tric. Man was center of all. This was diametrically opposed to the position of the Old Testament, which is theocentric. Secondly, the evolutionary concept, which had won the day in the biological sciences, was brought over into the study of the Old Testament. Men came to think of long peri ods of development in religious thinking and b e lie f, beginning with the same conditions for all peoples and' religions. Finally, bu ild ing on the philosophical basis of Kant, all religion was viewed as subjective feeling. If one felt an event recorded in Scripture had validity for him, that was sufficient. It can be seen that these views were totally out of harmony with the testimony of the Old Testament. These currents of thought were brought into a synthesis by Well- hausen. On the application of the foregoing points of view he re wrote the whole of Old Testament history and religion, denuding it of the supernatural. Whereas the advantages were very few in his system, the disadvantages spelled the end of Old Testament study for multitudes, who abandoned it as fruitless and useless. When men began to realize the cost of embracing this system, leaving the Old Testament as just a record of history of the religion of Israel, which was considered like all other religions, they began to re-examine their positions. In this they had the new aids of cognate languages, better meth ods of textual criticism, and espe cially the new finds of archaeolo gy. The latter discipline was seen to confirm the historicity of the Old Testament time after time. With the reinstatement of the Old Testament into a category of respectable trustworthiness, men were again ready to seek the pages of this revelation for its teachings of its unique theology. A new day has dawned for the study of the Old Testament. Nev- Dr. Feinberg is Prof, of Old Testament and Dean of Talbot Theological Seminary.
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T e c h n ic a l l y , it may be claimed that the first serious student of the Old Testament was Ezra the scribe (Ezr. 7:10). Some rab binic sources even credit him with the rewriting of the Old Testa ment after the Babylonian Cap tivity. After Ezra’s time the pro fession of scribe came to be well known, and is described at length in Ecclesiasticus, an apocryphal work. These scribes studied the Word, copied it, guarded its puri ty, and transmitted it to the next generations. Thus in the time of our Lord His Scriptures were the Old Testament. He exhorted His disciples to study this revelation, if they would understand Him and His mission of redemption (John 5:45, 46; 6:45). Again and again He expounded to them the Scriptures of the Old Testa ment. When we come to the preaching and ministry of the apostles, we find they too studied the Old Testament as the Word of God in truth and found in it the valid basis for their faith, conduct, and hope. Rabbinic Judaism, which took its departure from the Messianic faith, has always encouraged the study of the Old Testament, al though they have added through
the centuries the interpretations of the rabbis to the sufficient tes timony of God. For the godly Is raelite there never was a question as to the applicability or worth of the Old Testament for belief and behavior. When C h r is t ia n it y became more removed from its Jewish background, difficulties arose in the study of the Old Testament on the part of Christian scholars. The question was: How can the Old Testament be made Christian, and thus applicable to believers of this Church age? To accom plish this objective, strange al legorizing methods were applied in the study of the Old Testa ment. The historico-grammatical principles of Biblical interpreta tion were discarded or disregard ed. This wrought havoc with safe interpretation of the Scriptures. Yet this method was in vogue even in Reformation times, and has continued in many quarters to this day. With the rise of humanism and the appearance of the Renais sance in Europe, men began to view all revealed truth from pure ly rational and non-supematural viewpoints. For one thing, men saw the universe as anthropocen
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