But the next distinct stage is reached when we come to De Wette, whose contributions to Biblical learning were many and varied, but who was pre-eminent in historical criticism. He carried criticism beyond literary analysis and De Wette. literary appreciation to the task of determining the worth of the documents as records, the validity of the evidence. His peculiar qualities were conspicuous in his early and exceedingly influential work—the Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1806-1807). In the introduction to vol. ii. he carefully analyses the principles of sound historical method and the essentials of a trustworthy historical record. These principles he applied to the Old Testament, firstly to the Books of Chronicles, and then to the Pentateuch. The untrustworthiness of Chronicles—briefly admitted by Luther—he proved in detail, and so cleared the way for that truer view of the history and religion of Israel which the treatment of Chronicles as a trustworthy record of the past hopelessly obscured. In the criticism of the Pentateuch his most influential and enduring contributions to criticism are his proof that Deuteronomy is a work of the 7th century B.C., and his insistence that the theory of the Mosaic origin of all the institutions described in the Pentateuch is incompatible with the history of Israel as described in the historical books, Judges, Samuel and Kings.
Strong in historical criticism, De Wette was weak in historical construction. But what he failed to give, Ewald supplied, and if more of De Wette’s than of Ewald’s work still stands to-day, that is but an illustration of the melancholy Ewald. fact that in history negative criticism is surer than positive construction. But Ewald’s History of the People of Israel (1843-1859) was the first great attempt to synthesize the results of criticism and to present the history of Israel as a great reality of the past. By the force of his wide learning and even more of his personality, Ewald exercised for long an all-pervading and almost irresistible influence. He closes one epoch of Old Testament criticism; by his influence he retards the development of the next. Before passing to the new epoch it must suffice to make a simple reference to the philological work of Gesenius and Ewald, which assisted a sounder exegesis and so secured for later criticism a more stable basis.
The next stage brings us to the critical theories or conclusions which at first gradually and then rapidly, in spite of the keenest criticisms directed against them both by those who clung more or less completely to tradition and by the Vatke; Reuss. representatives of the earlier critical school, gained increasing acceptance, until to-day they dominate Old Testament study. The historico-critical starting-point of the movement was really furnished by De Wette: but it was Vatke who, in his Biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt (1835), first brought out its essential character. The fundamental peculiarity of the movement lies in the fact that it is a criticism of what is supreme in Israel—its religion, and that it has rendered possible a true appreciation of this by showing that, like all living and life-giving systems of thought, belief and practice, the religion of Israel was subject to development. It seized on the prophetic element, and not the ceremonial, as containing what is essential and unique in the religion of Israel. In literary criticism its fundamental thesis, stated independently of Vatke and in the same year by George in Die älteren jüdischen Feste, and in a measure anticipated by Reuss, who in 1832 was maintaining in his academical lectures that the prophets were older than the Law and the Psalms more recent than both, is that the chronological order of the three main sources of the Hexateuch is (1) the prophetic narratives (JE), (2) Deuteronomy, (3) the Priestly Code (P), the last being post-exilic. This entirely reversed the prevailing view that P with its exact details and developed ceremonial and sacerdotal system was at once the earliest portion of the Pentateuch and the Grundschrift or foundation of the whole—a view that was maintained by Ewald and, though with very important modifications, to the last by A. Dillmann (d. 1894). Inherent in this view of religious development and the new critical position were far-reaching changes in the literary, historical and religious criticism of the Old Testament: these have been gradually rendered clear as the fundamental positions on which they rest have been secured by the manifold work of two generations of scholars.
