Part 15

I do not know to what extent Mr. Darwin's views are likely to be permanent; but supposing that they, or any view of the same class, should eventually overcome all existing difficulties, and be generally regarded as representing the process by which it has pleased God to bring about man's physical and mental supremacy, then it can hardly seem strange that the same God should have adopted a course of progress and development in the spiritual and religious world. I say, emphatically, "if it has pleased God" to act thus; because if I accept the hypothesis of the nebular origin of planetary systems, or the supposition of the earth being a fluid globe gradually cooled, or even the assertion that our most ancient progenitors were marine animals, I must do so with the underlying assumption that it has pleased God so to work. I do not find fault with scientific men for not putting their theories in this form; but looking at the question from a religious, or even from a philosophical, point of view, I cannot consent to lose sight of God, as the intelligent maker of the whole. If this earth was originally a fluid mass, then I believe that that was the best, or, for anything I know to the contrary, the only way of making a world; if the marine animals, which Mr. Darwin sees through his scientific telescope, did become fish, and those fish eventually became men, then I believe that that was the best, or, for anything I know to the contrary, the only way of making men; and this being so, why may I not deal in the same manner with the alleged course of man's spiritual history? I have in my hands something which purports to be a revelation to my intellect, and to my soul, of the God who made me: that revelation is contained in a history which tells me that God spake at sundry times and in divers manners to the people of olden time, and that finally He spake by One who is called His Son. Now I do not say that this revelation is or is not a real one; but I do say that there is nothing to render us suspicious of its reality in the fact that it has been communicated gradually, that it has grown as the human race has grown, and that some of the steps in the process of revelation appear strange, or even, at first sight, unworthy of the grand scheme of which they form a part. No one has a right to find fault on this ground who has read the lessons of natural science, and observed how it points to gradual progression as a characteristic of the doings of God. Least of all can they find fault on this ground, who receive in whole, or even in part, the recent theories concerning the origin of man. I will not undertake to answer for those students who have gone deeply into these physical questions; but I do assert, without fear of contradiction, that to men of ordinary education, and ordinary habits of thought, the difficulties of accepting Scripture as the revelation of God to the human soul, however much those difficulties may be expounded or even exaggerated, are absolutely nothing as compared with the difficulty of accepting recent views of man's prodigious pedigree.

The fact is, that it is not so much the process by which a result has been brought about, as the result itself, which is the all-important thing. Whatever may have been the history of our earth in the dark dim distance of incalculable ages, we know that its present condition is very beautiful, and that it answers admirably well the purpose for which it seems to have been originally designed, namely, that of serving for the residence of intelligent man; and whatever may have been the process by which that creative work was consummated, which is described in Scripture as the making of man out of the dust, and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, we know that man is high above all the rest of creation, and worthy of being spoken of as being made in the image of God. And so in the case of man's spiritual history, we need not be over-careful to criticize the several steps when we are able to see the result; the question is, not so much whether the steps of God which we trace in Old Testament history be such steps as we should imagine that the Most High would have left, as whether the mystery of the Incarnation, and the truth that God has spoken to us by His own Son, be not worthy of all acceptation. If Christ be worthy of our adoration and love, then, though the way may have been long, and strange, and dark, and sometimes even weary, yet we may be sure that it is the right way, because it has led us to Him.

For there is this further analogy between nature and revelation, namely, that in each the progress is not indefinite, but tends to a limit. Whatever theory be adopted with regard to the history of the earth, we seem to see in its present settled condition the limit towards which everything has been moving in past geological ages; and even if man has been a progressive animal, and has only gradually attained his present physical perfection, I presume it is not anticipated that the process of natural selection, or any other process, will carry him beyond the point which he has now reached. Or, if we take the divine picture of creation, we see the creative work tending from the limit of chaos to the limit of man; then physics cease and religion begins, and we hear utterances of the voice of God beginning with whispers, and becoming more and more distinct, until we are permitted to listen to divine oracles uttered by human lips. Beyond this the dreams of philosophy, and the aspirations of the human heart, and the longings of the weary and heavy-laden cannot carry our thoughts or raise our desires.

