The Fundamentals (1910), Vol.1

The History of the Higher Criticism. 97 the Pentateuch, as he confesses, under the guidance chiefly of Ewald. (Hexateuch, page 63.) Of course, this list is a very partial one, but it gives most of the names that have become famous in connection with the movement, and the reader who desires more will find a complete summary of the literature of the Higher Criticism in Professor Bissell’s work on the Pentateuch (Scribner’s, 1892). Briggs, in his “Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch” (Scribner’s, 1897), gives an historical summary also. We must now investigate another question, and that is the religious views of the men most influential in this movement. In making the statement that we are about to make, we desire to deprecate entirely the idea of there being anything unchar­ itable, unfair, or unkind, in stating what is simply a matter of fact. THE VIEWS OF THE CONTINENTAL CRITICS. Regarding the views of the Continental Critics, three things can be Confidently asserted of nearly all, if not all, of the real leaders. 1. They were men who denied the validity of miracle, and the validity of any miraculous narrative. What Chris­ tians consider to be miraculous they considered legendary or mythical; “legendary exaggeration of events that are entirely explicable from natural causes.” 2. They were men who denied the reality of prophecy and the validity of any prophetical statement. What Chris­ tians have been accustomed to consider prophetical, they called dexterous conjectures, coincidences, fiction, or imposture. 3. They were men who denied the reality of revelation, in the sense in which it has ever been held by the universal Christian Church. They were avowed unbelievers of the super­ natural. Their theories were excogitated on pure grounds of human reasoning. Their hypotheses were constructed on the assumption of the falsity of Scripture. As to the inspira-

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