Questions on Chapter 4.
all-important truth. And if Christianity is true, then the Bible is a revelation of God to man. These two positions stand or fall together. The Bible and the Christian religion are either both true or both false. As it is from the Scriptures that we learn what Christianity is, and gain a knowledge of the principal and more direct evidences by which its claim to truth must be tested, we think it the more natural course in this investigation, to begin by an inquiry concerning the claims of the Scriptures to our regard and confidence.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER 4.
QUESTION 1. What kind of evidence should we require on this subject?
2. Why is it absurd to demand mathematical demonstration?
3. What would be the effect of either greatly increasing or diminishing the evidence?
4. What is the connection between the claims of the Scriptures and of Christianity?
CHAPTER 5. — ANTIQUITY OF THE SCRIPTURES.
IN fixing our attention upon the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the first thing demanding our notice is their remarkable antiquity. On this point no laborious research or extended argument is needed. In this connection we do not propose an inquiry concerning the character of the sacred writers, or the authority pertaining to their productions; these questions will be considered in their proper place. The simple question now before us is the antiquity of the Scriptures as a whole. The Christian claims both the Old and the New Testaments as a divine revelation, containing the history and setting forth the principles of his religion. These Scriptures, though written by a great variety of authors, extending through centuries, and embodying two great dispensations — the Mosaic and the Christian — are yet so intimately connected, and so necessarily dependent upon each other, that they are not to be contemplated as two distinct and separate systems, but as kindred parts of the same connected system, constituting the complete revelation of God to man.
As to the New Testament, it will be shown in its proper connection that it originated in the apostolic age, and has been received and revered by the Church, and its existence acknowledged by the world, in all succeeding ages. But for the Old Testament and its authors a much higher antiquity is claimed.
In presenting the claim of antiquity for the Scriptures, we do not pretend to prove, by an argument founded upon that consideration alone, that revelation is true; all we claim is, that antiquity entitles revelation to great reverence and respect — it is a prima facie presumption in its favor. We will not here dwell upon the fact that the sacred writers not only profess to carry the chronology of man beyond the period of Homer and Cadmus, but even up to the beginning of the world. While pagan records are so soon lost amidst the clouds of Olympus or the darkness of the tombs of Egypt, revelation carries us back, without the mists of doubt or fable, to the primal birth of our race.
It may easily be shown that this antiquity has been claimed for the Old Testament and its authors, not only by Christians from the earliest ages of the Christian Church, but by the Jews from the commencement of all historic record. And this has never been contested, but has often been admitted by pagan authors, even when engaged in a direct crusade against revelation.
During the first two or three centuries of the Christian era, circumstances were probably more favorable for a thorough discussion of the evidences of Christianity than they have ever been since that period. The science and learning of the pagan nations had risen to its highest pitch, the temple of Janus had been closed, general peace prevailed throughout the world, and, by reason of the wide-spread influence of the Roman Empire, every facility existed for the extension of commerce and the rapid and wide diffusion of knowledge. Add to all this the novelty of Christianity, and the proximity of all the great and marvellous events connected with its origin and establishment, together with its antagonism to the long-established customs and religions of the world, and we have every circumstance necessary to arrest the attention and awake the interest of the most able and gifted pens on both sides of the controversy.
If Christianity be an imposition, that was the juncture the most favorable of all to expose the delusion. And bold was the effort, and formidable the means, employed for that object. There appeared upon the arena a succession of zealous and accomplished champions, armed and equipped with all the learning and eloquence of the schools, and stimulated by interest and goaded by malice, resolved to maintain the honor of the religion of their country, and put down the new-rising and hated superstition of Christianity. Celsus in the second century, Porphyry and Hierocles in the third, and Julian in the fourth, stepped boldly forth as formal antagonists to crush by argumentative disputation the religion of Christ. To meet this quaternity of assailants, God raised up in his Church not only a “noble army of martyrs,” but an erudite and intrepid band of apologists and defenders of the faith. Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustin, Origen, Eusebius, Irenæus, and Athenasius, at that interesting period fearlessly met and triumphantly vanquished the mighty champions of infidelity.
