SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
A
DOUBTER'S DOUBTS about science and religion
APPENDIX
NOTE I
(Chap. VII. P. 88
ante)
THE CREATION.
As already noticed, if the first chapter of Genesis speaks
of "the Creation of the Universe" at all it is in the first verse. The very
word "create" is not used again save in verses 21 and 27, which relate to the
work of the fifth and sixth "days." And if the truth of evolution could be
scientifically established, the evolutionist might appeal to the language of
verses 11, 20, and 24 as affording proof that it has biblical sanction. And the
word rendered "create" has as wide a range of meaning as its English
equivalent. Neither in Hebrew nor in English does the word necessarily connote
a making out of nothing. Just as counters may represent different values at
different times, so is it with words; for words are only counters. And we need
to keep this in view as we read Gen. i. and ii. For instance, we are told that
God created man, and yet that He made him out of the dust of the earth.
Gen. 1. i is almost always read as though" created" were the emphatic word in
the verse. But in the Hebrew the structure of the sentence throws the emphasis
on GOD; and the Massorah intensifies this by inserting the Athnah, or pause
mark, after the Divine name. The burden of the first verse is that GOD was the
Creator. The second verse tells that at the time of which the narrative speaks
the earth existed in a condition of desolation and emptiness. But Isa. xlv. 18
declares that this was not its condition according to the design of its maker.
Of its earlier history we know nothing, save what geology may teach us : but
the sequel describes the refitting and refurnishing of the planet as a home for
the Adam race.
Our English version suggests that the heavenly bodies came
into existence on the fourth day; and this, combined with the figment that they
are mere satellites, has been seized on by infidels to discredit Scripture. But
we must insist that the same canon by which all other writings are construed
shall prevail in scriptural exegesis, viz., that when words bear different
meanings, that meaning is to be accepted which is consistent with the context
and with known facts And, as we have seen, Gen. 1. 14-18 may be the description
of phenomena. My purpose here, however, is not to expound the Scripture, but
merely to enter a protest against confounding what Genesis says with what men
say about it.
NOTE II
(Chap. XII. p. 149 ante)
THE BOOK OF
DANIEL.
Professor Driver's Book of Daniel ("Cambridge Bible "series), which
is an expansion of the "Daniel" section of his Introduction, reproduces the
farrago of "errors" and arguments which were formulated by Bertholdt just a
century ago, and have been the stock-in-trade of the rationalists ever since.
Archeological discoveries have disposed of most of them, but still they serve
their purpose. I have dealt with them elsewhere fully and in detail.' And even
if they were all as weighty as most of them are frivolous, the Christian would
brush them aside in view of the fulfilled prophecy of "the Seventy Weeks," and
the fact that the book has been accredited by Christ.
The presence of Greek
words in Daniel, we are told, "demands" a date for the book after Alexander's
conquests. In Bertholdt's day the presence of Greek words in Daniel did seem to
"demand" a late date for the book; for it was then supposed that there were ten
such words, and that there was no intercourse between ancient Babylon and
Greece. But in view of the discoveries of the last century, and the now
admitted fact that the Greek words in Daniel are not ten, but only two, and
these the names of musical instruments, the rejection of the book on
philological grounds is in part an anachronism and in part a puerility.
A
like remark applies to his list of "historical errors." When I last reissued my
Daniel in the Critics' Den, Darius the Mede was the only "historical
difficulty" which seemed to remain unsolved. But there appears to be no longer
any doubt that this Darius was Gobryas, Governor of Kurdistan, the General who
commanded the army of Cyrus that captured Babylon. Gobryas was the son of
Cyaxeres (Ahasuerus in the Hebrew) and the brother and heir-apparent of
Astyages, the last King of the Medes. (Xenophon calls him his son, in error,
for Herodotus states that Astyages had no son.) In his youth he would have
known Cyrus, who attended the Median Court; and this, combined with the fact of
his kingly rank, may well have led Cyrus to trust and honour him. "Darius" was
doubtless a "throne name" (like "Artaxerxes." Josephus mentions that he had
another name among the Greeks). A most striking confirmation of this is
supplied by a statement in Ezra vi. I, 2. The decree issued by Cyrus for the
building of the temple, which could not be found either in the Chaldean or the
Persian capital, was at last discovered in the capital of Kurdistan. How, then,
could it have got to Ecbatana? The obvious solution of this enigma is that, for
some reason or other, Gobryas was sent back to his own province, and that he
carried with him the archives of his rule in Babylon. The language of Daniel
ix. i clearly indicates that he was a vassal king (he "was made king over the
realm").
