What is source criticism?

2 Three questions arise in connection with study of any Book of the Bible: (i.) as to the authorship and the materials ("sources") used by the writer, to which those engaged in the higher internal criticism address their inquiries; (ii.) as to the authority attaching to the Book, which is concerned with inspiration, and also with interpretation; (iii.) as to its genuine text, which is the inquiry of textual, external criticism (cf. Barry, p. 28). To each of these topics some remarks will be devoted, as introductory to such study of the Gospel.

In studying Old Testament criticism, we must direct our attention to the names by which the Jewish Scriptures have at different times been known; to the language in which they were composed; to the sources from which our printed copies have been derived; and to the materials used by translators in arriving at the meaning as well as the wording of the Text. The elements, in fact, out of which grew the Old Testament of our common English Bible will be our subject; and so a considerable portion of what German writers of 'Einleitungen' call 'General Introduction,' particularly that which possesses an interest for English readers.

A German professor, Eichhorn of the University of Gottingen, took up Astruc’s ideas, and in 1780 published a book embodying them. He it was who coined the term Higher Criticism, which has been defined as:

A few years later (1806) De Wette, a German professor of philosophy and theology at Heidelberg, continued on Eichhorn’s lines. Others kept up the task of criticism on these lines till Julius Wellhausen began to publish still more advanced views in 1878. He believed that he had discovered twenty-two different authors for the books of Moses—all unknown.

The modern critics, however, deny that Joshua had anything whatever to do with the book as we possess it. These wise men have discovered what equally learned and pious men of passed generations, seemingly did not know. They tell us that the date of the composition of Joshua is very late and that it is not the work of one man at all, but a compilation from the same sources that have been utilized in the Pentateuch. These are termed Jehovist (J.); Elohist (E.); Priestly Code (P.); Deuteronomist (D.) and still another Deuteronomist, termed D2. This So-called "science," higher criticism, tries to show which is which. And to these must be added a number of redactors, revisors and editors, who all had a hand in putting the book of Joshua into the shape in which we have it now. (The letters behind the names are used by the critic to indicate these different sources. W.H. Bennett in 1895 published Joshua in a number of colors, indicating the various documents.) Well has it been said:

"This view is supported by the fact that, even as it now stands the history sometimes gives more than one account of the same event, and that the Pentateuch often gives several laws on the same subject. Of the latter we have already had one example, but for our present argument the main point is not diversity of enactment, which may often be only apparent, but the existence within the Pentateuch of distinct groups of laws partly taking up the same topics. Thus the legislation of Exodus 20-23 is partly repeated in Exodus 34, and on the passover and feast of unleavened bread we have at least six laws, which, if not really discordant, are at least so divergent in form and conception that they cannot be all from the same pen (Ex. 12:1-28; Ex. 13:3-10; Ex. 23:15; Ex. 34:18; Lev. 23:5-14; Deut. 16.) Of historical duplicates the most celebrated are the twofold history of the creation and the flood, to which we must recur presently. The same kind of thing is found in the later books; for example, in the account of the way in which Saul became king, where it is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that 1 Samuel 11:11 should attach directly to 1 Samuel 10:16 (cf. 1 Sam. 10:7).

"The extent to which the historical books are made up of parallel narratives, which, though they cover the same period, do not necessarily record the same events, was first clearly seen after Astruc (1753 A.D.) observed that the respective uses of Jehovah (LORD) and Elohim (God) as the name of a deity afford a criterion by which two documents can be dissected out of the book of Genesis. That the way in which the two names are used can only be due to difference of authorship is now generally admitted, for the alternation corresponds with such important duplicates as the two accounts of creation, and is regularly accompanied through a great part of the book by unmistakable peculiarities of language and thought, so that it is still possible to reconstruct at least the Elohim document with a completeness which makes its original independence and homogeneity matter of direct observation. The character of this narrative is annalistic, and where other materials fail, blanks are supplied by genealogical lists. Great weight is laid on orderly development, and the name Jehovah is avoided in the history of the patriarchs in order to give proper contrast to the Mosaic period (cf. Gen. 17:1; Ex. 6:3) and, accordingly, we find that the unmistakable secondary marks of this author run through the whole Pentateuch and Joshua, though the exclusive use of Elohim ceases at Exodus 6. Of course the disappearance of this criterion makes it less easy to carry on an exact reconstruction of the later parts of the document; but on many points there can be no uncertainty, and it is clearly made out that the author has strong priestly tendencies, and devotes a very large proportion of his space to liturgical matters. The separation of this document may justly be called the point of departure of positive criticism of the sources of the Old Testament; and present controversy turns mainly on its relation to other parts of the Pentateuch. Of these the most important are: 1. The Jehovistic narrative, which also begins with the creation, and treats the early history more in the spirit of prophetic theology and idealism, containing, for example, the narrative of the fall, and the parts of the history of Abraham which are most important for Old Testament theology. That this narrative is not a mere supplement to the other, but an independent whole, appears most plainly in the story of the flood, where two distinct accounts have certainly been interwoven by a third hand. 2. Many of the finest stories in Genesis, especially great part of the history of Joseph, agree with the Elohim-document in the name of God, but are widely divergent in other respects. Since the researches of Hupfeld, a third author, belonging to northern Israel, and specially interested in the ancestors of the northern tribes, is generally postulated for these sections. His literary individuality is in truth sharply marked, though the limits of his contributions to the Pentateuch are obscure." — Ed. B. W. and R.