Those who are acquainted with Bishop Butler's great work will perceive that I have now been endeavouring--how imperfectly no one knows better than myself--to apply to the question of "the gradual development of revelation," those principles of reasoning which Bishop Butler has taught us to use. I was very sorry to see it stated in the evidence taken before the select committee of the House of Lords on University Tests, that Bishop Butler's _Analogy_ was "out of fashion" in Oxford.[66] I trust that the witness only intended to assert that the _Analogy_ was not now so commonly chosen for examinations as formerly, for it will be an evil day for us all when the method of reasoning which Bishop Butler taught us shall be "out of fashion" with thinking people. In truth, the advantage of the method is that, properly speaking, it never can be out of fashion; it is like the method of Euclid, or that of the Differential Calculus; it is an _organum_, an instrument, a machine, which may be applied in all the varying circumstances of theological controversy, and to almost all religious difficulties. For the principle of the method is this. You find certain difficulties in that which professes to be a revelation of God; you think to get rid of these difficulties by denying the revelation; will you succeed in doing so? Not if you find precisely analogous difficulties in the course of nature; unless you go further, and deny not only that there is a God of revelation, but a God of nature too. Nay, the argument carries you beyond this point, and suggests to you that if there be difficulties in God's natural world, and if He be pleased to reveal the spiritual world to us, then we ought to expect to find the same general method of proceeding in matters spiritual which we have been able to observe in the natural world. I quite admit that this reasoning has no force for the man who says "There is no God;" he must be dealt with in another way; but it has force and it has comfort for the doubting inquiring soul, by assuring it that it can find a logical resting-place, and that the refuge from the misery of blank and hopeless atheism is to be found in simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.[67]

With the atheist, I honestly confess, that I have little or no sympathy; certainly I should not think it worth while to compose a lecture intended for his special behoof. I should feel disposed rather to send him for his answer to the fourteenth and fifty-third Psalms. The difficulty of supposing the framework of the universe to have had no architect, appears to me to be so great, so absolutely immeasurable, that the man who can fancy that he has got over it must, as I believe, either not have understood the difficulty, or else have deceived himself as to his power of solving it; anyhow, I feel that he has cut away all ground of argument, as between him and me. Not so the man whose mind is sceptically inclined. Be it ever remembered that the word _sceptic_ is derived from a word which means to _look_ or to _see_--it is the same word which forms the root of the word _bishop_ or _overseer_; and accordingly there is nothing radically reproachful in the name of _sceptic_. It implies that a man is determined to look into matters for himself, not to trust every assertion, not to repeat a parrot creed; and so far as this determination is concerned, it is high and noble, and is in fact the very root and spring of all human knowledge; but who can wonder if looking should lead to doubting, and that so the name of sceptic should popularly imply, not the man who looks and believes, but the man who looks and doubts? And I am not ashamed to confess that I have much sympathy with this sceptical frame of mind. Not only is it closely connected with a noble instinct of inquiry and search for truth which God has implanted in the human mind, but also, as I believe, it is well-nigh impossible that an inquiring mind should deal seriously with religious subjects and remain entirely free from doubt. In my opinion, the amount of scepticism which has, during some period of his life, occupied the mind of each thoughtful earnest man, will be merely a question of degree; while, at the same time, I most sincerely believe that scepticism ought not to be, and need not be the lasting condition of the human soul, and that all doubts may be made to vanish in the light which God has given to "lighten every man who is born into the world."

I know not what may be the condition of mind of those to whom I have been speaking to-day. I presume the hope of the Christian Evidence Society is that some persons who feel practically the pressure of doubt and unbelief, will come and see whether any of their difficulties can be resolved by this course of Lectures. If there be such in this company, I beg them, in concluding this Lecture, to believe that they have been listening to one who does not wish to treat their speculative difficulties as trifles, but who would consider it as an unspeakable privilege to be able to help a doubting brother to get rid of his doubts, and to exchange them for the steady assurance of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

THE ALLEGED HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES

OF THE

OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS,

AND THE

LIGHT THROWN ON THEM BY MODERN DISCOVERIES.

BY THE

REV. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A.,

CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY, OXFORD.

THE ALLEGED HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.

In addressing you on the historical difficulties of the Old and New Testaments--a large subject, which it will be hard to treat adequately within the time allowed to me--I must in the first place premise, that with difficulties which lie on the verge or outskirts of the historic field, on the debatable ground between Science and History, I do not on the present occasion profess to deal. Questions as to the origin of man, whether by development or by direct creation, whether from one pair or from more; questions as to his primæval condition, his possession from the first of the faculty of speech, his original savagery or civilisation, and the like, lie (I think) beyond the domain of history proper, belonging to what has been properly termed the "_pre-historic_ period" of our race, and so not coming within the terms of the subject on which I have undertaken to speak to-day. History deals with man from the time to which written records reach back. Historical difficulties arise from divergence, real or apparent, between the different accounts contained in those records. Now the profane records, to which any modern critical school would attribute an historical value, do not reach back within many ages of the origin of man, and thus no "historical difficulty" can arise with respect to these primitive times. It is only when we descend to an age of records, when the apparently authentic accounts of ancient countries preserved to our day can be compared with the Scriptural narrative that difficulty arises and that either agreement or disagreement can be shown.