The most important item in "the errors of Daniel" is the opening
statement of the book, that in the third year of Jehoiakim Nebuchadnezzar
besieged and took Jerusalem. But the ground on which this is rejected as a
blunder is itself a blunder so grotesque that it deserves more than a passing
notice.
Josephus gives an extract from the lost history of Berosus, which
states that while on this expedition Nebuchadnezzar received tidings of his
father's death, and that "he hastened home across the desert." And blindly
following his German guides, Professor Driver's gloss on this is that the news
reached him at Carchemish, after the battle in which he defeated the Egyptians,
and that he returned from there to Babylon and never invaded Judea at all. But
Carchemish is on the Euphrates; and "to hasten home" from Carchemish to Babylon
across the desert would be as extraordinary a feat as if Professor Driver
hastened home from London to Oxford across the county of Kent or Hampshire! The
fact that the desert lay between Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon is conclusive proof
that in his homeward journey he set out from Palestine. But this is only a part
of the blunder. The extract from Berosus, which Professor Driver quotes,
mentions expressly his Jewish prisoners. How could he have had Jewish prisoners
if he had not invaded Judea? The Jews were not a party to the Battle of
Carchemish. That battle, moreover, was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and
after Nebuchadnezzar's accession (Jer. xlvi. ~ cf. xxv. i) ; whereas the
expedition mentioned by Berosus and Daniel was in his third year, before his
father's death. This, I may add, reconciles every chronological statement in
the various books.
NOTE III
(Chap. XII. p. i6i ante)
THE OLD
TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS.
As I wish to be fair to my opponents, I give
here in extenso the concluding passage of the Preface to Professor Driver's
Introduction. He writes
"It is objected, however, that some of the
conclusions of critics respecting the Old Testament are incompatible with the
authority of our blessed Lord, and that in loyalty to Him we are precluded from
accepting them. That our Lord appealed to the Old Testament as the record of a
revelation in the past, and as pointing forward to Himself, is undoubted; but
these aspects of the Old Testament are perfectly consistent with a critical
view of its structure and growth. That our Lord in so appealing to it designed
to pronounce a verdict on the authorship and age of its different parts, and to
foreclose all future inquiry into these subjects, is an assumption for which no
sufficient ground can be alleged. Had such been His aim, it would have been out
of harmony with the entire method and tenor of His teaching. In no single
instance (so far as we are aware) did He anticipate the results of scientific
inquiry or historical research. The aim of His teaching was a religious one; it
was to set before men the pattern of a perfect life, to move them to imitate
it, to bring them to Himself. He accepted as the basis of His teaching the
opinions respecting the Old Testament current around Him: He assumed, in His
allusions to it, the premises which His opponents recognised, and which could
not have been questioned (even had it been necessary to question them) without
raising issues for which the time was not yet ripe, and which, had they been
raised, would have interfered scriously with the paramount purpose of His life.
There is no record of the question whether a particular portion of the Old
Testament was written by Moses, or David, or Isaiah, having been ever submitted
to Him; and had it been so submitted, we have no means of knowing what His
answer would have been. The purposes for which our Lord appealed to the Old
Testament; its prophetic significance, and the spiritual lessons deducible from
it, are not, as has been already remarked above, affected by critical
inquiries. Criticism in the hands of Christian scholars does not banish or
destroy the inspiration of the Old Testament-it presupposes it; it seeks only
to determine the conditions under which it operates, and the literary forms
through which it manifests itself; and it thus helps us to frame truer
conceptions of the methods which it pleased God to employ in revealing Himself
to His ancient people of Israel, and in preparing the way for the fuller
manifestation of Himself in Christ Jesus".
