posed by Zerubbabel. It begins with these words, The Words of the Preacher, the Son of David, King of Jerusalem; which may be applied to Hezekiah as well as to Solomon: . . we ought rather to understand it of Solomon. . . . The Song of Songs . . . is allowed to be Solomon's by the consent of the synagogue and the church. The Talmudists attribute it to Ezrah, but without grounds. The books of the Prophets carry the names of their authors undisputed."1

About the same time several Roman Catholic divines, as well as Vitringa, took ground independently in favour of the theory of the use of written documents by Moses in the composition of Genesis. So Abbé Fleury,2 and Abbé Laurent François ; 3 but it was chiefly Astruc, a physician, who in 17531 made it evident that Genesis was composed of several documents. He presented to the learned world, with some hesitation and timidity, his discovery that the use of the divine names, Elohim and Jehovah, divided the book of Genesis into two great memoirs and nine lesser ones.

This was a real discovery, which, after a hundred years of debate, has at last won the consent of the vast majority of biblical scholars. His analysis is in some respects too mechanical, and, in not a few instances, is defective and needed rectification, but as a whole it has been maintained. He relies also too much upon the different use of the divine names, and too little upon variations in style, language, and narrative. The attention of German scholars was called to this discovery by Jerusalem. Eichhorn was independently led to the same conclusion. But still more important than the work of Astruc was that of Bishop Lowth,8 who unfolded the principles of par

1 l.c., pp. 1-5.

2 Mœurs des Israelites, Bruxelles, 1701, p. 6. This was translated into English and enlarged by Adam Clarke. 3d edition, 1809.

3 Preuves de la Religion de Jesus Christ, contra les Spinosistes et les Deistes, 1751, I. 2, c. 3, art. 7.

4 In his Conjectures sur les Memoires originaux dont il paroit que Moyse s'est servi pour le livre de la Genèse.

6 See Briggs, Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, new edition, 1897, pp. 46 seq.

6 In his Briefe über d. Mosaischen Schriften, 1762, Ste Aufl., 1783, pp. 104 seq.

7 Urgeschichte in the Repertorium, T. iv., 1779, especially T. v., 1779.

8 In De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum, 1753, and, 1779, in Prelim. Diss., and Translation of the Prophecies of Isaiah.

allelism in Hebrew poetry, and made it possible to study the Old Testament as literature, discriminating poetry from prose, and showing that the greater part of prophecy is poetical. His work on Hebrew poetry was issued in Germany by Michaelis, and his translation of Isaiah by Koppe, who took the position that this prophetical book was made up of a number of documents loosely put together from different authors and different periods.1 Lowth himself did not realize the importance of this discovery for the literary criticism of the Scriptures, but thought that it would prove of great service to Textual Criticism in the suggesting of emendations of the text in accordance with the parallelism of members.

The poet Herder2 first caught the Oriental spirit and life and brought to the attention of the learned the varied literary beauties of the Bible, and "reconquered, so to say, the Old Testament for German literature." 4

But these writings were all preparatory to the work of J. G. Eichhorn, in 1780.5 Eichhorn combined in one the results of Simon and Astruc, Lowth and Herder, embracing the various elements in an organic method which he called the Higher Criticism. In the preface to his second edition, 1787, he says:

1 Koppe, Robert Lowth's Jesaias neu übersetzt nebst einer Einleitung mit Zusätze und Anmerkungen, 4 Bd., Leipzig, 1779–1780.

2 In 1780 he published his Briefe über das Studium der Theologie, and in 1782 his Geist der Heb. Poesie.

3 Herder in his first Brief says: "Richard Simon is the Father of the Criticism of the Old and New Testaments in recent times." "A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament, as it ought to be, we have not yet." 1780. In 2d Auf., 1785. It is said on the margin, "We have it now in Eichhorn's valuable Einleit. ins Alt. Test., 1780-1783."

4 Dorner in Johnson's Encyclopædia, II. p. 528.

5 Einleit. ins Alt. Test. As Bertheau remarks in Herzog's Real Ency., I. Aufl., IV. 115: "In Eichhorn's writings the apologetic interest is everywhere manifest, to explain, as he expresses it, the Bible according to the ideas and methods of thought of the ancient world, and to defend it against the scorn of the enemies of the Bible. He recognized the exact problem of his times clearer than most of his contemporaries; he worked with unwearied diligence over the whole field of Biblical literature with his own independent powers; he paved the way to difficult investigations; he undertook many enterprises with good success, and conducted not a few of them to safe results. With Herder in common he has the credit of having awakened in wide circles love to the Bible, and especially the Old Testament writings, and excited enthusiasm carefully to investigate them."

"I am obliged to give the most pains to a hitherto entirely unworked field, the investigation of the internal condition of the particular writings of the Old Testament by help of the Higher Criticism (a new name to no Humanist). Let any one think what they will of these efforts, my own consciousness tells me that they are the result of very careful investigation, although no one can be less wrapt up in them than I their author. The powers of one man hardly suffice to complete such investigations so entirely at once. They demand a healthful and ever-cheerful spirit, and how long can any one maintain it in such toilsome investigations? They demand the keenest insight into the internal condition of every book; and who will not be dulled after a while?"