The first difficulty, really historical, which meets us when we open the volume of Scripture, is the shortness of the time into which all history is (or at any rate appears to be) compressed, by the chronological statements, especially those of Genesis. The exodus of the Jews is fixed by many considerations to about the fifteenth or sixteenth century before our era. The period between the Flood and the Exodus, according to the numbers of our English version, but a very little exceeds a thousand years. Consequently, it has been usual to regard Scripture as authoritatively laying it down that all mankind sprang from a single pair within twenty-five or twenty-six centuries of the Christian era, and therefore that all history, and not only so, but all the changes by which the various races of men were formed, by which languages developed into their numerous and diverse types, by which civilization and art emerged and gradually perfected themselves, are shut up within the narrow space of 2,500 or 2,600 years before the birth of our Lord. Now this time is said with reason to be quite insufficient. Egypt and Babylonia have histories, as settled kingdoms, which reach back (according to the most moderate of modern critical historians) to about the time at which the numbers of our English Bible place the Deluge. Considerable diversities of language can be proved to have existed at that date; markedly different physical types appear not much subsequently; civilization in Egypt has, about the Pyramid period, which few now place later than B.C. 2,450, an advanced character; the arts exist nearly in the shape in which they were known in the country at its most flourishing period. Clearly, a considerable space is wanted anterior to the pyramid age for the gradual development of Egyptian life into the condition which the monuments show to have been then reached. This space the numbers of our English Bible do not allow.

Such is the difficulty. Now how is it to be met? In the first place, candour should (I think) induce all those who urge it to let their readers, or hearers, know that a special uncertainty attaches to the numbers in question, from the fact that they are given differently in the different ancient versions. We possess the Pentateuch in three very ancient forms, in Hebrew, in the Greek version known as the Septuagint, and in Samaritan. Our English numbers represent those of the Hebrew text. The numbers of the Septuagint and the Samaritan version are different. Those of the Samaritan version extend the period between the Deluge and the birth of Abraham from the 292 years of the Hebrew text to 942 years,--an addition of six centuries and a half--while those of the Septuagint, according to some copies, give 1,072 years as the interval, according to others 1,172 years, thus increasing the period between the Deluge and Abraham by a space of nearly eight, or nearly nine centuries. Now if the Greek, or even if the Samaritan, numbers are the right ones, if they represent, that is, the original text, it may be questioned whether anything more is wanted. It may be questioned whether a term of from six to eight centuries is not enough for the production of that state of things which we find existing in Babylonia and in Egypt when the light of history first dawns upon them, whether within that space might not have been produced such a state of civilization, so much progress in art, such differences of physical type, and such diversities of language as appear to have existed at that period.

If, however, the ultimate verdict of calm reason, and rigid scientific inquiry should be against this view, if more time seem to be absolutely wanted for the development of settled government, of art, science, language, ethnical diversities, varieties of physical type, and the like, than even the enlarged chronology of the Septuagint allows, then I should not be afraid to grant that the original record of Scripture on this point may have been lost, and that, as it is certain that we cannot possess the actual chronological scheme of Moses in more than one of the three extant versions of his words which have come to us with almost equal authority, so it is quite possible that we may not posses his real scheme in any. Nothing in ancient MSS. is so liable to corruption from the mistakes of copyists as the numbers; the original mode of writing them appears in all countries of which we have any knowledge to have been by signs, not very different from one another; the absence of any context determining in favour of one number rather than another, where the copy is blotted or faded, increases the chance of error, and thus it happens that in almost all ancient works the numbers are found to be deserving of very little reliance. Where they to any extent check one another, they are generally self-contradictory; where they do not, they are frequently in the highest degree improbable.