Nearly a generation passed before Vatke’s point of view gained any considerable number of adherents. This is significant. In part it may fairly be attributed to the retarding influence of the school of Ewald, but in large part also Graf; Kuenen; Wellhausen; Colenso. to the fact that Vatke, a pupil of Hegel, had developed his theory on a priori grounds in accordance with the principles of Hegel’s philosophy of history. It was only after a fresh and keener observation of facts that the new theory made rapid progress. For that, when it came, much was due to the work of Graf (a pupil of Reuss, whose Geschichtliche Bücher des Alten Testaments appeared in 1866); to the Dutch scholar Kuenen, who, starting from the earlier criticism, came over to the new, made it the basis of his Religion of Israel (1869-1870), a masterly work and a model of sound method, and continued to support it by a long series of critical essays in the Theologisch Tijdschrift; and to Wellhausen, who displayed an unrivalled combination of grasp of details and power of historical construction: his Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels was published in 1878 and translated into English in 1885; the history itself, Israelitische u. jüdische Geschichte, followed twenty years later, after much further critical work had been done in the meantime. Not a little also was due to Colenso (The Pentateuch ... critically examined, pt. i., 1862), who, though he never entirely accepted the new position, contributed by his searching analysis of the unreality of P’s narrative to the formation (for example, in the mind of Kuenen) or ratification of the judgment on that work which is fundamental to the general theory.
This sketch of the critical movement has now been brought down to the point at which the comprehensive conclusions which still dominate Old Testament study gained clear expression and were shown to be drawn from the observation of a large body of facts. It does not fall within the scope of this article to examine the validity of these conclusions, nor even to notice the various subsidiary or consequential conclusions. Nor again is it possible to survey the more special developments of literary criticism which have later emerged, amongst which one of the most important has been the radical examination of the prophetic writings introduced and developed by (amongst others) Stade, Wellhausen, Duhm, Cheyne, Marti.[22] The starting-point of this newer criticism of the prophets is the clearer practical recognition of the fact that all pre-exilic prophecy has come down to us in the works of post-exilic editors, and that for the old statement of the problem of the prophetic books—What prophecies or elements in Isaiah, Jeremiah and the rest are later than these prophets?—is to be substituted the new critical question—From these post-exilic collections how are the pre-exilic elements to be extracted? Bound up with this question of literary criticism is the very important question of the origin and development of the Messianic idea.
But two things, the extent of the influence of criticism and the relation of archaeology and criticism, yet remain for consideration, in the course of which it will be possible just to indicate some other problems awaiting solution.
It is one thing for scholars to reach conclusions: it is another for these conclusions to exercise a wide influence in the Churches and over general culture. In the 16th century we find obiter dicta of the Reformers challenging traditional opinions on the Influence of Criticism. origin and character of the Old Testament; in the 17th century, among certain isolated scholars, elementary critical surveys of the whole field, which exercised, however, no extensive influence. Nor was it till late in the 18th century that criticism seriously challenged the dominance of the Protestant scholastic treatment of the Old Testament on the one hand, and the rough and ready, uncritical explanations or depreciations of the Rationalists on the other. But Eichhorn’s Introduction appealed to more than technical scholars: its influence was great, and from that time forward criticism gradually or even rapidly extended its sway in Germany. Very different was the case in England; after Geddes and Lowth, at the close of the 18th, till far down into the 19th century, the attitude even of scholars (with rare exceptions) was hostile to critical developments, and no independent critical work was done. Pusey indeed studied under Eichhorn, and in his Historical Enquiry into the probable causes of the Rationalist Character lately predominant in German Theology (1828-1830) speaks sympathetically of the attitude of the Reformers on the question of Scripture and in condemnation of the later Protestant scholastic doctrine; but even in this book he shows no receptivity for any of the actual critical conclusions of Eichhorn and his successors, and subsequently threw the weight of his learning against critical conclusions—notably in his Commentary on Daniel (1864). Dean Stanley owed something to Ewald and spoke warmly of him, but the Preface to the History of the Jewish Church in which he does so bears eloquent testimony to the general attitude towards Old Testament criticism in 1862, of which we have further proof in the almost unanimous disapprobation and far-spread horror with which Colenso’s Pentateuch, pt. i., was met on its publication in the same year.
