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J. W. McGarvey Short Essays in Biblical Criticism (1910) |
[Sept. 11, 1897.]
LITERARY VS. HISTORICAL CRITICISM.
Two weeks ago I called attention to President Harper's recent attempt to mollify opposition to the kind of criticism which he advocates by styling it a mere "literary study" of the Bible. The misleading character of that attempt will be still more apparent if we read the following extract from Cave's "Inspiration of the Old Testament," in which the true relation of literary and historical criticism is set forth, and the latter is shown to have superseded the former: [236]
The evidence mainly relied upon to-day by the advocates of the evolution theory, "the received view of European scholarship," as Kuenen says, is of a historical and not a literary kind. Comparatively little is heard of divergencies in phraseology, seeming anachronisms, dual or triple or multiple repetitions of narrative, apparent contradictions, and all the paraphernalia of literary criticism. The conflict concerning authorship has been transferred from the arena of literary to that of historical criticism. In this there is cause for thoughtfulness. The decisive battleground has been at length recognized. By the minutiæ of literary criticism, the most uncertain of weapons, no sure issue was likely to be reached. Wellhausen was quite right when he said, pungently enough, it is true, and in a different figure, that in all this byplay of literary criticism "the firemen never came near the spot where the conflagration raged." And Wellhausen was also right when be added that "it is only within the region of religious antiquities and dominant religious ideas that the controversy can be brought to a definite issue."--Prolegomena, p. 12.
A revolution in method has taken place. These words, from the "head professor" of the science, show that President Harper is either a back number in his study of criticism, or that his recent article was intended for a coating of whitewash.
[SEBC 236-237]
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