Jean Astruc (1753) practically started the popular method of Modernism when he ascribed the authorship of Genesis to two authors because Gen. 1 used the word-Elohim-for God; whereas Gen. 2 used the words-Jehovah Elohim. We ask in astonishment, Was this a sufficient reason for the assertion that the book of Genesis had two authors?
For instance, what would be thought of a critic, who, reading a life of Napoleon Bonaparte, and finding in one part the little Corsican described as Napoleon, and in another part as Napoleon Bonaparte, came to the conclusion that the book was compiled from two documents by an unknown editor, or redactor, as the Modernists are fond of describing such an individual? Would we not think that he had taken leave of his senses?
And when we remember this idea originated with a profligate Frenchman, we should wonder how the idea caught on, if we did not know how well it suits unconverted men to accept anything, which appears to undermine the authority of the Book which witnesses against them.
But Wellhausen, as we have seen, completely threw Astruc into the shade with his imaginary discovery of no less than twenty-two different authors for the Books of Moses-all unknown.
We may well ask, Was there any occasion in all the literature of the world, when an editor produced a volume made up of the writings of twenty-two different authors, more or less, and succeeded in foisting them upon a whole nation as the writing of one of their greatest men, and received as such without question for many centuries? And yet, this is what we are asked to believe in the case of Moses and the Jewish nation.
We should suppose that men nearer the time would know more about it than German professors at this late date. Men-able men too-much nearer the time received the five books as of Mosaic authorship without question. We say well ask, Why is the Bible of all the books in the world singled out for such treatment?
The fact that Wellhausen's twenty-two authors are all anonymous deepens suspicion. If such existed, they were wonderfully brilliant men to have produced among them the five books of Moses. There is absolutely nothing approaching them in ancient literature. But to believe that some editor, or redactor, pieced together the writings of twenty-two different authors, and made a coherent whole of them, so much so, that for centuries able men never suspected how the book was put together, would require infinitely more credulity to believe than it does to believe that God inspired Moses to write the five books, which bear his name.
It reminds me of an American story. In the States, insects in the fields are commonly called "bugs." At one of the colleges there was an eminent professor of "bugology," and one day his students determined to play a practical joke upon him.
They procured specimens of several varieties of bugs, and securing the head of one, the wings of another, the legs of a third, the body of a 'fourth and so on, they then carefully pieced the different members together and approached the professor. They invited him to examine this new specimen. They were sure the learned professor would know the variety and be able to tell them its name.
He carefully examined the object placed before him, and then gravely announced: "Gentlemen, this bug is a humbug."
So the Modernists' "Bible" is a humbug, and a patent humbug at that. How reasonable men can believe that such literary frauds could be imposed upon a nation passes our comprehension.
How then could these twenty-two different authors have provided material to have produced such a result, even in the hands of a skilful redactor? And if the twenty-two authors were brilliant men of letters, who must this super-genius be who could piece the different pamphlets into one and make a coherent whole? The author of such a surpassingly brilliant feat could no more expect to be hid than the sun at midday in a cloudless sky. And yet he is anonymous.
Rousseau, an immoral infidel by his own confession, said: " It is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write a history, than that one should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel. The marks of its truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero."
If only these Modernists would submit themselves to a test where their "assured results" could be proved one way or the other, the conceit would certainly be taken out of them.
It would have the same result, we are assured, as that which an orthodox minister imposed upon a Modernist minister. They were both attending a summer conference in America, and one day they began discussing in a friendly way the merits of Higher Criticism.
The orthodox minister asked his Higher Critic friend whether he knew two speakers at the Conference, whom we will call Mr. A. and Mr. B.
He replied that he knew them both quite well, had read their writings, had heard them preach often, and had frequently met them in private.
The orthodox minister then went to Mr. A. and asked him to write an account of one day's proceedings at the Conference. He then made the same request to Mr. B.
The accounts were written and the orthodox pastor became a sort of redactor, mixing up the two writers so as to form an intelligible whole.
He then handed the result to his Higher Critic friend, asking him to separate Mr. A.'s account from Mr. B.'s, and restore the original documents.
