Higher Criticism Defined.

The process by which the scholars referred to in the preceding section have reached their conclusions, is commonly styled The Higher Criticism. This title distinguishes it from "Textual Criticism," or the discovery and correction of clerical errors in the original text. Strictly defined, higher criticism is the art of ascertaining the authorship, date, credibility and literary characteristics of written documents.(1) It is a legitimate art, and it has been employed by Biblical scholars ever since the need of such investigations began to be realized. Only, however, within the last hundred years has it borne this title.(2) Previously both the textual and the higher criticism were known under the common title, "Biblical Criticism" It scarcely needs to be added that the exclusive use of the title Higher Criticism for that application of it which seeks to revolutionize established beliefs in reference to the Bible, is erroneous: as is also the tacit claim of some advocates of these revolutionary efforts to the exclusive title of higher critics.(3) All confusion in the use of these terms will be avoided if the definition just given is kept in mind.

This definition will be better understood if we add to it a statement of the method in which the inquiries of the art are properly conducted. This method is well defined by Prof. W. Robertson Smith in these words: "The ordinary laws of evidence and good sense must be our guides. For the transmission of the Bible is not due to a continued miracle, but to a watchful Providence ruling the ordinary means by which all ancient books have been handed down. And finally, when we have worked our way back through the long centuries which separate us from the age of Revelation, we must, as we have already seen, study each writing and make it speak for itself on the common principles of sound exegesis" (0. T., 18). In other words, the method is to employ the laws of evidence by which other questions of fact are determined, to do this with "good sense," and, when the meaning of the text is to be settled, to interpret it "on the common principles of sound exegesis. When Prof. C. A. Briggs says, "The higher criticism is exact and thorough in its methods" (Bib. Study, 194), he speaks truly of these methods when properly defined and applied; but it is unfortunately true that the most exact and thorough methods may, in unskilful hands, or in the hands of men with sinister designs, be employed with disastrous results. Any method of procedure which proposes to apply the laws of evidence, may, by misapplication of those laws, lead to erroneous and unjust decisions. Our courts of justice bear constant witness to this fact Any procedure in which "good sense," as Professor Smith expresses it, is to be our guide, may, by the lack of good sense on our part, guide us astray. Common sense is a very uncommon commodity, and not less so among men of great learning than among their less fortunate tell us. And as to "the principles of sound exegesis," the scarcity of the scholars who can steadily command and employ these is startlingly attested by the pages of countless commentaries on the various books of the Bible.

From these remarks it naturally follows that higher criticism, however correct the principles by which it seeks to be guided, is, in practice, an extremely variable quantity -- so variable as to include the writings of extreme rationalists on the one hand and the most conservative of Biblical scholars on the other. From these premises there springs again the inference that those who have adopted the conclusions of certain critics should not be so confident of their correctness as to practically assume their infallibility. We hear much of "assured results" but there are none so assured as to be exempt from revision. The real issue between the two great parties to the criticism of the Pentateuch lies here. It is the question, which of the two have employed aright, and do employ aright, the laws of evidence, the maxims of common sense, and the principles of a sound exegesis.

By what title these two parties should be distinguished, is as yet an unsettled question. As we have stated above, the party who favor the analysis have usually styled themselves critics, and their opponents traditionalists; but this is manifestly unjust to the latter; for while there are traditionalists on both sides -- that is, men who accept what has been taught by their predecessors without investigation on their own part -- yet it can not be denied that the leaders of this party have been as independent and as scholarly in their investigations as their opponents -- Thomas Hartwell Horne not less so than S. B. Driver. Again, the analytical party have styled their system modern and scientific, whereas the system which opposes it is equally modern in its argumentation, and whether it is less scientific or not is the question in dispute Prof. James Robertson, in his Early Religion of Israel, employed the titles "Biblical" and "Antibiblical;" but the more conservative school on the other side claim to be equally Biblical, in that they claim to have discovered the real significance of the Bible. Professor Briggs has employed, in his more recent writings, the titles "Critical" and "Anticritical;" but this is to assume that his party alone is critical. If we had, on the analytical side, only the unbelieving originators of the system, the difficulty would disappear, and the distinction of rationalistic, or unbelieving, and believing criticism would be appropriate and exact; but the difficulty is to find distinguishing terms which will include on that side both the radical and the evangelical wings of which it is composed. On the whole, it appears to the present author that the distinction is most fairly preserved by the terms destructive and conservative. By common consent the unbelieving critics are styled destructive, seeing that they would destroy the whole superstructure of Biblical faith. But the so-called evangelical wing seek to destroy belief in the principal part of Old Testament history as it has come down to us, and consequently their criticism is also destructive to a large extent These two distinguishing terms are for these reasons employed in the body of this work. 

1. It is defined by Prof. W. H. Green in these words: "Properly speaking, it is an inquiry into the origin and character of the writings to which it is applied. It seeks to ascertain by all suitable means the authors by whom, the time at which, the circumstances under which, and the design with which they were produced" (Higher Crit. of Pent., Preface, v.). He omits credibility, and the literary characteristics.

2. Johann Gotfried Eichhorn, author of a very learned Introduction to the Old Testament, was the first to use the new title, about the close of the eighteenth century. He accepted the analytical theory of the Pentateuch, so far as it had been elaborated, but, like Jean Astruc, who wrote a few years earlier, and who is usually credited with first propounding that theory, he held to the Mosaic authorship.

3. W. L. Baxter says of these: "Their more proper designation would be, Imaginationist Critics: they are higher than others, solely through building their critical castles in the air, instead of on terra firma" (Sanctuary and Sacrifice: A Reply to Wellhausen, viii.).