1.02.01 The Old Testament
I. THE OLD TESTAMENT.
Thus far we have been considering the general principles that should guide us in all Biblical study. Now let us proceed to the special application of those principles to the different parts of the Bible, beginning with the Old Testament. It is evident to the most casual reader that we have here a library of books differing among themselves very considerably— narratives, codes of law, prophetic discourses, poems, proverbs, etc. The Jews divided their Bible into three volumes, which they called respectively the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. This division roughly corresponds to a radical distinction between three classes of literature that we meet with in the Old Testament. The distinctions, it is found, go far deeper than the form of the books and the style in which they are written, being traceable down to the underlying ideas. When we study each of these great divisions by itself, searching out its specific teaching and rigorously confining our attention to that alone, it becomes perfectly apparent to us that there were various schools among the Jews of Old Testament days, as there were in the days of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes— differences which may be compared to those in New Testament times between the followers of St. James and the followers of St. Paul, or those in later ages between Lutherans and Zwinglians, between Calvinists and Methodists. Possibly this statement may strike the reader who is not prepared for it with a sense of dismay. We appeal to the Bible from the wrangling of the sects, and now we are told that corresponding differences are to be met with even there! If our court of appeal is divided within itself, how shall we obtain a final judgment on our case?
Now, it may be as well to remember that hitherto the reference to Scripture has not put an end to controversy, which has gone on through all these dreary centuries in spite of it. Both Whitefield and Wesley relied on their Bibles, and yet they quarreled. No doubt wiser methods of Biblical study than were pursued by controversialists in the past would have resulted in a nearer approach to unanimity of opinion as to its teachings. But there is another way of looking at the case. These differences are not so fatal as the sects, in the narrowness of their creeds and the bitterness of their conflicts, have supposed. Whatever may be our opinion as to the rights of the quarrel between Calvinists and Methodists, who will venture to say that in their great evangelistic work either Whitefield or Wesley was false to the Gospel of Christ?
We must not make too much of the differences between the Jewish writers. At heart they were agreed in the faith of Jehovah. What they show by their differences is partly that the vital, spiritual truths of the Old Testament revelation are infinitely more important than the forms in which they were conceived by the various schools of Jews, and partly that these truths themselves may be approached from different points of view, the aspects of which are not altogether the same, although what is really meant in the essence of it is much nearer identity than we might suppose from the very different ways in which it is expressed.
Neither should we let these differences disturb our faith in the inspiration of the several books. It is fatal to an artificial theory of inspiration. With such facts as these before us it will be impossible to continue asserting that the “sacred penman” was a mere amanuensis, to whom every word he wrote had been dictated. But it does not conflict with the saner theory that the Spirit of God opened the minds of the writers to perceive truth, and breathed through their thoughts in the expression of it.
See Wright, “Introduction to the Old Testament” and Bennett, “The Theology of the Old Testament” (“Theological Educator”); Driver, “Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament”; Ryle, “Canon of the Old Testament”; Buhl, “Canon of the Text of the Old Testament”; Davidson, “Canon of the Bible.”