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Archaeology proves the Higher Critics wrong

Archaeology proves the Higher Critics wrong. Glenfield Study Evening 19 October 2013. The Higher Critics. Who or what are the Higher Critics? What do they have to say for themselves? How can we recognise them and their arguments?

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Archaeology proves the Higher Critics wrong

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  1. Archaeology proves the Higher Critics wrong Glenfield Study Evening 19 October 2013

  2. The Higher Critics • Who or what are the Higher Critics? • What do they have to say for themselves? • How can we recognise them and their arguments? • Why, if at all, do we need to bother about them?

  3. Who are the Higher Critics? • Not always easy to recognise (they don’t wear badges!) • Call themselves ‘source critics’, ‘form critics’, ‘redaction critics’… • Hear them all the time, but don’t always recognise them • Mostly atheistical, and destructive of faith in the Word of God

  4. The origin of Higher Criticism • 19th century German school of thought from Tübingen University Theology Department • Regards the Bible merely as a set of documents of human origin • Destructive of belief in Divine inspiration of the Bible: everything explained in human terms

  5. Why we need to know • Theories responsible for undermining belief in God • Our own faith should not be blind • To show where the ‘experts’ are wrong • To strengthen our own faith • To help preach the Truth

  6. A sad state of affairs “…the complete assurance with which many [Higher Critics] wrote has been entirely unjustified … Yet the mass of people … have thought that the Higher Criticism, since it was endorsed and advocated even by distinguished bishops, could be taken for granted as giving correct results. The effect of such grave errors upon Christianity in general…has been devastating” (Charles Marston, The Bible is true)

  7. Ferdinand Baur • German theologian (1792-1860) • Founded the Tübingen School of Theology • Tried to ‘prove’ Paul did not write the pastoral epistles

  8. Julius Wellhausen • German Biblical scholar and Orientalist (1844-1918) • Professor at Göttingen University • Responsible for the ‘Documentary hypothesis’ regarding the Books of Moses • Claimed Moses didn’t know how to write!

  9. Friedrich Delitzsch • German Assyriologist (1850-1922) • Claimed ‘primitive man’ did not worship one god • Tried to ‘prove’ that the Genesis creation account was ‘borrowed’ from Babylonian culture • Frequently attacked the Old Testament for alleged inaccuracies

  10. Heinrich Ewald • German theologian and orientalist (1803-1875) • Professor of Languages at Göttingen and Tübingen • Assigned the Book of Daniel to the post-exilic Maccabean era, on spurious linguistic grounds

  11. Dean Arthur Stanley • Influential Dean of Westminster (1815-1881) • Embraced many liberal ideas • Did more than any other churchman to undermine simple faith in the Word of God • Gave outspoken support to Bishop Colenso

  12. Bishop John Colenso • Controversial churchman • The ‘Bishop of Woolwich’ of his day (1814-1883) • Accused of heresy • Embraced Higher Critical views (especially about the Pentateuch)

  13. Canon S.R. Driver • 1846-1914 • Professor of Hebrew at Oxford • ‘High priest’ of English Higher Criticism • Taught Higher Critical theories to a whole generation of scholars • Edited Cambridge Bible and ClarendonBible series (many volumes badly flawed)

  14. The opposition! • E.B. Pusey (1800-1882) • Joseph Lightfoot (1828-89) • C.H. Waller (1840-1910) • J.W. Burgon (1813-1888) • Believed in the inspiration of Scripture • Their writings can generally be trusted

  15. Higher Critical inroads • Became almost a test of academic ‘scholarship’ (Emperor’s new clothes) • Infiltrated high proportion of 20th-century Bible commentaries, handbooks and dictionaries > untrustworthy • General public followed like sheep > widespread assumption that the Bible is unreliable (‘urban myth’)

  16. Higher Criticism: what and why? “The term ‘higher criticism’ has reference not to any pretended superiority … it is concerned with questions of date and authorship, unity and literary structure, thesources used and the historical milieuxreflected in the books of the Bible … The ‘lower criticism’ is concerned with the history of the text after it left the hands of the author or compiler, and seeks to recover the original form of the text” (Chambers Encyclopedia)

  17. Biblical Criticism: the family tree Biblical Criticism HigherLower LiteraryHistoricalTextual

  18. The aims of Literary Higher Criticism To determine: • Questions of authorship (one author or several?) • Dating: based on apparent times and conditions in the text • Reliance on earlier sources?

