THEOLOGY UNDER ITS CHANGED CONDITIONS. 175 



this into perfection ? We evidently must not assert for Christianity 

 an exclusive place in the upraising of the world to God. 



2. Passing on to the sphere of criticism, we find that the Old Testa- 

 ment has undergone a great change. The successive labors of Ewald, 

 Graf, and Wellhausen, in Germany ; of Kuenen, in Holland ; of Reuss 

 among French, and Robertson Smith among English critics, have won 

 the general assent of scholars even of men of such conservative lean- 

 ings as Delitzsch, in Germany ; of Briggs, in America ; and of the 

 Oxford Hebraists, Driver and Cheyne. The " Guardian " newspaper, 

 which represents the more educated opinion of the Anglican clergy, 

 published, on the 3d of last November, a cautious article, from which 

 we may infer its readiness to accept the results of this criticism, and its 

 consciousness that Christian doctrine has nothing to fear from it. Let 

 us endeavor to give a succinct account of these results. 



The Pentateuch is now held to be of Mosaic origin only in the sense 

 of incorporating historical and legal elements, which a tradition, partly 

 but not wholly trustworthy, had handed down as connected with Moses. 

 In its present state it consists mainly of three elements : 1. The early 

 documents, which combine two sources, one of which uses the name Je- 

 hovah, the other Elohim ; 2. The Deuteronomic ; and, 3. The priestly : 

 these three elements are represented in successive casts of the law by, 

 1. The Decalogue and the book of laws in Exodus xx-xxiii ; 2. The 

 Book of Deuteronomy ; 3. The Book of Leviticus ; and took shape in 

 writings, the first about 800 b. c. ; the second at the time of Manasseh 

 or Josiah ; the third during the period between Ezekiel and Ezra. In 

 these three periods the early documents were successively rehandled, 

 so that the first four books bear traces of the later influence, first of 

 the Deuteronomist, and, secondly, of the Levitical writers ; the Book 

 of Joshua, also, has been subjected to the same processes, being, in 

 fact, a continuation of the first five books, and forming with them the 

 "Hexateuch." The histories, from Judges to 2 Kings, form a con- 

 nected work, the various parts of which were composed at various 

 times, some of them being contemporary with the events described, 

 but which took its final shape in the time of Jeremiah. The Books of 

 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, form similarly one work, written un- 

 der priestly influence long after the time of Ezra. The Book of Esther 

 is a very late work, its claims to be placed in the Canon being disputed 

 by the rabbis down to the Christian era. The Psalms are of many ages 

 and authors, the Psalms actually written by David being limited to a 

 very few, possibly to the eighteenth alone. The Proverbs belong to 

 Solomon only in the sense in which the Psalms belong to David. Job 

 is of quite uncertain date and origin, while Ecclesiastes belongs to the 

 later Persian era, and the Song of Songs to the days of the northern 

 kingdom. The Prophets remain as the solid center, their date begin- 

 ning with the eighth century b. c, and the books being written by 

 those whose names they bear, with the exception of Isaiah xl-xlvi, 



