1904 31 {"The Historical N.T., being the Literature of the N.T. arranged in the order of its literary growth and according to the dates of the documents: a new translation, edited with prolegomena, etc. by James Moffatt, B.D. Second and revised edition. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38, George Street, 1901."}
The very title of this humanitarian book will suffice to reveal its unbelieving character to men of faith. Nor need it surprise any to read from the start extracts from Martineau, Westphal, and Goethe, occupying page 5. It is the "historical" method of neology, applied by Dr. Driver to the O.T., and here to the N.T. Under cover of a literary investigation the enemy seeks to undermine and overthrow its divine authority. "The enemy," one says; for we need not impute such a consciously sinister design to the author. God in any reality is excluded from the N.T. as from the Old Man takes His place with entire self-sufficiency.
The work is avowedly "a pioneering edition." For the modern research, chiefly German, pushed forward of late by British and American disciples, is not at all satisfied. Nor will the impulse let them rest, till "the apostasy first come, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition," as the apostle warned at an early day. Development is the key-note, whether for Christianity, or the testimony of apostles and prophets in what is commonly styled the New Testament. Were God in Christ frankly acknowledged to be its author, whatever the instruments to do His work according to His own perfection, such an idea as development must be regarded as intolerable; especially as the latest of its inspired writers takes such pains to repudiate it (1 John 1:1-4; 1 John 2:24-27; 1 John 4:1-6; 2 John 9-11).
As yet, the historical or new critical school professes to own that the scripture conveys, contains, or represents the word of God; they deny that it is the word, while admitting that it is to be the word of God written. This admission, if it kept its promise aright, would be loyal; but to their mind it means that the writing partakes of the fallibility of the writer, instead of being the perfectly true and reliable reflex of God's mind which admits of no question. For it is the writing, the scripture, "every scripture," which the apostle declares to be God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16). The issue, for the pioneer at the present juncture, is that the bulk of Paul's Epistles appeared first, from those to the Thessalonians to the Colossians and Philemon; then came 1 Peter; after it the Synoptic Gospels, Mark first (save Mark 16:9, etc.); then the Epistle to the Hebrews; afterwards Luke's Gospel and Acts next; then the absurdity of the Apocalypse of John, before his Gospel, the Epistles 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, being attributed to another John! The Pastoral Epistles are supposed to follow long after Paul by his scholars! 1 and 2 Timotheus, with Titus, before 1 Timothy!! After these came the Epistle of James, then of Jude, and lastly of 2 Peter ("during the course of the second century, and probably in its first half"), the fragment of Mark being added before the Pastorals. This bold tampering may be illustrated by the effort to turn Rom. 16:1-20 into a note to Ephesians, and 2 Cor. 10 — 13:10 into an intermediate letter. Who can set bounds to the mania of speculation? Lachmann's pranks were bad enough, however clever, on the Iliad of Homer; but how sinful the profanity in dealing with scripture, and how mischievous to all who are proud of such cobwebs!