LIBRAE | 
 
 UNIVBMITY Of 
 CAUW>1HA I
 
 THE 
 
 PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 AND 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA AND SYMBOLICS, 
 ONION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK 
 
 AND 
 
 BARON FRIEDRICH VON HUGEL, 
 
 MEMBER OF THE CAMBRIDGE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1906
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 THE following correspondence took place during 
 our holiday, away from most of our books and 
 papers. 
 
 The Answers of the Pontifical Biblical Com- 
 mission appeared officially, with the Pope's 
 Approbation, dated June 27th, in the Revue 
 Biblique for July. The Answers are also given, 
 in Latin and English, in the Tablet for July 28th, 
 but with still some uncertainty as to whether 
 they had received the Papal assent, since the 
 Osservatore Romano had indeed published the 
 Answers, but without the Approbation. 
 
 The weeks which have elapsed since, in the 
 Engadine and in Surrey, we thus re-formulated 
 to each other the slowly-acquired, deliberate 
 convictions forced upon us by our many years' 
 closest study of the Pentateuch and of the 
 critical work which four generations of scholars 
 have expended on this great complex of writings, 
 have in nowise abated our sense of the import- 
 ance and inevitableness of these positions, or 
 
 of our responsibilities and duties as Biblical 
 
 iii
 
 iv PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Students within the Christian Church. We 
 therefore now publish herewith these much- 
 tested reflexions and requirements of two work- 
 ing scholars and life-long lovers of organized 
 Christianity, sure that truth sincerely sought and 
 simply spoken can never completely miscarry 
 amongst men, and confident of contributing our 
 share towards the advent of that most necessary, 
 most fruitful, and most difficult thing, the 
 definitive, operative recognition, by Ecclesiastical 
 Authority, of sound critical historical method, 
 and of this method's most assured results. 
 
 C. A. B. 
 F. v. H. 
 
 All-Saints Day, 1906.
 
 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 I 
 
 HOTEL BELLE-!LE, CADENABBIA, 
 
 Sept. 4th, 1906. 
 
 My dear Friend, 
 
 I was surprised and dismayed when I 
 read in the Corriere della Sera, the opinion of 
 the Biblical Commission respecting the Mosaic 
 Authorship of the Pentateuch. When we were 
 in Rome together, I had the very highest 
 authority for the statement that I have made 
 in many places, that a reasonable amount of 
 liberty would be given in Biblical Criticism, so 
 long as its results did not conflict with the estab- 
 lished dogmas of the Church. 
 
 What, my dear Friend, does this change of 
 position mean ? The Church has never com- 
 mitted itself officially to the Mosaic authorship
 
 6 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 of the Pentateuch; and to recognize that Hebrew 
 laws and institutions were a development of a 
 divinely guided Theocracy, rather than given all 
 at once to Moses at the beginning of the Hebrew 
 Commonwealth, suits the Roman Catholic posi- 
 tion as to Christian Dogma and Institutions, 
 better than the usual Protestant position that we 
 must build on the New Testament alone. I can 
 see no good reason why the Authorities in Rome 
 should make such a sudden and abrupt change 
 of policy. 
 
 I have, as you know, devoted many years of 
 study to the problem of the Pentateuch, and also 
 to the larger question of the Reunion of Christen- 
 dom. I understood on the highest authority and 
 from conversation with the Pope himself, that he 
 was broad-minded, generous-hearted and earnest 
 in his purpose to reform the Church and do 
 what he could for the reunion of the Protestant 
 Churches with Rome. It would be a great grief 
 to me, and it would dash many hopes to the 
 ground, if it should appear that I have been 
 mistaken, and that I have misled others also. 
 
 What can you say, to relieve my mind ? What 
 can the many other Old Testament scholars who, 
 like yourself, are my friends, say and do? Are 
 they all to be put under the ban ?
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 
 
