14 - A General View of the Results...

A General View of the Results of So-Called Scholarly Biblical Criticism.

Limiting this survey to the subject of the Pentateuch, let us in conclu­sion express our principal ideas regarding the character of the work of bib­lical criticism and its goals. For the early Christian Church all of the rabbinical determinations relative to the books of the Old Testament Scriptures were, apparently, not dogmatically necessary. However, it did preserve them to a great degree. But why? This springs from an understanding of the spirit, the religiosity of Old Testament man, in whose consciousness the “righteousness of God” had preeminence, for the Lord Himself is righteous and hath loved righteousness; upon righteousness hath His countenance looked (Psalms 10:7). Hence, the religious Jew had a dread of any falsehood, deceit, injustice, and whatever else elicits the disclamation: If in my heart I regarded unright­eousness, let the Lord not hear me. Wherefore God hath hearkened unto me, He hath been attentive to the voice of my supplication (Psalms 65:18-19). Fret not thyself so as to do evil. For evil doers shall utterly perish (Psalms 36:8-9). Set not your hopes on injustice (Psalms 61:11). I have hated the congregation of evil­doers (Psalms 25:5). I have hated every way of unrighteousness (Psalms 119:104). The principle of righteousness was so bound up with the understanding of “faith” for the Old Testament Jew that it was in fact Old Testament reli­gion that developed the idea of “a righteous person,” and “a righteous one,” to signify a religious man, and this it passed on to Christianity. “Scholarly criticism” all but constructs its hypotheses on a contradic­tory supposition: it is inclined to see the falsification, the forgery, and the artificial creation of ancient authorities and the deceitful utilization of these authorities everywhere among the collectors and preservers of the books of the Bible, the spiritual leaders of Israel. If this were so, then whole series of misunderstandings arise. How could this artificial, untruthful approach to the matter coincide with the personal, lofty, spiritual animation, with the great enthusiasm in the souls of the directors of the Hebrew people - and finally, simply with the thought of the fear of God? From whence was the zeal for their reli­gion, and their boldness, those “scourges” directed to the people, the readiness for self-denial, for self sacrifice generated in them? The same contradiction is met in passages about the people. Let us pass on to a specific occurrence. How could a forgery, alleged to have been produced by the High Priest Hilkiah (We read in Prof. Kartashev’s article, “How can we accept with a clear con­science the completely incredible story (chps. 22-23 of IV Kings) of the supposed­ly chance discovery of the ‘Book of the Law’ or ‘Book of the Covenant,’ found dur­ing the renovation of the Temple of Jerusalem - a book totally unknown both to the High Priest Hilkiah who found it, to the righteous King Josiah, who was faith­ful to Yahweh, and to the whole nation? And this was barely one thousand years after Moses. It took place in the year 621, thirty-six years before Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar. No, this can only be comprehensible by admitting that it was not a new, strangely forgotten, neglected book that was found at the time of King Josiah, but a totally new one. The delusion that the Pentateuch existed from time immemorial thus goes up in smoke. Indeed, the Pentateuch did not yet exist” [this means from Kartashev’s point of view, that a crude and extremely dangerous forgery was made]), even if he had passed off a new work as an ancient one, have produced that religious revival among the Hebrew people which in the history of the Jews is called the “first rebirth?” A similar question arises concerning the activity of Ezra. If Ezra, calling upon the blinded people to walk in the law of God, which was given by the hand of Moses, the servant of God (Nehemiah 10:29), basing himself upon the authority of Moses, was either hiding the truth or was himself led into error, was it that the people did not suspect this possibility, but gave the oath demanded by him which compelled them to such great sacrifices and self-restraint as, for example, the mass removal of those of their wives who were of non-Jewish blood? Could a “second rebirth” have take place in history on such dubious grounds? Criticism maintains that from the time of the Babylonian captivity in the religious sphere the Jewish people fell increasingly under the influence of foreign peoples - the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks - and that this influence is reflected, on one hand, in the appearance of a great number of books of the Bible which have hitherto been accepted as dating from an earlier period, and, on the other hand, in the borrowing of a number of religious beliefs from the peoples that oppressed them. Thus criticism sees an instability and mutability in Old Testament Jewish beliefs. Are there sufficient grounds to confirm this? Does not oppression create an oppos­ing tendency in the ideological response of a nation? Does it not incline more towards rejection [of the oppressors] and self-determination than to borrowing from foreign peoples? An indication of the type of reaction that involuntary subjection elicits in a nation can be seen in Psalms 136:1-26 : By the waters of Babylon. An enslaved people can to a certain degree forget its lan­guage, but this comes about independently of its own will. On the other hand, in the area of religion, a sense of national self-preservation inspires the oppressed to fear especially the intrusion of an alien spirit in the spir­itual domain. We have examples from a time nearer to our own. The Greeks and Western Slavic peoples, throughout many centuries of Turk­ish suzerainty, preserved Orthodoxy unchanged; those that did not remain faithful to it became denationalized. The Russian people preserved their faith just as strictly under the Tatar yoke. But the victorious ancient Roman Empire created within itself a religious eclecticism which assimi­lated the various religions of the subject nations of which it was com­prised. What is characteristic of a people applies to its leaders as well. The autonomy, stability, and independence of biblical religious understanding and even of corresponding terminology is gradually being confirmed by the study of the ancient Hebrew manuscripts, found in our times, in Palestine, and particularly by the “Dead Sea Scrolls.” This refers not only to the books of the Old Testament, but, to a lesser degree, to the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament as well. Here again let us refer to the testimony of archaeology, according to the information of Professor Albright:

They maintain that Greek philosophical thought had a marked influence on a portion of the Old Testament, especially on the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. I date the book of Job to approx­imately the seventh century B.C. The more deeply that its prob­lems are studied, the clearer it becomes that there is no trace of a Greek philosophical treatment of these problems. As for Ecclesiastes, one can now more or less definitely date it towards the end of the fifth century B.C. Though I recognize the simi­larity of thought between the writings of the Prophets and that of many Greek thinkers of the sixth century B.C. and also the Phoenician written material we have from this same general period, I cannot see a trace of the influence of Greek philo­sophical thought, as many have once done, myself included. Hebrew literature is as old as Greek literature and is compara­ble to it in content. Generally speaking, nowhere before the sixth century - not in the pagan writings of the Near East, or in the Old Testament, or in Homer, Hesiod, or the early Greek poets - is it possible to find traces of authentic philosophical thought.

(W.F. Albright, “The Ancient Israelite Mind”). The same author writes about the independence of biblical under­standing from Greek influence, on the basis of research done on the Dead Sea Scrolls. But this material pertains to the New Testament.