He begins his investigation of the books of Moses with the wise statement:

"Whether early or late? That can be learned only from the writings themselves. And if they are not by their own contents or other internal characteristic traces put down into a later century than they ascribe to themselves or Tradition assigns them, then a critical investigator must not presume to doubt their own testimony else he is a contemptible raisonneur, a doubter in the camp, and no longer an historical investigator. According to this plan I shall test the most ancient Hebrew writings, not troubling myself what the result of this investigation may be. And if therewith learning, shrewdness, and other qualifications which I desire for this work should fail me, yet, certainly no one will find lacking love of the truth and strict investigation."

These are the principles and methods of a true and manly scholar, the father of the Higher Criticism. It is a sad reflection that they have been so greatly and generally ignored on the scholastic and rationalistic sides. Eichhorn separated the Elohistic and Jehovistic documents in Genesis with great pains, and with such success that his analysis has been the basis of all critical investigation since his day. Its great advantages are admirably stated:

"For this discovery of the internal condition of the first books of Moses, party spirit will perhaps for a pair of decennials snort at the Higher Criticism instead of rewarding it with the full thanks that are due it, for (1) the credibility of the book gains by such a use of more ancient documents. (2) The harmony of the two narratives at the same time with their slight deviations proves

their independence and mutual reliability. (3) Interpreters will be relieved of difficulty by this Higher Criticism which separates document from document. (4) Finally the gain of Criticism is also great. If the Higher Criticism has now for the first distinguished author from author, and in general characterized each according to his own ways, diction, favorite expressions, and other peculiarities, then her lower sister who busies herself only with words, and spies out false readings, has rules and principles by which she must test particular readings."

1

Eichhorn carried his methods of Higher Criticism into the entire Old Testament with the hand of a master, and laid the foundation of views that have been maintained ever since with increasing determination. He did not always grasp the truth. He sometimes chased shadows, and framed visionary theories both in relation to the Old and New Testaments, like others who have preceded him and followed him. He could not transcend the limits of his age, and adapt himself to future discoveries. The labours of a large number of scholars, and the work of a century and more, were still needed, as Eichhorn modestly anticipated.

These discussions produced little impression upon Great Britain. The conflict with deism had forced the majority of her divines into a false position. If they had maintained the fides divina and the critical position of the Protestant Reformers and Westminster divines, they would not have hesitated to look the facts in the face, and strive to account for them; they would not have committed the grave mistakes by which biblical learning was almost paralyzed in Great Britain for half a century. Eager for the defence of traditional views, they,

1 In l.c., II. p. 329; see also Urgeschichte in Repertorium, 1770, V. p. 187. We cannot help calling attention to the fine literary sense of Eichhorn as manifest in the following extract: "Read it (Genesis) as two historical works of antiquity, and breathe thereby the atmosphere of its age and country. Forget then the century in which thou livest and the knowledge it affords thee; and if thou canst not do this, dream not that thou wilt be able to enjoy the book in the spirit of its origin."

"There

2 Mozley in his Reminiscences, 1882, Am. edit., Vol. II. p. 41, says: was hardly such a thing as Biblical Criticism in this country at the beginning of this century. Poole's Synopsis contained all that an ordinary clergyman could wish to know. Arnold is described as in all his glory at Rugby, with Poole's Synopsis on one side, and Facciolati on the other."

for the most part, fell back again on Jewish Rabbinical authority and external evidence, contending with painful anxiety for authors and dates; and so antagonized Higher Criticism itself as deistic criticism and rationalistic criticism, not discriminating between those who were attacking the Scriptures in order to destroy them, and those who were searching the Scriptures in order to defend them. It is true that the humanist and the purely literary interest prevailed in Eichhorn and his school; they failed to apply the fides divina of the Protestant Reformers; but this was lacking to the scholastics also, and so unhappily traditional dogmatism and rationalistic criticism combined to crush evangelical criticism.

VI. THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY There is a notable exception to the absence of the critical spirit in Great Britain, and that exception proves the rule. In 1792 Dr. Alexander Geddes, a Roman Catholic divine, proposed what has been called the fragmentary hypothesis to account for the structure of the Pentateuch and Joshua.1 But this radical theory found no hospitality in Great Britain. It passed over into Germany through Vater,2 and there entered into conflict with the documentary hypothesis of the school of Eichhorn. Koppe had proposed the fragmentary hypothesis to account for the literary features of the book of Isaiah, and now it was extended to other books of the Bible. Eichhorn had applied the documentary hypothesis to the Gospels, Isaiah, and other parts of Scripture. The first stadium of the Higher Criticism is characterized by the conflict of the documentary and fragmentary hypotheses along the whole line. The result of this discussion was that the great variety of the elements that constitute our Bible became more and more manifest, and the problem was forced upon the critics to account for their combination.

1 The Holy Bible; or, the Books accounted Sacred by Jews and Christians, etc. London, I. pp. xviii. seq.

2 Commentar über den Pentateuch mit Einleitungen zu den einzelnen Abschnitten der eingeschalteten von Dr. Alex. Geddes' merkwürdigeren kritischen und exegetischen Anmerkungen, etc. Halle, 1805.