It is worth while to attempt to find any possi ble sources for the sake of the light which such an investigation might throw IWO the work ; hut it would be intellectual suicide to substitute the study of the sources, for the study of the book. But very few, even of the men who support the new tradition, regard the results thus far reached as being final ; the most of them will agree that the source-restorations of the newer school which they now accept are still open to much revision. And this is another reason for a study of the Old Testament as distinguished from its possi ble sources.
(6) Sources. The completed Old Testament contains more than merely the extracts which the final authors have made from their sources. It gives us their judgment, either expres'.cd of implied, in regard to the relations between the sources and their proper interpretation.
From the point of view of inspiration, we must hold that whatever Divine authority these hooks may have, conies largely through the men from whose hands the completed works came. Some writers have claimed that inspiration belongs ex clusively to the original documents, but a single illustration will expose the fallacy of that idea. In the fourth chapter of the Book of Ezra we find a copy of the letter written by Bishlam, Ta heel and others to the Persian king a letter in which the Jews who were building the temple were slandered. The letter is one of the original sources of the Book of Ezra, but it is here copied simply on account of its falsity, and to show that it is contrary to the mind of God. To assume, then, that other sources contain all the inspira tion which has been given, is entirely contrary to the evidence in the case. The "holy men who spake as they were moved by the lloly Ghost" were as often the secondary, as the primary authors of the books.
From a literary point of view Old Testament writers have sometimes been accused of being "uncritical," but they have at all events con structed books which have attracted more at tention than any other literary product, and that, ton, for a period covering more than twenty-two centuries. It may be well to inquire how many men, who call themselves "critical," can construct even one book which will command attention from scholars for more than two thousand years? These early authors have done work which is still so thoroughly alive that this fact alone is conclusive proof of its value. They certainly had fountains of information which we have not— they had the whole of certain works of which we have only the parts which they considered worthy of use. We, therefore, owe it to our
selves to study these I-Kinks as a whole. (See Old Testament Books Versus Their Sources, by Willis J. Beecher : Ribliotheea Sacrw. April, 1809, pp. 209, sq.) (Sec SCRIPTURE, HOLY.) 6. Human Element in the Bible.
The later versions of the Bible have been con ceded to be superior to the earlier, because of the better scholarship of its translators.
(1) Translations. We feel this human cle ment in the translation work. and our Bible may well be called a Divine-human book. All trans lators have for themselves done the very best work they could—all that honest, prayerful ap plication could do in sn difficult and responsi ble an undertaking. And the Bible is better for this painstaking human element. No later trans lation has been made from the original docu ments than those from the hands of the B blical writers themselves. They have been made first from copies. then front copies of collies, and so un, the originals having been lost.
Scholars find that ,bough there are thousands of minute variations in the hundreds of manu scripts which they have collated. there are no changes that affect the Divine doctrine of re ligion.
(2) Human Agencies. Nevertheless the copy ing of the Bible is a human clement. There is a blending of the human element, also touching the text as it came from the hands of the original writers, a blending of life, between the source of Divine revelation and the intelligent and rcsponsi ble human beings who penned the revelations com ing through them. In these revelations we look to the man who was used to record them, not the pen that wrote, nor the fingers that held the pen, not the tongues of the men that spoke, but the soul force—the whole roan—as a free person ality inspired in this superhuman work, the man chosen by God to communicate the Divine unto the human. Oehler in his Old Testament Theology, pp. 479, 48o, says : "Whatever the prophet learned, experienced or observed, all that he feared or hoped, all concern ing which he needed counsel or information, nay, even the external events which concerned him personally, all offered so many points of con nection by which the Divine Word might reach him, and that word clothed itself in forms which had a relation to the idiosyncrasy and experience of the prophet, and was reported by him accord ing to his individual rhetorical or literary powers." (3) Personal Peculiarities. Prophets, apos tles and evangelists all possessed individual pe culiarities, stronger, perhaps, because of the greater personality of men thus gifted.