From 1869 T.K. Cheyne worked indefatigably as a resourceful pioneer, but for many years, in view of the prevailing temper, with “extreme self-suppression” and “willingness to concede to tradition all that could with any plausibility be conceded.” (Cheyne, Origin of the Psalter, p. 15); more especially is his influence observable after 1890, when he published his Bampton Lectures, the Origin of the Psalter, a work of vast learning and keen penetration, without restraint on the freedom of his judgment—always stimulating to students and fellow-workers, though by no means always carrying large numbers with him. From about 1880 the prevailing temper had changed; within a decade of this date the change had become great; since then the influence of Old Testament criticism has grown with increased acceleration. The change in the former period with regard to a single point, which is however typical of many, is briefly summed up by Dr Cheyne: “In 1880 it was still a heresy to accept with all its consequences the plurality of authorship of the Book of Isaiah; in 1890 to a growing school of church-students this has become an indubitable fact” (Origin of the Psalter, xv.). By 1906 this plurality of authorship had become almost a commonplace of the market. Many, particularly of late, have contributed to the wide distribution, if not of the critical spirit itself, yet at least of a knowledge of its conclusions. To two only of the most influential is it possible to make more definite reference—to W. Robertson Smith and S.R. Driver. From 1875 onwards Smith contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica a long series of important articles, which, together with the articles of Cheyne, Wellhausen and others, made that work an important factor in the change which was to pass over English thought in regard to the Bible; in 1878, by his pleadings in the trial for heresy brought against him on the ground of these articles, he turned a personal defeat in the immediate issue into a notable victory for the cause which led to his condemnation; and subsequently (in 1880), in two series of lectures, afterwards published[23] and widely read, he gave a brilliant, and, as it proved, to a rapidly increasing number a convincing exposition of the criticism of the literature, history and religion of Israel, which was already represented in Germany by Wellhausen and in Holland by Kuenen. In 1891 Dr Driver published his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (6th ed., 1897); less popular in form than Smith’s lectures, it was a more systematic and comprehensive survey of the whole field of the literary criticism of the Old Testament. The position of the author as regius professor of Hebrew at Oxford and canon of Christ Church in succession to Pusey, and his well-established reputation as a profound Hebrew scholar, commanded wide attention; the qualities of the book itself—its marked sobriety, its careful discrimination between the differing degrees of probability attaching to various conclusions and suggestions, and in general its soundness of method—rapidly extended the understanding of what Old Testament criticism is and commanded acceptance of the well-established conclusions.
No less rapid has been the change in America during the same period, nor less numerous the scholars well equipped to pursue the detailed investigation involved in critical study or those who have shown ability in popular presentations of the critical standpoint.[24] Pre-eminent amongst these is C.A. Briggs, whose influence has been due in part to a large and varied body of work (Biblical Study, 1883, and many articles and volumes since) and in part to his organization of united critical, international and interconfessional labour, the chief fruits of which have been the Hebrew Lexicon (based on Gesenius, and edited by F. Brown, one of the most eminent of American scholars, S.R. Driver and himself), and the International Critical Commentary. Other important works in which English and American scholars have co-operated are the Encyclopaedia Biblica (1899-1903) and Hastings’ Bible Dictionary (1898-1904)—the latter less radical, but yet on the whole based on acceptance of the fundamental positions of Vatke, Graf, Wellhausen. Between either of these and Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible (1863) yawns a great gulf. Space forbids any attempt to sketch here the special growth of criticism in other countries, such as France, where the brilliant genius of Renan was in part devoted to the Old Testament, or within the Roman Catholic Church, which possesses in Père Lagrange, for example, a deservedly influential critical scholar, and in the Revue Biblique an organ which devotes much attention to the critical study of the Old Testament.
Rapid and extensive as has been the spread of critical methods, there have not been lacking anticritica. Many of these have been not only apologetic, but unscholarly; that is, however, not the case with all. In Dr James Orr’s learned work, The Problem of the Old Testament considered with reference to Recent Criticism (1906), the author’s chief aim is to prove insecure the fundamental positions of the now dominant school of criticism.