Besides, as denominations are growing so large in this country as to be unwieldy and unable to give proper representation in the upper courts, it was well that they remained apart and formed smaller denominations. With the spirit of a Calvinist we say philosophically, "it was to be so," and we therefore have to-day a more varied type of Calvinism in America than if there had been union.

Finally, even if the proposed union did not take place, it was a prophecy, which has been fulfilled in the "Alliance of the Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian system." Had that been known of in 1744, it would have solved the problem of union. Let us rejoice that in our day, we have such an Alliance to show the essential unity of historic Calvinism while still perpetuating its distinctive types.

Reading, Pa.

JAS. I. GOOD.

VIII. CRITICISMS AND REVIEWS.

BUDDE'S DAS BUCH DER RICHTER.

DAS BUCH DER RICHTER, erklärt von Dr. Karl Budde. Ord. Professor der Theologie in Strassburg. Leipsic J. C. B. Mohr.

The very latest production of the teeming German religious press is the Kurzer Hand Commentar zum Alten Testament, published in Liepsic by J. C. B. Mohr. Of the six volumes at hand we latterly ventured some observations in these pages upon Proverbs and Job. Since then Judges, expounded by Dr. Budde, has mainly attracted our attention. We have recently spent many a perplexed hour over this interesting and difficult portion of the Bible. We have not, of course, come to any very satisfactory solution of the literary and historical problems presented by its contents. But neither, we are bound to add, do Dr. Budde's labors assist us to any better conclusions. Indeed, they only add to our confusion.

This is pre-eminently a "critical" commentary. There is, therefore, no occasion for surprise to find its method characterized by the freest freedom of criticism and its conclusions shaped and controlled by critical principles exclusively.

At the very threshold of his work Dr. Budde makes it plain that he comes to the treatment of his subject with a distinct bias. He brings to the book he examines the conclusions which he pretends to draw from it. He is a prejudiced witness in favor of the reigning critical mania for disintegration. This explains the constant assumption of the truth of theories and facts of which the reader of the book has had no proof. Dr. Budde builds his critical work upon foundations laid elsewhere. He takes it for granted that the hypotheses of modern criticism concerning, let us say, the Hexateuch-hypotheses that played such havoc alike with the history and the literature of the Bible— have been incontrovertibly demonstrated, and apply, without further argument, with equal force, to Judges. But this, as every candid scholar will admit, is by no means true. Thus far the presumption must still be held to be on the side of the traditional view.

The most casual perusal of Dr. Budde's pages indicate that he deals with this book solely and altogether along the lines of that primal canon of criticism which demands that the literature of the Bible must be treated just like any other literature in the trial of its merits. But in Dr. Budde's hands this rule means the reduction of the book to a purely human plane. There is no acknowledgment, explicit or implied, of any kind of inspiration whatsoever. The treatment is, therefore, wholly mechanical. Thought and time are exhausted in minute examinations of who wrote, re-wrote, edited and re-edited every section, paragraph and verse, and in nicely balancing the probabilities for and against annotations, amendments of and omissions from the text.

In treating, for instance, the Gideon story, such queries as the following are put into the foreground: 1. Can the present status of 6, 1-8, 3 be explained as the revision of a once consistent story, or must it be assumed that two narratives are here combined? 2. If the latter, how far does the combination extend? 3. May portions of 6, 1-8, 3 be used to supplement and complete 8, 4-21, either as an introduction to or as a part of the latter narrative itself? 4. Is ch. 9 merely a continuation of the single narrative in 8, 4–21, or is it the conclusion of the double story in 6, 1-8, 3? 5. Is the main thread of 6-7 only a poorer conception of what is related in 8, 4-21, is it spun out of these verses, or is it an independent, even though later tradition? 6. Can the two names, Jerubbaal and Gideon, be divided between the two main stories? If so, what is their relation? Is it possible that the two names describe two distinct persons? 7. Is there any ground for dividing the two strands of the narrative between J. and E.?

Here is a task peculiarly apropos of a critical commentary. Here certainly are problems worthy of a whole corps of German professors. But what, after this kind of work has been done, is the sum total of results? Well, as Dr. Budde's book itself abundantly testifies, granting that these purely critical processes have all been satisfactorily accomplished, absolutely nothing substantial is thereby gained. Granted that a correct and properly applied principle of literary analysis can succeed in separating the component parts of this ancient book, there still remains the determination of their dates, their mutual dependence, their effects on the history, or vice versa. And of these things, as well as of the divisive process, the different critics give very different accounts indeed. And when it comes to the vastly more important question whether this or any other book of the Bible can be adequately dealt with in this way, whether the office, dignity and worth of the Scriptures, or any part of them, can be even faintly grasped by such treatment, we are content to leave the answer to the intelligent judgment of the Christian reader. Further examination of Dr. Budde's work brings to light the fact that, in his eagerness to make good his theories, he has fallen into the curious but common critical error of looking for and demanding nineteenth century literary, historical and critical ideals in productions thousands of years old. Unless these ancient Biblical documents can be made to conform to the canons of modern literary excellence, the conclusion, according to Dr. Budde is irresist ible, that they have been seriously and injuriously tampered with by second and third hands, or, as we shall see, by "schools" of hands. But the ancient historiographer was no artist. His stylus, whether used to write upon stones or skins, handled by Assyrian or Hebrew, was not the modern pen, Mr. Huxley's so-called "weapon of precision." Exaggeration and contradiction do not, even now, necessarily imply double or treble "sources." Because Dr. Budde lacks the true historical feeling, he cannot measure men and their works by their times.