 If the Opinion of the Biblical Commission as 
 to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is 
 merely the opinion of the members of the Com- 
 mission, it will carry little weight; for while there 
 are many able scholars in the Commission whom 
 I honour for their work in many different fields of 
 theology, the Commission is singularly destitute 
 of Biblical critics; and hence its Opinion, standing 
 for that of the average member, or even for that 
 of the majority of the members, can, whatever 
 its importance in ecclesiastical circles, be of but 
 little or no consequence before the tribunal of 
 Biblical scholarship. I recall my studies of the 
 large work of Rector Janssen on Dogmatic 
 Theology. I have used it, with profit and 
 admiration, in the field of Scholastic Theology ; 
 but his treatment of the Bible is so unscholarly, 
 and his use of the Hebrew language shows such 
 profound ignorance, that no serious worker 
 could deem him competent to give an opinion in 
 matters of Hebrew Scholarship, and his name 
 discredits at once the report of the Commission. 
 The name of Vigouroux stands for an antiquated 
 apologetic, distinguished by special pleading and 
 a closing of the eyes to everything that does not
 
 8 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 count for his side of the case. If these two 
 names are fairly representative of the majority of 
 the Commission, its report is indeed without 
 value. 
 
 It is exceedingly unfortunate, if it be true, 
 that this Report has received the endorsement of 
 the Pope; for whilst the Holy Father assured me 
 himself that such decisions, even when approved 
 by the Pope, have not the character of infalli- 
 bility, yet his name when given to any decision, 
 carries an authority with the faithful beyond esti- 
 mation. Scholars may continue to question it, 
 but the Church as a body is likely to acquiesce, 
 and even scholars are thereby perplexed and 
 troubled. 
 
 If this decision should go no further, it will 
 have only a temporary influence, such as the 
 decisions on the very same subject-matter of 
 the General Assembly of the Free Church of 
 Scotland against William Robertson Smith, and 
 of the American Presbyterian General Assembly 
 against me. In both these cases it is now evident 
 that the action of these ecclesiastical bodies did 
 not hinder the progress of Biblical Criticism, but 
 really hastened its triumph. The same result 
 may come from the opinion of the Biblical Com- 
 mission ; indeed, it will certainly do so, for in- 
 sofar as it can have with scholars any influence at
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 9 
 
 all, it will but stir them up to renew their investi- 
 gations, and these will make our cause all the 
 more triumphant. 
 
 I cannot think that the authorities of Rome 
 will be so blind as to put this decision in a new 
 Syllabus. The Syllabus of Pius IX greatly 
 injured the Catholic Church. It has been the 
 fashion in recent years to apologize for it and 
 to explain it away. The Holy Father himself 
 assured me that it did not come under the 
 category of Infallibility. If the Holy Father 
 should issue a new Syllabus, it would amount to 
 nothing more than a temporary opinion. But it 
 would undoubtedly have great influence in the 
 Catholic Church. It would be a stumbling-block 
 to scholars ; it would rejoice the enemies of the 
 Church ; it would reawaken Protestant polemic ; 
 it would greatly injure all irenic movements ; it 
 would make the present Pontificate a desperate 
 failure, instead of being, as we hoped, a great 
 reformatory influence in the Church. 
 
 Anything that I can do to prevent so great an 
 evil, I will do, as a matter of duty, and as a call 
 to work for conciliation or to battle with truth 
 and righteousness as circumstances may direct. 
 I had determined to devote the remainder of my 
 life to irenic work, to the removal of prejudices, 
 to the distinction between what is essential in
 
 io THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 religion, and what is a matter of private opinion 
 and practice, and to do all in my power in the 
 direction of the reunion of Christendom. I had 
 laid aside my work in Biblical Criticism for this 
 higher work. I was content with what we have 
 already achieved, and willing to leave the re- 
 maining problems to the younger men to solve. 
 But if it is necessary again to buckle on armour 
 and battle for Biblical Criticism, to which I have 
 devoted so much of my life, and for which I 
 have laboured and suffered not a little, I will 
 not hesitate to do so. 
 
 ii 
 
 So far as the question of the Mosaic authorship 
 of the Pentateuch is concerned, that has been 
 settled in the arena of Biblical scholarship in the 
 negative. There are scholastic Theologians who 
 still resist this result, and pious Bishops and 
 Priests who are still afraid of it ; and there are 
 still many, probably the great majority of lay 
 Christians, who care little if at all about it ; but 
 there are few Hebrew scholars, competent of 
 their own knowledge to weigh the evidence, who 
 have any doubt concerning it. 
 
