94 The Fundamentals. Pentateuch, page 46.) Astruc said that the use of the two names, Jehovah and Elohim, shewed the book was composed of different documents. (The idea of the Holy Ghost em ploying two words, or one here and another there, or both together as He wills, never seems to enter the thought of the Higher Critic!) His work was called “Conjectures Regarding the Original Memoirs in the Book of Genesis,” and was pub lished in Brussels. Astruc may be called the father of the documentary the ories. He asserted there are traces of no less than ten or twelve different memoirs in the book of Genesis. He denied its Divine authority, and considered the book to be disfigured by useless repetitions, disorder, and contradiction. (Hirsch- felder, page 66.) For fifty years Astruc’s theory was unno ticed. The rationalism of Germany was as yet undeveloped, so that the body was not yet prepared to receive the germ, or the soil the weed. THE GERMAN CRITICS. The next stage was largely German. Eichhom is the great est name in this period, the eminent Oriental professor at Gottingen who published his work on the Old Testament introduction in 1780. He put into different shape the docu mentary hypothesis of the Frenchman, and did his work so ably that his views were generally adopted by the most dis tinguished scholars. Eichhorn’s formative influence has been incalculably great. Few scholars refused to do honor to the new sun. I t is through him that the name Higher Criticism has become identified with the movement. He was followed by Vater and later by Hartmann with their fragment theory which practically undermined the Mosaic authorship, made the Pentateuch a heap of fragments, carelessly joined by one editor, and paved the way for the most radical of all divisive hypotheses. In 1806 De Wette, Professor of Philosophy and Theology
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