In this controversy the Christian apologists boldly asserted for the Mosaic records an antiquity beyond the claims not only of all Grecian learning, but of all heathen mythology. Surely, if these claims of antiquity on the part of Christians could have been set aside or shown to be supposititious, these learned opponents of Christianity could and would have accomplished the task! But, so far from this being the case, there is no record of such an attempt. They either fully admitted them, or passed them by in silence, which implied the same.
Let us notice a few of the many testimonies on this subject. Justin Martyr declares: “These things which we have learned from Christ and the prophets are the truth, and more ancient than any thing recorded by other writers.” And he charges Plato with having “copied from Moses,” who, he affirms, “was more ancient than all the writers of the Greeks.” And this point he engages to prove “even from profane historians themselves.” He quotes from Polemon, Apion, Ptolemæus, Hellanicus, Philochorus, Castor, Thallus, and several other ancient profane authors, this admission of the superior antiquity of Moses, and confirms the same by the unrebutted testimony of Philo and Josephus. He proceeds: “Socrates was the master of Plato, Plato of Aristotle. Now these men flourished in the times of Philip and Alexander of Macedon; wherefore it is plain how much older Moses must be than any of them.” He adds (speaking to the Greeks): “All your poets, however ancient, your legislators, historians, philosophers, and orators, composed and spoke in the Greek character,” but that “your own grammarians themselves allow that Moses wrote in the Hebrew character before Greek letters were invented.”
Tatian proves by testimony from Chaldean, Phenician, and Egyptian writers, that Moses flourished not only anterior to the Trojan war, and consequently before the age of Homer, but prior to the origin of the Greek and Trojan races. He quotes testimony from Ptolemy the priest, clearly evincing that Moses wrote more than twenty generations anterior to Homer.
Clemens Alexandrinus asserts that the Grecian philosophers are “thieves and robbers, because, before the coming of Christ, they stole and appropriated to themselves portions of truth from the Hebrew prophets which they adulterated or disfigured with ignorant diligence.” And this fact, we may add, is abundantly confirmed by Diodorus Siculus, from whose history it may be learned that not only Orpheus, but Homer, Solon, Pythagoras, Plato, and others, in their search for knowledge, visited Egypt, where they met with the writings of Moses.
Tertullian assumes the superior antiquity of the Mosaic writings, and that heathen philosophers have pilfered from them, as undoubted facts. Origen thinks it “needless to produce Egyptian, Phenician, or Grecian testimonies (in regard to the superior antiquity of the Mosaic records), since any one may read them by consulting Josephus’s works, where is a long catalogue of authors who confirm the truth of this matter by their concurrent testimonies.”
Eusebius invokes history to attest “the superior antiquity of the schools of the prophets over those of the Academy, the Lyceum, or the Portico.” He shows that both Plato and Pythagoras borrowed from Moses. Augustin assumes it as evident, from undisputed testimony, that “the Bible record is more ancient than the stream of Grecian literature, carrying us back beyond the days of Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, the seven sages of Greece, Orpheus, Linus,” etc. “Wherefore,” he adds, “though the learning of Greece warms the world to this day, it cannot be boasted that it is as excellent as ours.”
Among the writers, neither Jewish nor Christian, who have testified to the existence and antiquity of the sacred writers, may be named Manetho, Cheremon, Apollonius, Lysimachus, Strabo, Justin, Juvenal, Pliny, and Tacitus. All these, and many others, have admitted not only the superior antiquity of the Mosaic writings, but that Moses was the founder and lawgiver of the Jewish state. Indeed it may be affirmed that these facts were as notorious among the surrounding ancient nations as among the Jews themselves.
As already stated, upon the mere fact of antiquity alone the Christian does not profess to found an argument in proof of Christianity, yet it must be admitted that great advantage in the investigation is derived from this source. Revelation is here placed in the outset upon high vantage-ground. It is not only shown to be entitled to great reverence and respect, but there arises at once a prima facie presumption of its truth: It can scarcely be thought possible that this antiquity could be so long and so generally claimed and admitted, and no effort made for its refutation, unless it had been founded in fact. And when this antiquity is admitted, the arguments in favor of revelation must occupy a position of commanding plausibility. Indeed, it will be difficult to show how a system such as revelation unfolds could originate at so early a period, or maintain the influence it has so long wielded, unless it had been divinely revealed, and was protected by a superintending Providence.