A second historical difficulty connected with Genesis was much insisted upon by the late Baron Bunsen. The primitive Babylonian kingdom is declared in the tenth chapter of Genesis to have been Cushite. Baron Bunsen held that there were no Cushites out of Africa, and that "an Asiatic Cush existed only in the imagination of Biblical interpreters, and was the child of their despair."[68] But an analysis of the earliest documents recovered from Babylonia has shown that the primitive Babylonian people, that which raised the first structures whereof any trace remains, in the country, and whose buildings had gone to ruin in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, was (at any rate to a large extent) Cushite, its vocabulary being "undoubtedly Cushite or Ethiopian," and presenting numerous analogies with those of the non-Semitic races of modern Abyssinia. Hence, modern historical science, in the person of one of its best representatives, M. Lenormant, commences now the history of the East with a "First Cushite Empire," which it regards as dominant in Babylonia for several centuries before the earliest Semitic Empire arose.[69]

A difficulty less noticed, yet one which was, in the state of our historical knowledge a few years since, more real, may be found in the narrative contained in the 14th chapter of Genesis with respect to the invasion of Palestine in the time of Abraham by a number of kings from the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. These kings act under the presidency of a monarch, called Chedorlaomer (or Chedor-lagomer), who is stated to be "king of Elam." Now till very recently there was no profane evidence that Elam--which is not Persia, as many have supposed, but Elymaïs or Susiana, the country between Babylonia and Persia--had ever been an independent state, much less a powerful kingdom, and still less one that at so remote a date could have exercised suzerainty over so many and such important nations. But the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions have shown that throughout almost the whole of the Assyrian period Elam maintained herself as an independent state and one of considerable military strength on the south-eastern borders of the empire; and very recently[70] it has further been discovered that, according to the Assyrian belief, an Elamitic king was strong enough to invade and plunder Babylonia at a date, which expressed in our ordinary manner would be B.C. 2,286, or somewhat earlier than the time commonly assigned to Abraham. Further, the primitive Babylonian remains bear traces of the extension of Elamitic influence into Babylonia at a remote era; and the possibility of such distant military expeditions at this far-off period of the world's history, receives illustration at once from the epithet "Ravager of Syria," which is borne by a Babylonian monarch of about this date, and also from the numerous expeditions conducted not very much later by the Egyptian princes from the valley of the Nile into Mesopotamia.

No other historical difficulties, so far as I know, present themselves in the narrative of Genesis. Some attempts were made in Germany, about thirty or forty years ago, to prove that the description of Egypt contained in the latter portion of the book exhibited numerous "mistakes and inaccuracies;" but the "mistakes and inaccuracies" alleged were scarcely of an historical character, and the writers who alleged them have been so triumphantly refuted by Hengstenberg, and others, that the sceptical school has ceased to urge the point, and now allows the entire truthfulness and accuracy of the whole account. Few things are in truth more remarkable than the _complete_ harmony and accordance which exist between the picture of ancient Egypt and the ancient Egyptians, as drawn for us by Moses, and that portraiture of them which is now obtainable from their own contemporary writings and monuments.

With regard to the narrative contained in the last four books of the Pentateuch, modern criticism has chiefly employed itself in objections turning upon the numbers. The multiplication of the Israelites, as related in Genesis and Exodus, has been declared to be utterly and absolutely incredible. The sudden exodus from Egypt of a body of two millions of persons in the way narrated has been pronounced an impossibility. The subsistence of such a multitude, with their flocks and herds, in the Desert of Tih for forty years, or even a single year, has been said to be inconceivable. Many minor objections, turning on the same point of numerical difficulty, have been urged, and the conclusion has been drawn that the entire narrative of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy is unhistorical--a romance drawn up at a comparatively late period of the nation's history, having perhaps a certain historic foundation, but in its details wholly and entirely imaginary.[71]

Now, with respect to these objections, let it be observed, in the first place, that they all turn upon the one point of number; and that the numbers of the sacred texts are (as has been already observed) exactly the part of it which is most liable to corruption and least to be depended upon. So that if the difficulties of the multiplication, as stated, of the exit from Egypt, the march, the passage of the Red Sea, and the sojourn in the wilderness, were all allowed to be as great as represented, it would be enough to reply that there may have been a corruption of the numbers--the addition (say) of a cipher in each case--and that the whole narrative would stand good, and the difficulties disappear, if for "six hundred thousand that were men" in Exodus xii. 37, we were to read 60,000, and so on--the entire exodus being thus made one of 200,000 instead of two million souls. But this mode of meeting the difficulty is not, perhaps, here the right one. The numbers may be defended as they stand. In Germany the best critics, including so subtle and little credulous a writer as Ewald, accept them. They seem required by the general tenor of the whole narrative, especially by the great unwillingness of the Egyptians to let the people go, and by their power, within little more than a generation to conquer and occupy Canaan. Assuming therefore the numbers to be sound, to have come to us as they were delivered by Moses, let us inquire what the great difficulties are of which so much has been made, and see if they are really so insuperable.