Still further examination of this commentary reveals the interesting circumstance, that with all his painstaking care, with all of his marvelous induction of related, correlated, interrelated, and nonrelated facts, Dr. Budde habitually fails to take cognizance of the human element as a factor in the

production of this book. This may seem to be rather seriously at variance with our other observation, that Dr. Budde looks upon the book as a wholly human piece of work. But there is a difference between knowing a man and knowing something about human nature. Dr. Budde is quite sure the book was made by men, and by men only, but he does not even begin to faintly appreciate the kind of men who made it. Here Dr. Budde is seriously deficient. He lacks sympathy with human nature. He needs a little common sense. He would then be able to appreciate the fact that men are not and never were all alike, that they frequently contradict themselves, that they often exaggerate, that ancient Hebrew chroniclers could be as incomprehensible as any modern German professor! Could Dr. Budde keep such commonplaces in view, it would enable him properly to bend his theories to the facts, instead of always doing the reverse.

Another striking thing about this commentary is the often almost pitiful drivel to which it frequently descends in its treatment of the linguistic and rhetorical phenomena of our book. It would seem that here, at least, Dr. Budde's observations, as those of a trained Hebraist, as a specialist, would be decisive. But it has been well said that "specialists are very prone to become theorists, and a specialist with a theory is a very unsafe guide." `This is amply illustrated in the book under review. Take, purely at random, some of the comments in the discussion of Gideon's call. Thus 6: 14, "And the Lord looked upon him," is said to be "suspicious," even though, as Dr. Budde himself adds, "it would be difficult to say why and from whence it had been added." Then why suspicious? For no other reason than that Dr. Budde's sense that the dramatic proprieties are violated by its, to Dr. Budde, premature revelation of the identity of Gideon's supernatural visitor. But this whole account describes what is evidently a theophanic manifestation. In such accounts the messenger is always more or less distinctly identified with the Lord himself. All the Old Testament writers were saturated with this idea. Can it, then, reasonably surprise us if a writer's deep conviction of this truth should occasionally dominate his sense of the strict dramatic proprieties, if he ever had any, and by such a lapsus calamus anticipate his climax? "Have not I sent thee?" in the same verse, is also a later addition, and for the same reason. In 6 : 15, we are told to read instead of

Why? Because the latter vocalization being the form always used when God is spoken of, xaт' éžoɣý, its use here also indicates a breach of the dramatic proprieties, in that it makes Gideon recognize Jehovah's messenger before, in Dr. Budde's judgment, he ought to be allowed to recognize

him.

The second half of this verse seems to Dr. Budde to be an amplification based on 1 Samuel 9, 21. Dr. Budde can make this suggestion because he holds, contrary to most of his compeers, that 1 Samuel 9, 21, belongs to a pre-Deuteronomic work. In 6, 16, again, for the same reason, Dr. Budde prefers the third person, of the LXX., to the

T

first person,, of the Receptus. In 6, 17, the request for a sign again presumes too much upon Gideon's perspicacity, and is "surely foreign." The latter part of the verse arouses that dreadful critical "suspicion" because of the late (?) form of the relative pronoun The occurrence of this form here indisputably shows the clause to be a gloss, because it occurs in 5, 7. But 5, 7 is by Dr. Budde referred to as a gloss, because its peculiar relative form is found in 6, 17! Could any one more correctly reason in a circle? And, anyway, "Shew me a sign that it is thou that talkest with me" is illogical and scarcely possible in a connection in which "I am Yahweh" had gone before. That, of course, is purely a matter of opinion between Dr. Budde and the ancient worthy who penned this account. In 6, 18, must mean "sacrificial offering," and is, therefore, an amendation by a later hand, in order, once again, to harmonize with Gideon's all too previous and somewhat persistent recognition of his guest. The second half of this verse, "And he said, I will tarry until thou come again," is graciously put down as "original." But what a pity Dr. Budde does not tell us how he knows it. For our part, we would like to hear his reasons for this truly startling judgment, for back of that simple statement there surely lurks the keenest kind of historical insight, the profoundest scholarship! Bah! Such examples might be multiplied. But enough has been said to show how thoroughly Dr. Budde understands the art of critical legerdemain.

It is time to say something of Dr. Budde's division of the book into its supposedly component parts. Since our space precludes an examination in detail of the whole work, we must content ourselves with an analysis of the Gideon story, a fairly representative portion of Judges and of Dr. Budde's manipulation of it. To this end a bird's-eye view of his division of the entire book will be helpful.

Dr. Budde holds that the authors of our present book of Judges, Rp, lived probably about 400 B. C. These unknown authors had before them a work compiled by D, and another slightly later one by D2. These represented the views of the so-called Deuteronomistic school, the "pragmatists" of the fiifth century. D, and D2, in turn, got their material from Rje, a succession of writers who performed about 650. Rje got their material from E and E2, north-israelitish, theocratic historians of the eighth century, and from J, Judaic writers of the ninth century. J and E, finally, drew upon the popular traditions current in their day.

In harmony with this theory of the composite authorship of the book, its several parts are microscopically divided among no less than nine different "schools," for the reader must bear in mind that the critical symbols J, E, Rje, etc., no longer represent "individual authors, but a succession of writers, the historiography of a certain period and school." This is one of the latest requirements of criticism. It seems to us to knock the last prop from under any possible linguistic or rhetorical argument. Dr. Budde tells us that the separation and restoration of the sources of the complicated Gideon story have recently been frequently attempted, but not with satisfactory results.