 I. It is evident from the form of the first 
 question answered by the Biblical Commission,
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH n 
 
 that it was framed for a negative answer. It is 
 not the question of a doubter, or of one sincerely 
 desiring to know the truth ; but of one deter- 
 mined to magnify the evidence in favour of the 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and to 
 minimize the evidence against it. The evidence 
 against it is tersely and uncandidly stated as 
 "arguments amassed by Critics." No indication 
 is given of their nature, their number, or their 
 importance. The Commission decides that they 
 are not "of sufficient weight." It is alto- 
 gether probable it is well-nigh certain that the 
 majority of the Commissioners did not in fact 
 weigh them ; and therefore their opinion that 
 they are of insufficient weight is mere prejudice 
 and nothing more. If the question had been an 
 honest one, it would at least have mentioned 
 these arguments. The arguments are as follows : 
 (i) The language of the four great documents 
 is so different, that they must have been com- 
 posed by different writers. The difference of 
 language extends to a very large vocabulary, each 
 of these documents having its own Lexicon. And 
 these differences are not merely differences of 
 synonym ; they are differences representing 
 different centuries in the historical development 
 of the Hebrew language. These documents of 
 the Pentateuch represent a language that did
 
 12 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 not exist until centuries after the death of Moses. 
 The evidence for all this has been given only in 
 part in Driver's Introduction to the Literature of 
 the Old Testament^ and in my Higher Criticism 
 of the Hexateuch, and many other recent works ; 
 but it is fully given in our new Hebrew Lexicon, 
 now completed, in which Drs. Brown and Driver 
 and myself have carefully examined and classified 
 the uses of all Hebrew words in the Old Testa- 
 ment according to their historical development in 
 the literature. It is impossible for any one to 
 study the complete series of these words as we 
 have done, without coming to the conclusion 
 which we have reached in entire concord, that 
 Moses could not have written any one of the 
 great documents of which the Pentateuch is 
 composed. 
 
 (2) The style of the different documents of the 
 Pentateuch is so different that it implies several 
 different authors, and this again, not living at the 
 same time, but at widely different periods of 
 history. It is safe to say that the differences in 
 style are not merely such as distinguish the chief 
 dogmatic authorities of modern Rome, such as 
 Billot and Janssen, but such rather as distinguish 
 these still living writers from the Medieval School- 
 men, Duns Scotus and Bonaventura. To my 
 mind it would be easier to prove that Thomas
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 13 
 
 Aquinas was the author of these four theological 
 systems, than to show that the four great docu- 
 ments of the Pentateuch had one and the same 
 author, Moses. 
 
 (3) The historic situation of the several docu- 
 ments is different. The institutions indicate very 
 different periods of history, corresponding with 
 the periods reflected in the Historical and Pro- 
 phetical books. One might as well put all the 
 Ceremonies, Usages and Laws of the Church 
 back into the time of Gregory the Great, and 
 attribute them all to him, as to attribute the 
 great Pentateuchal Documents to Moses. 
 
 (4) The strongest evidence to my mind is that 
 from Biblical Theology. I have been many years 
 Professor of Biblical Theology. I have made 
 an inductive study of all the Hebrew terms of 
 theology for the Lexicon, and of all the theo- 
 logical conceptions for my Lectures. If there is 
 such a thing as a history of doctrine in the 
 Church, there was a history of doctrine in Israel. 
 The literature reflects that historical development, 
 and may be ranged historically in accordance 
 with that development. The document that we 
 name E goes in general with the Ephraimitic 
 prophets Amos and Hosea, the document J with 
 the early prophets of Judah ; Z>, Deuteronomy, 
 is nearest to Jeremiah ; and P to Ezechiel and
 
 14 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 the Chronicles. This cannot be denied, but 
 must be weighed and explained by those who 
 insist upon the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
 teuch. 
 
 I have stated four great lines of argument, 
 based all of them not upon theories but on facts 
 on a great number of lexical and syntactical 
 differences, differences of style and of historic 
 situation, and differences of theology all along 
 the line of religious faith and morals. Men are 
 so constituted that they can ignore evidence how- 
 ever weighty. They may refuse to consider it as 
 of any importance, from prejudice or from in- 
 difference. But I am sure that no one can go 
 over the immense detail of these arguments with- 
 out being convinced that they are of sufficient 
 weight to disprove the traditional opinion that 
 Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. 
 
 II. The Biblical Commission, having dis- 
 missed the manifold proofs of the critics in a 
 short sentence, heaps up " the very many 
 evidences to the contrary contained in both Testa- 
 ments collectively, the perpetual agreement of the 
 Hebrew people, and the constant tradition of the 
 Church, as well as the proofs furnished by inter- 
 nal criticism of the text." This seems on the 
 surface to be of sufficient weight. But the critics 
 have carefully and thoroughly examined all this
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 15 
 
 evidence, and find it amounts to nothing more 
 than a floating tradition, without historical basis, 
 without verification, and without authoritative 
 vindication of any kind whatever. 
 