Yet it is plain that even for him the distinction between Jehovistic and Elohistic documents, with which these criticisms began, is fading away, so that he has often had to consider the question, "Is it probable that there should have been two narratives of the patriarchal and Mosaic ages, independent, yet largely resembling each other, and that these narratives should have been combined together into a single whole at a relatively early period of the history of Israel?" He answers, indeed, though with some hesitancy, that he believes it to be a fact that there were, "and that in some part, even if not so frequently as some critics have supposed, the independent sources used by the compiler are still more or less clearly discernible."

F. Parts of Luke remain discernible in every chapter of his Gospel, so as to amount to more than one half of it, which by modern critics are attributed to some special source or sources at his command (cf. Moffat, pp. 266 ff. and section B. above). Weiss ("Sources of Luke's Gospel," chapter 4) — with whom Harnack essentially agrees — assigns these to a single source, which he has designated "L," and Bartlet "S" (Sondergut of Wernle). Whether there is more than one such source, Harnack describes as at present "the most important problem in Synoptic criticism."

G. A succinct account having thus been given of the development to the present time of the "Synoptic Problem," a few words may be added by way of summary and appraisement of critical results. We have found that the hypothesis now prominently before students of the Gospels assumes the existence of at least two, most scholars think three, main sources of "Luke." Amongst indications of the synoptist's use in general of various sources is that afforded by what are deemed duplicate records (Weiss, "Sources of Luke's Gospel," p. 119); that is, two records of the same incident or discourse noticeable in Matthew, and even in Mark, in regard to which our Evangelist is believed, like John, to have exercised something like modern "criticism," at least discrimination: as to these "doublets" so-called, see Hawkins, pp. 80-107, if not Wernle, pp. 99-101. Luke 4:16-30 might be compared with Mark 6:1-6, or Luke 15:4-7 with Matt. 18:12-14: see Bennett, p. 141, Hawkins, loc.cit., or Wernle, p.99 ff. Some, as H. Holtzmann (followed by Wernle), find "doublets" even in Luke, e.g., the mission discourse in Luke 11 compared with that in Luke 10; 19:26 with Luke 8:18; Luke 21:14 with Luke 12:11. Such writers discredit the supposition that the Lord spoke or acted in the same or a similar way at different times, in diverse connections, with distinct purposes; but see Godet, l., p. 69.

Difficulty has arisen among critics in arriving at agreement as to the source of the special passages, whether oral or written. Wernle himself, amongst others, treats them as derivable from that writer's one written "special source" supposed to have been used by Luke.

C. Reverting to what has been introduced at the beginning of the present note as to critical opinion going back to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, it is necessary to recall such views as Lessing's that common written material underlies all the Synoptics; and Eichhorn's, that an Aramaic original was used in the composition of the three existing Gospels, but that none of them saw the others' work. Unremitting study of the subject by many scholars during the last century has led to the now dominant conclusion: most critics find various strata or layers in all, indicating different stages of development in the form that the Synoptics have respectively taken (J. Weiss, p. 39 f.), resulting in part from inter-dependence (with this cf. Godet's conservative view, i., pp. 42-48, 53-71). And so of Luke's Gospel, that it depends primarily on one or other of its predecessors. We may, then, first consider the order in which these Gospels were written.