The result was a ludicrous failure.
Now if a man, with the information that the paper put into the hands was actually written by two authors, whom he knew personally, and whose styles he was familiar with, could not unravel the work of each, what chance has a Western professor in the nineteenth century after Christ to unravel writings of twenty-two Eastern authors, dating long centuries before Christ?
Both the source of Modernism and its methods leave us utterly skeptical as to its " assured results."
Canon Cheyne is the name of a well-known English Higher Critic, who followed in the steps of Wellhausen, and even surpassed him in his wild guesses.
Bishop Welldon writes of him: "At the hands of such a critic as the late Dr. Cheyne it [higher criticism] aspires to fix the dates not only of particular books, but even of particular chapters and even verses in the same book. Dr. Cheyne's method of treating the Psalter and the Prophetical books falls LITTLE SHORT OF INSANITY." MODERNISM, p. 4.
Rev. Dr. Hanson giving his presidential address to the Metropolitan Free Church Federation at Marylebone (November 27th, 1906), explaining Dr. Driver's treatment of Gen. 7:99There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. (Genesis 7:9) says:- Dr. Driver cuts this single verse into five separate scraps, then alters a word to suit the theory that he has adapted, and finally adopts a clause from another verse lower down, simply because he was unable to find a place for it elsewhere according to the hypothesis which governs his analysis, and he did not wish to leave it hanging in mid-air. Imagine analysis conducted in that fashion through a whole book. Yet this, if you please, is criticism. At the risk of outraging the proprietries, I venture to call it nonsense. Let a man believe in such analysis if he can; but, for my part, I do not hesitate to call it laborious trifling, which can only commend itself to those who have a theory to support, and impudence enough to offer it for the acceptance of thoughtful men. Such reconstruction is surely the most elaborate jest of modern times I marvel at the critics' want of humor." INVULNERABLE CERTAINTIES, p. 10.
The writer was in correspondence recently with a very leading Modernist and ventured to remark that his writings gave evidence that his modern views were most evidently moderated and held in check by his early training. He ventured to quote the words of Dr. W. H. Green of Princeton University:- " They who have themselves been grounded in the Christian faith may by A HAPPY INCONSISTENCY hold fast their old convictions, while admitting principles, methods, and conclusions that are logically at war with them_ But who can be surprised if others shall with stricter logic carry what has thus been commended to them to its legitimate conclusions?"
He found that his surmises were correct, for this leading modernist replied:- " I was brought up in the strictest school of verbal inspiration, and was compelled to move away from it under the sheer pressure of my study of the actual phenomena of Scripture."
The writer replied that what concerned him was that the coming generation will largely begin where the Modernist of the present generation leaves off, and that they will carry Modernism to its legitimate and logical conclusion, viz.: to blank infidelity. The apostasy of Christendom is foretold in the Scriptures, and Modernism is hastening the fulfillment of this prophecy. When the Church of God is caught up at the second coming of Christ, nothing but the empty shell of a Christless profession will be left, and it will then only need a step or two more to complete the process, and Christendom will be fully and unabashedly apostate. To this end Modernism is helping.
It is deeply instructive that what moved this Modernist leader from his early belief in verbal inspiration worked exactly the other way in the case of the distinguished Hebrew scholar and author of that monumental book, " The True Value of the Old Testament," the late Rev. A. H. Finn. He wrote:- "For myself (if I may be pardoned a personal reference) it was the utterly unscientific methods employed in the so-called ' scientific criticism ' as they are set forth in higher critical works that repelled me before ever I had studied the works on the other side." (p. 12).
The late Professor Orr, the holder of a Theological chair, was just as severe. He wrote:- " The radical vice of the newer critical method is its continual substitution of arbitrary conjecture for the facts of history." PROBLEM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, p. 119.
With Bishop Welldon, a classical scholar, describing Cheyne's method of criticism as " little short of insanity," and the Rev. A. H. Finn's charging " scientific criticism " with employing " utterly unscientific methods," and Professor Orr's damaging stricture, we are certainly entitled to submit Modernistic teaching to the severest test, since its origin and methods are so questionable.