 (i) "The very many evidences to the contrary 
 contained in both Testaments, taken collectively," 
 are not specified, but they are well known to all 
 Biblical scholars. They are chiefly passages in 
 which certain laws, predictions and sayings are 
 put in the mouth of Moses. But this amounts 
 to nothing more than the putting of the Psalms 
 in the mouth of David. The Biblical Commis- 
 sion will hardly go so far as to attribute the 
 Psalter to David. This Biblical custom of using 
 the name of Moses for the Law, that of David 
 for the Psalms, and that of Solomon for Wisdom 
 is so sustained by the similar usage of other 
 nations and literatures that it is no argument 
 whatever for authorship. On the other hand all 
 the arguments used by the critics against the 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch are 
 evidences contained in the Old Testament itself. 
 And surely they are many, many more in quantity 
 than those used by the anti-critics. If the 
 passages cited by the anti-critics have the mean- 
 ing they ascribe to them, then the Old Testa- 
 ment is in irreconcilable conflict with itself on 
 the question in debate.
 
 16 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 (2) "The perpetual agreement of the Hebrew 
 people" and (3) "the constant tradition of the 
 Church " amount to nothing more than the con- 
 tinuation of the Biblical usage of "Moses" as 
 the name of the Pentateuch and of the personi- 
 fied Law. Neither the Hebrew people nor the 
 Church has ever undertaken an authoritative in- 
 vestigation of this tradition, or verified and con- 
 firmed it. It does not belong to authoritative 
 tradition, but to unverified and unauthorized 
 tradition. 
 
 (4) " The proofs furnished by internal criticism 
 of the text " are new to me. I await a statement 
 of them with great interest. I am confident that 
 the Commission cannot present them. This 
 heaping up of evidence for the Mosaic author- 
 ship of the Pentateuch consists of words, nothing 
 more. 
 
 III. The correctness of my criticism of the first 
 question answered by the Biblical Commission in 
 the negative, is confirmed by their answers to the 
 second and third questions. The opinions that 
 Moses "entrusted the writing of it" (the Penta- 
 teuch) "to some other person or persons, but in 
 such manner that they faithfully rendered his 
 meaning, wrote nothing contrary to his will, and 
 omitted nothing" ; that "the work thus formed, 
 approved by Moses as the principal and inspired
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 17 
 
 author, was made public under his name " ; and 
 that " Moses in his work used sources, i.e. 
 written documents or oral traditions," were pro- 
 claimed by Biblical Critics in the infancy of 
 Biblical Criticism, more than a century ago, as 
 a reasonable solution of the problem according 
 to the knowledge of the Hebrew language, litera- 
 ture, history, and theology that then existed. 
 The Biblical Commission have evidently learned 
 nothing from the splendid work of Biblical 
 scholarship during the past century. They de- 
 liberately ignore it, or else have not thought it 
 worth their while to study the works of modern 
 scholars. For the history of Biblical Criticism 
 makes it evident that those who recognize dif- 
 ferent hands and different documentary sources 
 in the Pentateuch cannot attribute the author- 
 ship or instigation and revision of the Penta- 
 teuch to Moses, for the reason that the evidences 
 of different hands and different documents are 
 differences of language, style, historical circum- 
 stance, religious institutions, doctrines of faith 
 and morals representing several different periods 
 of Hebrew history. Some of these hands were 
 as far from Moses as Jeremiah and Ezra, and 
 from one another as Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
 Ezechiel, and the Chronicler. If there is any 
 such thing as a history of the Hebrew language,
 
 i8 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 a historic development of doctrine in the Old 
 Testament, a history of Hebrew law, institution, 
 and literature: the hands that wrote the great 
 documents of the Pentateuch were hands that 
 wrote many centuries after Moses, and Moses 
 has no responsibility whatever for their work. 
 
