06.09. Answering the Critics

Chapter 8 Answering the Critics A primer of the faith can hardly be expected to state, much less answer, all the objections of the critics, but one or two replies may be hinted at as a kind of sample of the rest. For example, take the question of the different names of the Deity as suggesting different documents and authors. Why should not the critics take the rational, not to say the reverent view, that God may have revealed these different names of Himself to express the different relationships He sustains to His intelligent creatures? “Elohim” stands for God as Creator and Lord of the universe, but “Jehovah” stands for him as the Covenant-keeping God, the God of redemption especially, the God of his own people.

It is true that the one Name is used in Genesis 1:1-31 and in the first or outline account of creation, and the other in Genesis 2:1-25 which gives the same account in detail; but may not these two accounts (if they be two indeed), have been brought together by the one inspired pen for the sake of their combined lesson? And what is that lesson? It is that Elohim is Jehovah, and Jehovah is Elohim. The God who made Heaven and earth is no mere tutelary God like those of the nations round about, but omnipotent and supreme, and this God is, in a peculiar sense, the God of Israel, his chosen nation. Is not this a lesson worthy of the bringing together of two such documents by the one hand, and worthy indeed of the employment of the two names in the one account? Moreover, as others have pointed out, this theory of the two names of God, identifying two documents and two human authors, to be credited must be consistent, but it is not consistent. “Elohim” is found in the so called Jehovistic documents and “Jehovah” in the so called Elohistic, and this not merely once or twice but many times. What do the critics say to this? O, only, that the text is corrupt, or that the redactor made a mistake!

Now as to the question of the documents themselves, no thinking person will dogmatically deny that Moses may have gathered some of his information recorded in the book of Genesis in this way. The art of writing was known and literature highly cultivated thousands of years before he was born, and the great cities of patriarchal times and earlier, had libraries like the great cities of today. Tradition had handed down stories of the creation, of the fall, of the deluge, of the nations, of the earlier periods of Israel, why should not Moses have had access to these authorities the same as any other historian of that or any other time? Would this affect the question of his divine inspiration? Certainly not, for one may as truly be inspired to compile (and to sift out truth from error as he compiles), as to write down a revelation fresh from the throne of God.

Let anyone compare the record of Moses in the book of Genesis with the legendary and mythological accretions on the same subjects in contemporaneous writings, and he will have little difficulty in recognizing the divine guidance by which he was “led through the realms of fable into the region of truth.” And then again, it may be readily granted to the critics that Moses did not write every word of the Pentateuch as we now possess it. It is not vital to its Mosaic authorship to insist on this. Some other hand may have added the record of his own death, for example, just as there are indications of editorial comment in other places (see Genesis 13:7; Genesis 36:31; Exodus 16:35; and Leviticus 18:28, for examples). Sometimes modern names of places, i.e., modern as compared with the period of Moses, are found in the text, and it is perfectly supposable, that they may have been added, or the earlier names altered by a later hand. Ezra may have done this after the captivity in connection with that reading and interpreting of the law mentioned in the book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 8:1-18); “but however this may have been, the isolated phrases cannot be suffered to weigh against the abundant evidence for the earlier origin of the book that contains them.”

There is, of course, very much more that might be said in answer to the critics. One argument against their position which has always had great weight with me is the fact that the nation of Israel would have been without a literature for the first several centuries of its history if their hypothesis be correct. Place the origin of the Pentateuch, or the major part of it away up in the days of the kings or farther, and what did Israel possess before that in the way of national writings? Nothing whatever. Here is an argument that has gained force of late since archaeological research has demonstrated beyond a doubt the great literary activity of contemporaneous nations. If Israel were an unintelligent people at the beginning this might not apply, but we know the opposite to have been the case. And then again, is the corresponding fact that Moses was competent to write the Pentateuch. Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians was he as few other men of his age. “Egyptian learning was carefully concealed from foreigners,” remarked Dr. S.G. Green, “the priests and the royal family alone having access to it; but to this class must the writer of the Pentateuch have belonged” as judged by a critical examination of its contents; and yet he must have been a Hebrew speaking the language and cherishing the sentiments of his nation. Who fits this condition of things except Moses?

We wish space and time afforded the opportunity to go further into the internal evidence of the Mosaic authorship. We should like to speak of the references to Egyptian life many of which were formerly alleged to be incorrect, but are now demonstrated to be true, and true particularly of the time of Moses, but we close with this quotation from the Bible Hand-book (revised edition page 403):

“Add to this that Judaism is founded upon the supposed truthfulness of these records. If there be a forgery, when could it have been executed? Not when the Septuagint was made (B.C. 285). Not on the return from Babylon (B.C. 536). Not on the division of the kingdom (B.C. 975). Not in the days of Samuel (B.C. 1095). Not in the four hundred years preceding. For in each successive era there were thousands interested in detecting the forgery and setting aside the burdensome institutions founded upon it. To suppose any man could secure the observance of these things on the plea that they had been observed from the first, and for the reasons assigned, when it must have been known that this statement was untrue, is to suppose a greater miracle than any the record contains.” A greater miracle, I may add, than to suppose that Moses wrote the Pentateuch.