Sword & Trowel 2020: Issue 1
Critical methods were applied to the Old Testament, they shifted the focus away from the Law (the books of Moses) to the prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and their fellows, from the 8th century BC onwards). The prophets came to be seen as the real founders of Jewish religion in terms of a monotheism (belief in one God) where God was regarded as a moral or righteous God. This ethical mono- theism, Higher Critics held, had not existed among the Jews until the ministry of the prophets. It was the prophets, therefore, not Abraham or Moses, who were the creative origi- nators of Jewish religion.
Initiated into Higher Criticism
Germany’s leading Higher Critic of the Old Testament was Julius Wellhausen, Professor of Old Testa- ment at the universities of Göttingen, Greifswald, Halle, and Marburg. With Wellhausen’s name in particu- lar is associated the JEDP theory of the Pentateuch. As I said, William Robertson Smith’s academic mentor at the Free Church College, A B Davidson, be- came very sympathetic to these views of the Old Testament. Davidson was a devoted student of German biblical criticism; he came to have huge admi- ration for Julius Wellhausen and his work, although not travelling so far along the critical path as Wellhausen. It was Davidson, more than anyone else, who initiated a whole genera- tion of Free Church students into the basic outlook of Higher Criticism. One of Davidson’s students later wrote the following on the impact that Davidson had on his students as
page 24 a lecturer:
‘The defects of the edifice [that is, of traditional understandings of the Old Testament] are manifestly not his invention, but simply his discovery. He now advances to more serious measures. The fabric is as- sailed with a stream of suggestions, subtle and disintegrating as a chemi- cal solvent. In quick succession he discharges searching questions that pierce through the arguments of de- fence like [military] arrows. These are followed by reasons compact and massive that fall on the walls like a battering ram. The ancestral mansion of our faith trembles to its founda- tion, the battlements topple and tumble, the walls one by one fall in, and the whole edifice crumbles into ruins.’
That description of Davidson’s im- pact is from the pen of his one-time pupil, William Gray Elmslie, who became Old Testament professor in the English Presbyterian College in London. We might reasonably ask how Da- vidson got away with this, as it were, in so conservative a church. Did no one see what he was doing or call him to task? The explanation for Da- vidson’s unchecked influence appears to lie in two factors. First, Davidson was never dogmatic
about his critical views of Scripture; he taught them, but always in the subtle, suggestive way described by Elmslie. Moreover, he embraced Higher Critical views only in a moderate way – for example, he was never very enamoured of the fully elaborated JEDP theory.
Second, the effect of his personal- From Divine Revelation to Human Reason
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