I appeal to all spiritual
Christians whether it is not a thorough misrepresentation of the Lord's
ministry to assert that "the aim of His teaching . . . was to set before men
the pattern of a perfect life." He could not but be the Great Exemplar, but
this was purely incidental. His supreme aim was to fulfil "all things which
were written in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms
concerning Himself."
And I appeal to all honest men whether the words
quoted are not a flagrant misrepresentation of the question here at issue;
which is not as to the authorship and date of writings accepted as inspired
Scriptures, but as to whether the Mosaic books be priestly forgeries of the
later period of the Monarchy. The Book of Jeremiah enlightens us as to the
character of the priests of that era. Against them it was that his prophecies
were mainly directed (see, e.g., i. i8; v. 31); and the "laity" had to
intervene to prevent their murdering him (xxvi. 8, i6). Yet the "critical
hypothesis" is that the books were concocted by these miscreants!
The great
covenant name of God is deemed so sacred and held in such awe by the Jews that
they never utter it even in public worship; and yet in Leviticus-the briefest
book of the Pentateuch-it is used more than 300 times, and nearly 40 times we
find the solemn formula, "Jehovah spake unto Moses." If this be not the
authentic record of a Divine revelation, the wanton profanity of it is
unspeakably infamous. It need not be said that Dr. Driver is incapable of
either wilful misrepresentation or profanity; but it is evident that his mind
is swayed by the superstitious belief that because" the Church" accredits the
whole Bible as Divine it is immaterial whether its contents are the work of
inspired prophets or of apostate priests. Certain it is that he and his
co-editors and writers of the Bible Dictionary are the dupes of "current German
notions respecting the Divine authority and revelation of the Old Testament."
By thus acting as jackals to the German rationalists these men have lowered the
standard of biblical scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic. But infinitely
more deplorable is it that they have dethroned the Bible from the place it used
to hold in every Christian home; and as the result "family worship"
-to use
the good old term - is fast dying out. For the practical common sense of the
Britisher and the American cannot be deluded by pious claptrap about the
inspiration of writings which, if the "Higher Criticism" has proved its case,
ought to be relegated to the Apocrypha. We are charged, forsooth, with
superstitiously clinging to discredited traditional beliefs! My answer is,
first, that such a taunt comes ill from such a quarter. Both Christian and
Rationalist stand clear of superstition; but superstition alone supports the
attempted compromise between infidelity and faith, which even their ally,
Professor Cheyne, deplores in this Bible Dictionary school of critics. And
further, "the assured results of modern criticism" will not bear examination by
any one who is competent to test them (see Chap. XII. ante). The sham " Higher
Criticism" will live only so long as it remains the preserve of the preacher
and the pundit.
I will quote in conclusion the following bold and honest
words of Dean Alford :-
"It is important to observe in these days how the
Lord here includes the Old Testament and all its unfolding of the Divine
purposes regarding Himself in His teaching of the citizens of the kingdom of
heaven. I say this, because it is always in contempt and setting aside of the
Old Testament that Rationalism has begun. First its historical truth, then its
theocratic dispensation and the types and prophecies connected with it, are
swept away; so that Christ came to fulfil nothing, and becomes only a teacher
or a martyr; and thus the way is paved for a similar rejection of the New
Testament-beginning with the narratives of the birth and infancy as theocratic
myths-advancing to the denial of his miracles-then attacking the truthfulness
of His own sayings, which are grounded on the Old Testament as a revelation
from God-and so finally leaving us nothing in the Scriptures but, as a German
writer of this school has expressed it, "a mythology not so attractive as that
of Greece." That this is the course which unbelief has run in Germany should be
a pregnant warning to the decriers of the Old Testament among ourselves. It
should be a maxim for every expositor and every student that Scripture is a
whole, and stands or falls together. (Greek Testament, Matt. v. 18.)
THE END
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