  19. The aims of Historical Higher Criticism • To evaluate the Bible as a historical document • To determine whether a record of a particular event is contemporary with the event, or whether it has been ‘borrowed’ from an earlier source • To assess the degree of accuracy in the Biblical record

  20. The arrogance of the Higher Critics (1) “I know of no-one … who has distorted the meaning of so many Hebrew words, or made such wild work of Hebrew history, as Ewald, because whatever occurs to him appears to him as certain as a revelation” (E.B. Pusey)

  21. The arrogance of the Higher Critics (2) “The arrogancy of tone adopted at times by the ‘higher criticism’ has been productive of nothing but mischief … It is because these popes have … been proclaiming … the doctrine of their infallibility, that it is desirable to test the conclusions of the ‘higher criticism’ … by the discoveries of oriental archaeology” (A.H. Sayce)

  22. Five cases of Higher Criticism Biblical Criticism Higher Lower LiteraryHistoricalTextual

  23. Five cases of Higher Criticism (1) Biblical Criticism Higher Lower LiteraryHistoricalTextual Pentateuch author

  24. Five cases of Higher Criticism (2) Biblical Criticism Higher Lower LiteraryHistoricalTextual Pentateuch author Dating of Daniel

  25. Five cases of Higher Criticism (3) Biblical Criticism Higher Lower LiteraryHistoricalTextual Pentateuch author Dating of Daniel Divided Isaiah

  26. Five cases of Higher Criticism (4) Biblical Criticism Higher Lower LiteraryHistoricalTextual Pentateuch author Genesis 14 Dating of Daniel Divided Isaiah

  27. Five cases of Higher Criticism (5) Biblical Criticism Higher Lower LiteraryHistoricalTextual Pentateuch author Genesis 14 Dating of Daniel ‘Legends’ Divided Isaiah

  28. Pentateuch authorship • Julius Wellhausen (1870s): Moses couldn’t write! • Argument from silence • Adopted by Encyclopedia Britannica (9th ed., 1881) • Contradicted by archaeological discoveries

  29. The invention of writing • Excavations of Conder, Warren, Petrie and others: vast libraries of written records pre-dating Moses • Date of invention of writing revised: from 800 BC back to at least 3,000 BC

  30. Sumerian inscription in monumental archaic style c. 2,600 BC

  31. Cuneiform tablet c. 2,500 BC

  32. A tablet from Tell el-Amarna c. 1350 BC

  33. The dating of Daniel • ‘Traditional’ date (6th century BC): challenged by Heinrich Ewald • ‘Greek’ words for musical instruments in Daniel > basis for suggesting later date • Higher Critics feel obliged to discount inspired prophecies…

  34. ‘Greek’ musical instruments in Daniel 3 and 7 • qeren-‘cornet’ (horn) • mashroqita– ‘flute’ (reed) • qitharos– ‘guitar’ (sitar) • sabbeka– ‘sackbut’ (harp) • pesanterin– ‘lyre’ • sumponeyah – ‘dulcimer’(bagpipe)

  35. The authorship of Isaiah • W.R. Smith (The Prophets of Israel, 1882): Isaiah ‘divided’ at Chapter 34! • Same theory adopted by S.R. Driver in Life and times of Isaiah (1893) • Scholars still arguing about the Deutero-Isaiah theory!

  36. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran

  37. The historicity of Genesis 14 • Example from Historical Higher Criticism • Abraham’s battle with the kings: often attacked as unhistorical • Especially criticised by Wellhausen

  38. Wellhausen’s view of Genesis 14 “That four kings from the Persian Gulf … made an incursion into the Sinaitic peninsula, that they … attacked five kinglets on the Dead Sea shore, and … carried off prisoners, and finally that Abraham … set out in pursuit with only 318 manservants and forced them to disgorge their prey – all these incidents are sheer impossibilities”

  39. Part of an Elamite prism which mentions Chedorlaomer c. 1950 BC

  40. D.J. Wiseman on Genesis 14 “[In Genesis 14] Abraham is described in terms which accord with the early second millennium … For example, the Genesis 14 incident would hardly have been … feasible after 1000 BC … There is nothing inconsistent in the Abrahamic narratives which demands … that this is a late interpretation of the patriarch’s role”

  41. J.A. Thompson on Gen. 12-50 “The fact that there are so many links [in the Genesis narratives] with the world of the first part of the second millennium BC is inexplicable if the stories of the patriarchs are only the inventions of later days … We are compelled to conclude that the narratives of Genesis 12-50 have a solid historical basis”

  42. Alleged ‘legendary’ accounts • The very existence of Sargon, king of Assyria (Isaiah 20) • The murder of his son Sennacherib (Isaiah 37) • The fall of Babylon under Belshazzar (Daniel 5) • All denied as myths by the critics

  43. Sargon King of Assyria 722-705 BC

  44. Sennacherib’s death Inscription found on a clay tablet at Nineveh: “On the 20th day of Tebet [Sennacherib’s] sons revolted against him and they killed their father Sennacherib. On the 18th day of Sivan, Esarhaddon, his son, became king”

  45. Inscription about Belshazzar An invocation to the gods of Babylon: “May it be that I, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, never fail you. And may my firstborn, Bel-shazzar, worship you with all his heart”

  46. Conclusions… • Higher Critics highlight: man’s ignorance & the perfection of God’s written Word • High spiritual cost for the world: “a strong delusion” • Evidence mostly ignored…

  47. A personal challenge from the Lord Jesus Christ John 5:46-47 “If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”

  48. The Bible, archaeology and the critics “The trend of all this increased knowledge [from archaeology] has been to confirm the authority of the books of the Old Testament … Destructive criticism is thrown on the defensive; and the plain man may read his Bible confident that, for anything that modern research has to say, the Word of our God shall stand for ever” (Rendle Short, Archaeology gives evidence)

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