ceremonial institutions carefully devised being shown to have come after the ruder beginnings of religious development instead of before them. Thus fell another main support of the older biblical theology.
To work out this new discovery and to close for a time this great line of Continental scholars came Kuenen. Starting with strong prepossessions in favor of the older thought, and even with violent utterances against some of his opponents, he was borne on by his love of truth until, in his great work, The Religion of Israel, published in 1869, he took his place as, in many respects, the leader in the upward movement. He, too, opened new paths. Recognizing the fact that the religion of Israel was, like other great world religions, a development of higher ideas out of lower, he led men to bring deeper thinking and wider research to the great problem. With ample learning and irresistible logic he also proved that the Old Testament prophecy was never supernaturally predictive, and least of all predictive of events recorded in the New Testament. Justly has one of the most eminent divines of the contemporary Anglican Church indorsed the statement of another eminent scholar that "Kuenen stood upon his watchtower, as it were the conscience of Old-Testament science"; that his work is characterized "not merely by fine scholarship, critical insight, historical sense, and a religious nature, but also by an incorruptible conscientiousness and a majestic devotion to the quest of truth."
Thus was established the science of biblical criticism. Its further development and results, especially in Great Britain and America, will be next considered.[1]
- ↑ For Lowth, see the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, D. D., Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, London, 1893, pp. 3, 4. For Astruc's very high character as a medical authority, see the Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, Paris, 1820. It is significant that at first he concealed his authorship of the Conjectures. For a brief statement see Cheyne; also, Moore's introduction to Bacon's Genesis of Genesis; but for a statement remarkably full and interesting, and based on knowledge at first hand of Astruc's very rare book, see Curtiss, as above. For Michaelis and Eichhorn, see Meyer, Geschichte der Exegese; also, Cheyne and Moore. For Isenbiehl, see Reusch in Allg. Deutsche Biographie. The texts cited against him were Isaiah, vii, 14, and Matt, i, 22, 23. For Herder, see various historians of literature and writers on exegesis. For his influence, as well as that of Lessing, see Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap. x. For a brief comparison of Lowth's work with that of Herder, see Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 3 7 1. For examples of interpretations of The Song of Songs, see Farrar, as above, p. 33. For Castellio (Chatillon), his anticipation of Herder's view of Solomon's Song, and his persecution by Calvin and Beza, which drove him to starvation and death, see Lecky, Rationalism, etc., vol. ii, pp. 46-48; also, Bayle's Dictionary, article Castalio; also, Montaigne's Essais, liv. i, chapit. xxxiv; and especially the new life of him by Buisson. For a remarkably frank acceptance of the consequences flowing from Herder's view of it, see Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 211-405. For Geddes, see Cheyne, as above. For De Wette and contemporaries, see Meyer, Cheyne, and others, as above. For Theodore Parker, see his various biographies, passim. For Reuss, Graf, and Kuenen, see Cheyne, as above; and for the citations referred to, see the Rev. Dr. Driver, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in The Academy, October 27, 1894; also, a note to Wellhausen's article Pentateuch, in the Encyclopædia Britannica. For the view of leading Christian critics on the book of Chronicles, see especially Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, pp. 495 et seq.; also Wellhausen, as above; also, Hooykaas, Oort, and Kuenen, Bible for Learners. For many of the foregoing see also the writings of Prof. W. Robertson Smith; also, Beard's Hibbert Lectures, chap. x. For Hupfeld and his discovery, see Cheyne, Founders, etc., as above, chap, vii; also, Moore's Introduction. For a justly indignant judgment of Hengstenberg and his school, see Canon Farrar's History of Interpretation, p. 417, note.