 IV. The fourth question and its answer is an 
 evident concession to the few Hebrew scholars of 
 the Commission. It recognizes that "some 
 modifications have been introduced into it" (the 
 Pentateuch), "such as additions after the death 
 of Moses, either inserted by an inspired author, 
 or attached to the text as glosses or interpreta- 
 tions ; words and forms translated from the 
 ancient language to more recent language ; and, 
 finally, faulty readings to be ascribed to the error 
 of amanuenses, concerning which it is lawful to 
 investigate and judge according to the laws of 
 criticism." But this concession is qualified by 
 the characteristic formula : " Due regard being 
 paid to the judgment of the Church." 
 
 How wide is the door opened by this pro- 
 blematic and hesitating opinion ? 
 
 (i) It is admitted that investigation and judg- 
 ment must be according to the laws of criticism. 
 If this is so, then, it necessarily follows that the 
 laws of criticism must determine the entire in- 
 vestigation, and not merely any definite part of
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 19 
 
 it. But then, what sense is there in the qualifica- 
 tion that " regard" must be "paid to the judg- 
 ment of the Church " ? Is the Church, or indeed 
 even Scholastic Theology alone, to judge that the 
 judgments pronounced by the laws of criticism 
 are false? It might be said that the Church has 
 the right to a judgment in the determination of 
 the laws of criticism. But if the Church recog- 
 nizes the laws of criticism, it must abide by the 
 verdict of those laws. But to recognize that the 
 laws of criticism must judge in these investiga- 
 tions, and then intimate that the Church must be 
 the final judge, is taking back with one hand 
 what is offered with the other, and is open to the 
 grave charge of insincerity. 
 
 (2) The distinction between additions "in- 
 serted by an inspired author " and additions 
 "attached to the text as glosses or interpreta- 
 tions " seems, on the face of it, to imply a 
 dangerous heresy, for which certainly the Biblical 
 Critics of my acquaintance would refuse responsi- 
 bility. For it seems clearly to assert that the 
 glosses and interpretations attached to the text 
 are not from inspired authors, and hence that 
 a considerable, but undetermined, amount of the 
 Pentateuch is not inspired. Now the chief work 
 of Biblical Criticism at the present time is just 
 this work of detecting the glosses and interpreta-
 
 20 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 tions of the older documents by later hands. 
 The number of these is constantly increasing 1 . 
 Hence the inevitable result of this decision of 
 the Biblical Commission is to withdraw inspira- 
 tion from a considerable portion of the Penta- 
 teuch, and to render a further very considerable 
 portion of it of doubtful inspiration. This is 
 certainly a more dangerous position than any that 
 has been taken up by sober critics. The only 
 safe position is that the Canon as it stands is an 
 inspired book ; that the inspiration of the sacred 
 writings does not depend upon Amos and Ezra 
 or any other known author ; and that the inspira- 
 tion of the glosses and additions is just as sure as 
 the inspiration of the originals. In fact, it may 
 be said of a considerable portion of the Hebrew 
 literature, that it is just the editors and glossators 
 who give the earlier documents that religious 
 flavour and propriety that makes them fully fitted 
 for religious use. This is certainly true of the 
 Psalter and the sentences of Wisdom, and is no 
 less true of the laws of the Pentateuch. If an 
 Index or Syllabus of prohibited writings or pro- 
 positions is to be of any real fairness or value, 
 such heresies of ultra-conservative Scholastics as 
 this dangerous opinion of the Biblical Commis- 
 sion should be branded by it, rather than those 
 minor errors into which Biblical Critics some-
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 21 
 
 times stumble in their eagerness to solve difficult 
 problems in new and dangerous fields. 
 
 (3) The intimation that there are " words and 
 forms translated from the ancient language into 
 more recent language " recognizes that there is 
 a history of words and forms in the Hebrew 
 language. That recognition is fatal to the 
 opinions of the Biblical Commission, for Hebrew 
 lexicography compels the conclusion that these 
 words and forms cannot be explained as mere 
 translations, but must be recognized as original 
 to the documents, and if so, then the late date of 
 the documents inevitably follows. The Biblical 
 Commission have thus given a sword into the 
 hands of the Critics with which they themselves 
 will be slain. 
 
 in 
 
 The Biblical Commission might do a great 
 and noble work for Christianity and the reunion 
 of Christendom, if it would devote itself to the 
 great Biblical problems of this age. I venture 
 to suggest some of them, (i) The preparation 
 of a Hebrew Old Testament, on the basis of a 
 study of all existing Codices. (2) The prepara- 
 tion of a Greek Bible, on the basis of the chief 
 ancient authorities. (3) The preparation of a
 
