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THE EVOLUTION OF OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION




    THE EVOLUTION OF OLD
    TESTAMENT RELIGION

    BY
    W. E. ORCHARD, B.D.

    LONDON
    JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET
    1908




    TO
    My Wife




PREFACE


The substance of this book was originally delivered as a Course of
Lectures to a week-night congregation. The Lecture form has been
retained, and this accounts for the repetition of the leading ideas,
while the practical interests of Church life account for the insistence
on the religious value and lesson. It is hoped that this, which might
be irritating to the professional student, may be helpful to the
ordinary reader who is repelled by the technicality of critical works,
and often fails to discern the devout spirit by which such works are
inspired, or to discover what religious interest is served by them.

Where everything is borrowed from other writers, and no claim to
originality is made, detailed acknowledgment would be impossible, but
the resolve to attempt some such course in place of the usual form of a
week-night service was formed in the Hebrew class-room of Westminster
College, Cambridge, while listening to the Lectures on Old Testament
Theology and Messianic Prophecy, delivered by the Rev. Professor Dr.
Skinner (now Principal), in which accurate scholarship was combined
with a deep insight into the present religious importance of these
subjects. Grateful acknowledgment is also due to the Rev. J.R. Coates,
B.A., who kindly read through the proofs and made many valuable
suggestions.

                    W. E. ORCHARD.

    ENFIELD, _August, 1908_.




CONTENTS


    LECTURE                                         PAGE

          INTRODUCTION                               vii

       I. THE SEMITIC RACES                           19

      II. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS       31

     III. MOSAISM                                     55

      IV. THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN                     83

       V. PROPHETISM--EARLY STAGES                   107

      VI. THE RELIGION OF THE LITERARY PROPHETS      135

     VII. THE EFFECT OF THE EXILE                    169

    VIII. THE WORK OF THE PRIESTS                    195

      IX. THE RELIGION OF THE PSALMISTS              215

       X. THE RELIGION OF THE WISE                   241

      XI. MESSIANIC EXPECTATIONS                     265




INTRODUCTION


It is a matter of common knowledge that within the last few decades a
tremendous change has come over our estimate of the value of the Old
Testament, and that this change is of the gravest importance for our
understanding of religion. But what the exact nature of the change
is, and what we are to deduce from it, is a matter of debate, for the
facts are only known to professional students and to a few others who
may have been led to interest themselves in the subject. With some,
for instance, the idea prevails that the Old Testament has been so
discredited by modern research that its religious significance is now
practically worthless. Others believe that the results arrived at are
untrue, and regard them as the outcome of wicked attacks made upon the
veracity of the Word of God by men whose scholarship is a cloak for
their sinister designs or a mask of their incapacity to comprehend its
spiritual message. There is perhaps a middle course open to some who
have found a message of God to their souls in the Old Testament, and
who, on hearing that the authorship of this book has been questioned
or the historicity of that passage assailed, are unmoved, because
they believe that it does not matter who wrote the Pentateuch or the
Psalms so long as through these documents they hear the voice of the
living Word of God. Here then is a subject on which there exists a
distressing confusion, and, moreover, a subject in which ignorance
plays no small part. Save with a few devout souls who have made a long
and continuous study of the Scriptures, it may be doubted whether there
is any widespread knowledge of the actual message of the Old Testament,
even among Christian people. There are certainly many people willing to
defend the authority of the Bible who spend very little time in reading
it. The favourite Psalms and the evangelical passages of Isaiah are
probably well known, and beyond this there is but the knowledge gained
in early days, from which stand out in the memory the personalities
of Samson and Saul, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the lion's den,
together with the impressive stories of the Flood, the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the fall of
Jericho. A very little is probably carried away from the public reading
of the Scriptures in places of worship. It cannot be said that this
acquaintance conveys any real impression of the magnificent message
that lies embedded in these thirty-nine books which go to make up the
Old Testament. Now whatever harm may be charged to the modern methods,
it can at least be claimed that neglected portions have been carefully
studied, the meaning of obscure passages discovered, and much of
importance and interest brought to light; but more than this, it has
been discovered that the essential message of the Old Testament lies
largely apart from those narratives and personalities that impress the
superficial reader, and rather in the record of a gradual development
of the conception of God and of His purpose in calling Israel to be the
recipient of His self-disclosure. It has been found that the striking
figures of the landscape are of less importance than the road that
winds among them along which revelation moves to its final goal.

