Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/364

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344
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
hitherto prevailed of the history of Israel, and in particular of the work of Moses. On the other hand, one result will certainly remain, that the Pentateuch was not composed by Moses himself, but was compiled by later editors from various original sources. . . . But the very variety of these sources may be applied in favor of the credibility of the Pentateuch.

In other words, it may be said that Dr. Strack regards it as established that "The Law of Moses" is a title of the same character as "The Psalms of David" the whole collection being denominated from its principal author. But he is convinced that the general conclusions of the prevalent school of Old Testament criticism, which involve an entire subversion of our present conceptions of Old Testament history, will not be maintained. In the face of this opinion, it does not seem presumptuous to express an apprehension that the younger school of Hebrew scholars in England, of whose concessions Mrs. Ward makes so much, have gone too far and too fast; and, at all events, it is clear from what Dr. Strack says—and I might quote also Delitzsch and Dillmann—that it is much too soon to assume that the school of whose conquests Mrs. Ward boasts is supreme. B\it, even supposing it were, what has this to do with the admitted and undoubted failures on the other side, in the field of New Testament criticism? If it be the fact, as Mrs. Ward does not deny, that not only Strauss's but Baur's theories and conclusions are now rejected; if it has been proved that Baur was entirely wrong in supposing the greater part of the New Testament books were late productions, written with a controversial purpose, what is the use of appealing to the alleged success of the German critics in another field? If Baur is confuted, he is confuted, and there is an end of his theories; though he may have been useful, as rash theorizers have often been, in stimulating investigation. In the same valuable hand-book of Dr. Zöchler's, already quoted, I find, under the "History of the Science of Introduction to the New Testament," the heading (page 15, vol. i, part 2), "Result of the controversy and end of the Tübingen school."

The Tübingen school (the writer concludes, p. 20) could not but fall as soon as its assumptions were recognized and given up. As Hilgenfeld confesses, "it went to an unjustifiable length, and inflicted too deep wounds on the Christian faith. . . . No enduring results in matters of substance have been produced by it."

Such is the judgment of an authoritative German hand-book on the writer to whom, in Merriman's opinion, "we owe all that we really know at the present moment about the New Testament," as though the Christian thought and life of eighteen hundred years had produced no knowledge on that subject!

In fact, Mrs. Ward's comparison seems to me to point in exactly the opposite direction: