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vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
the “quarterly review” on the “speaker’s commentary.”*
The leading article in the current number (April 1879) of the Quarterly Review ought to arrest the attention of the English-speaking portion of Christendom. It is a succinct and judicious review of that monument of Scriptural Exegesis, the “Commentary upon the Holy Bible,” upon which forty of the most learned Anglican divines have been labouring during the past fourteen or fifteen years; and which, from having been first suggested by the late Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr. Evelyn Denison, afterwards Viscount Ossington, is popularly known as “the Speaker’s Commentary.”
The article in question is important, not so much because it marshals for us, with gravity and ample scholarship, the conclusions of the reverend commentators, as in the fact that it marks a new departure in Christian theology, the authoritative beginning of an era of compromise with science. There is no mistaking the fact. The paper has a deeper pathetic significance than its author permits to appear on the surface. Its tone is more that of a wail than a pæan of gladness, though it endeavours to put the best face possible upon things. It makes concessions to modern scientific research which were hardly to be expected from the chief organ of the ultra-Conservative and Church party of England, and which a few years ago would have been refused with indignation. It is but too evident that, as the reviewer says,
“From the beginning the world has not stood still, and never did it move faster than now. Researches are more than ever pushed forward in all directions; every promising field of discovery is occupied; fresh trains of speculation are opened out; new lines of attack are constructed, which need new expedients of defence; and again and again the commentator is called for to appropriate and systematically apply, out of the new materials, all that can be turned to account in illustration and defence of the sacred volume.”
The gravity of the situation is enhanced by the circumstance that the ancient bulwarks of our faith are now assailed from within as well as from without, by men in holy orders as well as lay sceptics. Inch by inch the old advanced positions respecting the literal inspiration of the Old and New Testaments have been yielded to the “growing intelligence of the age.”
“The time,” says the Quarterly, “has certainly passed when the whole Bible could be practically esteemed a single book, miraculously communicated in successive portions from heaven, put into writing no doubt by human hands, but at the dictation of the divine Spirit, so that every word from Genesis to Revelation stood on exactly the same level of divine authority and perfect infallibility, and the voice of any portion of it, no matter when or on what subject, was held to be conclusive and without appeal.”
Referring to the Old Testament it remarks:—
“The growth of the physical sciences has brought into question the literal accuracy of its notices of the phenomena of Nature, and suggested that as to such matters its writers were left to use the current language of their age, instead of being guided supernaturally into an anticipation of modern discoveries... Thus there seems to be a growing persuasion that there is present throughout the Old Testament, in addition to the divine element of revelation, a real and large human element mingled in varying proportion with the divine,” &c.
The realization of this fact, instead of striking dismay into the heart of the reverential critic, as one would suppose it might, seems, on the contrary, to give satisfaction, for it excuses him from attempting to stubbornly hold to the inviolability of Scripture utterances in spite of the protests of science and the reproaches of improved analytical scholarship. It was “fatal to the arbitrary despotism exercised over them by the theologian, by which texts were forced into yielding dogmatic meanings altogether alien from their historical purport, and which in any other connexion would have been branded as preposterous anachronisms.” Freed from the old clogs that impeded his intellectual perspicacity, he is now enabled to trace in the sacred pages the record of a progressive education of mankind by God, “an education which could not be characterized at every stage by the inculcation of a perfect morality or the guidance of infallible teachers, but which stooped to their weaknesses, engrafted itself on their ideas, tolerated for a time much that was imperfect, partial, and afterwards to be corrected or purged away,” &c.
If the only readers of this language were to be orthodox Christians, perhaps no great harm might result from this confession that the inspiration of the whole Bible is no longer a religious dogma, and the implication that its text may be as greatly altered hereafter to meet future exigencies of critical analysis as it has in the present instance. But fancy the use that can and will be made of the fatal words we have italicised by the keen and astute champions of Buddhism and other Oriental religions, and of the whole article and the Commentary itself by the host of European free-thinking critics, who may now plausibly affirm that the admitted human element in the Holy Scripture gives them the right to treat it like any other book of human or alleged semi-divine authorship. It is too much to expect that unbelieving scholars will come up to the Quarterly reviewer’s ideal of an exposition: “So long,” he says, “as the critic is filled with profound reverence for the Word of God, and is sensitive to every breath of His Spirit, his comparative freedom from bondage to the letter will have little tendency to tempt him astray. The Bible itself will be his safeguard and guide.” In other words, if criticism is wholly confined to those who are irrevocably committed in advance to the belief that the Bible is the true and only Revelation, then the expositor will not become a sceptic! Really, this cannot be regarded as a very hopeful view of the case; nor one calculated to encourage the devoted missionaries to continue preaching the Gospel to the heathen. It may be a relief to know that the “fervent devotional utterances of the ancient saints” are not of necessity directly inspired, especially “mingled with the imprecations of unholy passion, or with carnal delineations of the all-perfect God;” but the conservative reader will ask, who is to draw for us the line between what the human oracle says of itself and what is uttered under a divine afflatus? And who is to draw it for the heathen metaphysicians? The Quarterly very properly demands of the commentators a categorical definition. It will have no shuffling, for
“While Christendom is in conflagration with questions which involve the very possibility of a revelation from God, they cannot be content to sit at the feet of well-meaning but feeble expositors, who, in their ignorance of the very elements of critical science, think to stay the flames by piping forth their little worn-out common-places, which simply take for granted that the Biblical writers were, one and all, the divine secretaries, and every word they wrote was as entirely God’s as if it fell on our ears out of heaven, and as authoritative as that word of Christ which shall never pass away. They want real scholars, the masters of well-digested knowledge, to tell them how matters actually stand; how much of the old must be given up, and how much of the new may reasonably claim acceptance. They cannot shut their ears to the difficulties which are proclaimed on the housetops.”
The present Commentary does not altogether
“satisfy those on whom modern critical difficulties press most heavily. It is from beginning to end the work of ‘bishops and other clergy of the Anglican Church.’ Now this stamps a certain impress on the work. It ensures its being in a high degree conservative of the old, and repugnant to the admission of new, ideas so far as they can be honestly barred out. As a class, such writers would be more than human if they always appreciated … against old fashioned ideas, or the real magnitude of difficulties which their school has been in the habit of glossing over with conventional but inadequate explanations.”
What is this but a plain hint that the Anglican divines have not made as honest and complete a commentary as would have been put forth by a mixed committee of clergymen and of sceptics able to understand the “cogency of arguments” offered against “old fashioned ideas,” and not addicted to “glossing over” serious difficulties? And yet, what astounding concessions these forty authors of the Commentary, who represent, according to the Review, “everything that was soundest and best in modern Biblical scholarship,” have been forced to make, we will endeavour to show.
It has already been seen that the literal infallibility of the Old Testament is virtually abandoned. If the point requires sharper definition, it only remains for us to quote the following (Quarterly Review, p. 335):—
“To us, we confess, every attempt to place the older Scriptures on the same supreme pinnacle on which the New Testament stands, leads inevitably to a disparagement of the later Revelation, in which the power and wisdom of God find their consummate manifestation.”
And the authority of the late Bishop Thirlwall, “of whom, after his death, the Primate remarked that any age of the Church might have been proud to possess him,” is invoked to support this view. Speaking of fierce controversies over the Old Testament, the Bishop says:—
“The numbers, migrations, wars, battles, conquests, and reverses of Israel, have nothing in common with the teachings of Christ, with the way of salvation, with the fruits of the Spirit.... Whatever knowledge we may obtain of them is, in a religious point of view, a matter of absolute indifference to us; and if they were placed on a level with the saving truths of the Gospel, they would gain nothing in intrinsic dignity, but would only degrade that with which they are thus associated. Such an association may indeed exist in the minds of pious and even learned men; but it is only by means of an artificial chain of reasoning, which does not carry conviction to all besides.”
So much for the general question of the equality in inspiration and authority of the Old and New Testaments; but besides this there is the subordinate one of the literal correctness of the translation in the authorized version. It will shock the feelings of many of the devout to know, that many and grievous errors have been discovered by the commentators. The aggregate number is not stated, but we have seen it computed at many thousands. “For the sake of ordinary readers” the old familiar text has “been retained unaltered in the body of the work, and the proposed changes have been consigned to the notes.” These changes must be very numerous, since the reviewer tells us that “in the poetical and prophetical books especially the number of corrections is enormous.”
The symbolical significance given, during so many centuries, to the Mosaic enumeration of clean and unclean beasts and fishes, is now totally abandoned. It was time, we are told, that we should outgrow “the older fancies. Such a reading back of recondite meanings into the primitive institutions of Israel is a strange anachronism, from which a little more literary culture would have saved many a well-meaning theologian.”
It is emphatically denied that the scapegoat ceremony has any relativity to the coming of Christ and His carrying away of the sins of the world. The truth appears to be that the Israelites believed in a demon named Azazel*, who dwelt in the desert, and into whose power they were constantly in danger of falling unless they made satisfactory expiation to Jehovah. Accordingly, two goats were taken, and by a lot or lottery one was assigned to each of the powerful deities, whereupon the sins of the people being solemnly laid upon the head of Azazel’s goat it was sent away to him into the desert. The Quarterly remarks of this ceremony that—
“A symbolism so simple and direct as this seems certainly more in harmony with primitive ideas and more likely to have been intended than any prefiguration of <... continues on page 8-254 >
* “The Holy Bible, according to the Authorized Version [A.D. 1611], with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church.” Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter, Preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. Vols. I—VI. The Old Testament. London, 1871—1876.
* Azazel was properly one of the…er will find a most inter…
Editor's notes
- ↑ The “Quarterly Review” on the “Speaker’s Commentary.” by unknown author, Bombay Gazette, The, Bombay, Thursday, June 26, 1879. The bottom of the middle column and the Azazel footnote are partly covered.