It may be objected that the new inspiration, which so many who have
studied the Scriptures by these methods claim to have felt, throws
quite a new emphasis on our conception of the Old Testament and
is revolutionary of all that we have been accustomed to believe
concerning it; that the methods are such as could not legitimately
be applied to the Word of God, and are the products of a criticism
which is puffed up with a sense of its own superiority; and that the
results are discreditable to the Old Testament, since they allege
that some of the narratives are unhistorical, some passages and even
whole books unauthentic, and traditions on which the gravest issues
have been staked shown to have nothing more than a legendary basis.
There is much in these objections that is natural, but much that
is misunderstanding. It is true that the contribution which the Old
Testament makes to religion is estimated differently from what it was
fifty years ago, and it must be allowed that this brings a charge of
having misunderstood the Scriptures against generations of scholars
and saints. But it is admitted that all matters of knowledge are open
to misunderstanding. It is no argument against the conception that
the earth moves round the sun, that the contrary idea was held in
other ages. We know that the understanding of the Old Testament has
been obscured, often by those who ought to have been the greatest
authorities on its meaning. Jesus read into the Scriptures a meaning
unrecognised by the authorities of His day, and dealt with them in a
fashion that was regarded as revolutionary. To some of the Scriptures
He appealed as to a final authority, but others He regarded as
imperfect and only suited to the time in which they were written. The
Jews of His day venerated every letter of the sacred writings, and
regarded the very copies of the Law as sacred to the touch, and yet on
their understanding of the Scriptures they rejected the mission and
message of Jesus. Christian scholarship has undoubtedly followed rather
after the Rabbis than after Christ. The message of the Old Testament
that the new methods have made clear certainly appears to be more in
conformity with the Spirit of Christ than with that of His opponents,
and if this is revolutionary then it is no new thing; religion always
moves along such lines.

Great offence has been caused and insuperable prejudice aroused among
many by the name under which these methods have become known. The
name, "higher criticism," conveys to most people a suggestion of
carping fault-finding and an assumption of superiority. This is due to
an entire misunderstanding of a technical term. Criticism is nothing
more than the exercise of the faculty of judgment, and, moreover,
judgment that ought to be perfectly fair. The sinister suggestion
that is conveyed in the word is due to the fact that our criticisms
are so often biassed by personal prejudices. But this only condemns
our faults, and not the method. "Higher" criticism does not mean any
assumption of superiority, but is simply a term used to distinguish it
from "lower" criticism. The criticism that endeavours to ascertain the
original text by a comparison of the various documents available is
called _lower_, and that which deals with matters higher up the stream
of descent by which the writings have been conveyed to us, namely,
matters of date and authorship, is called _higher_ criticism. It might
well be called literary and historical criticism, in distinction from
textual criticism. It employs historical methods, and uses the simple
tests of comparison and contemporaneity. For the understanding of a
particular age, it prefers those documents that describe the times in
which they were written, and give indirect evidence, rather than those
histories which were written long after the event and which reveal a
purpose other than the strictly historical. Fortunately, we have in
the Old Testament many such contemporary and indirect witnesses in the
writings of the Prophets. They are not consciously writing history,
but they tell us indirectly what the practices of their day were, and
especially what religious ideas were prevalent; for it is these things
that they feel called upon to attack. With these reliable standards we
can compare the regular histories, which were necessarily written at a
much later age, and very often to serve some religious purpose.

Now it is this method, which is surely a true and proper one, that
has changed our estimate of the history and development of religion
in Israel. Are we to condemn the method without examination because
it destroys certain traditions about the Bible which we have received
largely from Judaism?--the Judaism which could find no place for Jesus!
But it will be answered that these methods yield results that are
incompatible with the inspiration of the Bible, and are unworthy of
God's revelation to us. But how are we to decide what is compatible
with inspiration? We can only tell, surely, by seeing what these
results are and by discovering whether they bring any inspiration to
us. Can we be certain, without examining the facts, to what lines the
revelation of God is to be restricted? Is this not coming to the Bible
with a theory which we have manufactured and which will surely distort
the facts? It will be said that anything less than absolute accuracy
makes void any claim to be a Divine revelation. Let us consider what
this means. We know that the historical spirit, which endeavours to
see history as it actually happened quite apart from our desires or
sympathies, is an ideal which has only emerged with the general spread
of education, and that in ancient times history was written largely
with a view to edification, and especially for giving such lessons
as would lead to right principles being adopted for the future. It
was not the accuracy of the material but suitability for its purpose
that weighed with the historian. Now, with these conditions existing,
was it impossible for God to speak to men through their conceptions
of history, or had He to wait until the historical spirit prevailed?
Could He not use the early legends which they believed, and through
them bring the truth to men? We know that the greatest of all religious
teachers did not scruple to embody the highest truths in such parables
as lowly minds could receive. We may demand that revelation shall be
infallible, but this would need in turn an infallible person to receive
it, and even then an infallible interpreter. An infallible revelation
would mean that there could never be any progress in revelation; that
it would have to be given perfect in one process; that it would have
to be authenticated to men by authority,