who speaks of the writings of Moses, and declares that Moses "wrote of me."
Now let us turn to the book of Psalms, which has been well called the Hymn Book of the Second Temple. According to Dr. Farrar, they are "a collection of sacred poems in five separate books of very various antiquity." Canon Driver points out that they are mostly posterior to the prophetical writings. "When the Psalms," he says, "are compared with the prophets, the latter seem to show, on the whole, the greater originality; the psalmists, in other words, follow the prophets, appropriating and applying the truths which the prophets proclaimed." Very few of the Psalms are earlier than the seventh century before Christ. Dr. Driver affirms this with "tolerable confidence." Dr. Farrar says that "some may mount to an epoch earlier than David's," but this is mere conjecture. The more cautious Dr. Driver will not commit himself further than "a verdict of non liquet"; that is to say, there is no proof that David did not write one or two of the Psalms, and no evidence that he did. His name was associated with the collection, in the same way as the name of Solomon was associated with the Proverbs. Nevertheless it is David who is referred to by Jesus as the author of the hundred-and-tenth Psalm.* But this Psalm is one of those which are allowed to belong to a much later period. Jesus quoted it as David's, but Professor Sanday says "it seems difficult to believe it really came from him"**—which is as strong an expression as a Christian divine could be expected to permit himself in a case of such delicacy.
* Matthew xxii. 43-45; Mark xii. 36, 37; Luke xx. 42-44.
** Professor W. Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, p.
409. Canon Gore, with this utterance of Jesus right before
him, still more emphatically denies that this Psalm was, or
could have been, composed by David. See his Bampton Lectures
on The Incarnation of the Son of God, p. 197.
We have already seen that the book of Daniel was not written by the prophet Daniel, but by some unknown author hundreds of years later, probably in the second century before Christ. Upon this subject Professor Sanday takes precisely the same view as Canon Driver. He says that this is "the critical view" and has "won the day." All the facts support the "supposition that the book was written in the second century b.c.," and not "in the sixth." "The real author," he says, "is unknown," and "the name of Daniel is only assumed." He was writing, not a history, but a homily, to encourage his brethren at the time of the Maccabean struggle. "To this purpose of his," Professor Sanday says, "there were features in the traditional story of Daniel which appeared to lend themselves; and so he took that story and worked it up in the way which seemed to him most effective." Jesus Christ, however, held the orthodox view of his own time, and spoke of Daniel as the actual author of this book (Matthew xxiv. 15). "But this," Professor Sanday observes, "it is right to say, is only in one Gospel, where the mention of Daniel may be an insertion of the Evangelist's." Such conjectural shifts are Christian critics reduced to in their effort to minimise difficulties; as though reducing the mistakes of Jesus in any way saved his infallibility.
We will now turn to some portions of the Old Testament narrative which the Higher Criticism regards as legendary, but which Jesus regarded as strictly historical. One of these is the story of the Flood. No one of any standing is now prepared to defend this story, at least as we find it in the book of Genesis. A few orthodox scientists, like Sir James W. Dawson, pour out copious talk about tremendous floods in former geological ages; but what has this to do with the Bible narrative of a universal deluge which occurred some four thousand five hundred years ago? The Higher Critics have the impatience of Freethinkers with such intellectual charlatanry. They regard the story of the Flood as a Jewish legend, which was not even original, but borrowed from the superstitions of Babylon. Yet the opinion of Jesus Christ seems to have been very different. Here are his own words:—
"But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Matthew xxiv. 37-39).
Jesus Christ appears to have believed, like the disciples he was addressing, like all the rest of his countrymen, and like nearly all Christians until very recently, that the Flood was an historical occurrence, that Noah and his family were saved in the ark, and that all the other inhabitants of the world were drowned.
Another story which the Higher Criticism dismisses as legendary is that of Jonah. The book in which it is related was, of course, not written by Jonah, the son of Amittai, of whom we read in 2 Kings xiv. 25, and who lived in the reign of Jeroboam II. "It cannot," as Dr. Driver says, "have been written until long after the lifetime of Jonah himself." Its probable date is the fifth century before Christ. Dr. Driver says it is "not strictly historical "—that is to say, the events recorded in it never happened. Jonah was not really entertained for three days in a whale's belly, nor did his preaching convert the whole city of Nineveh. The writer's purpose was didactic; he wished to rebuke the exclusiveness of his own people, and to teach them that God's care extended, at least occasionally, to other nations as well as the Jews. Some critics, such as Cheyne and Wright, regard the story as allegorical; Jonah standing for Israel, the whale for Babylon, and the vomiting up of the prophet for the return of the Jews from exile. Dr. Farrar draws attention to the "remarkable" fact that in the book of Kings "no allusion is made to any mission or adventure of the historic Jonah." He adds that there is not "the faintest trace of his mission or its results amid the masses of Assyrian inscriptions." Even the writer of the book of Jonah, according to Dr. Farrar, attached "no importance" to its "supernatural incidents," which "only belong to the allegorical form of the story." So much for the Higher Critics; and now let us hear Jesus Christ:—