 22 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 new edition of the Latin Bible. (4) A new and 
 more thorough Polyglot. Why is it that, with 
 a few notable exceptions, all this is left to Pro- 
 testant scholars? If the Biblical Commission 
 would undertake some such work as this, under 
 the leadership of the few competent Hebrew 
 scholars in their midst, they would rejoice the 
 hearts of all students of the Bible ; Catholic, 
 Protestant, and even Jewish scholars throughout 
 the world would rally about them with en- 
 thusiasm. They would do much to disprove the 
 reproach against the Catholic Church that it 
 neglects the Bible and warps its teachings in the 
 interest of traditional errors ; and they would 
 greatly advance the movement for the reunion of 
 Christendom. Thus far, the Biblical Commission 
 have not justified their existence. All their 
 decisions have been in scholastic form, in the 
 interests of the unsifted contentions of Scholastic 
 Theology, and have grieved and discouraged 
 all serious students of the Bible. 
 
 What, my dear friend, do the Biblical Com- 
 mission really hope to accomplish by the publica- 
 tion of such opinions as these ? They cannot in 
 any way stay the progress of Biblical Criticism 
 in the Protestant world, where it has been chiefly 
 advanced in the past century. They may indeed 
 obstruct Biblical studies in the Catholic world,
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 23 
 
 by grieving and discouraging the many Catholic 
 Biblical scholars who have done so much in 
 recent years for Biblical learning. But if this be 
 their aim, they weaken the Catholic Church in 
 its entire relation to the Bible ; they give the 
 adversaries of the Church an opportunity for re- 
 asserting its antagonism to Biblical Christianity ; 
 they conjure up a fresh conflict with science and 
 erect another stumbling-block to scholars ; and 
 build up an additional barrier to the reunion of 
 Christendom. 
 
 The scholastic Theologians, who seem to be in 
 the saddle again, have done mischief enough 
 already. They have alienated a large proportion 
 of educated men and women from the Church, 
 especially in Catholic countries. We were gradu- 
 ally coming to a better state of affairs. Many 
 scholars have become interested in the reunion 
 of Christendom, and have been ready to make 
 great sacrifices, and to labour with zeal and en- 
 thusiasm for that great cause. They have sought 
 anxiously to solve the historic problems, hard 
 enough at the best, which distract and divide 
 Christendom, and to do so without outrage to 
 sound historical method. Now the Biblical Com- 
 mission throw into the arena another challenge 
 to conflict. It is evident that the majority, or 
 the spokesmen of that Commission, do not sin-
 
 24 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 cerely desire the application of historical method 
 to historical subject-matters, or the peace, pros- 
 perity, and reunion of Christendom. They prefer 
 direct conflict with scholarship and science, and 
 discord with their fellow-Christians, to the re- 
 linquishment, or even to the permitted question- 
 ing, of their traditional scholastic refinements 
 and dangerously abstract, a priori, artificial views. 
 It may be that whom God desires to destroy, He 
 first makes mad. They would plunge the Church 
 into the gulf to save their own interests. But 
 the Church will not go into the gulf. It will 
 eventually throw off its incompetent advisers ; 
 and other counsellors, more worthy, will take 
 their place, and the movement for right method 
 in the right place, for the union of sincere scholar- 
 ship and science with deep faith, peace, and 
 charity will go on, all the more rapidly for the 
 temporary check and the inevitable, practical 
 demonstration of the utter fruitlessness and acute 
 danger of such direct conflict with a huge mass 
 of facts. May God guide the present Pontiff, so 
 devout and noble-minded, and so zealous, speedily 
 to see through the dangerous incompetence of 
 these reactionary functionaries who, as far as 
 man can do so, are riding the Church to ruin, 
 and to replace them by other faithful men, deeply 
 trained and fully competent scholars, who will
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 25 
 
 act in accordance with what we are convinced are 
 the difficult, great ends, and saintly desires of his 
 true mind and heart. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 C. A. BRIGGS.
 
 II 
 
 HINDHEAD, HASLEMERE, 
 
 September 2gth, 1906. 
 
 My dear Professor, 
 
 Your important and impressive letter was 
 of necessity both a pain and a pleasure to re- 
 ceive. A pain ; for the points which you so 
 vigorously press upon me, cannot fail to be dis- 
 tressing to one who is a Catholic as well as a 
 Scholar ; and a pleasure, because of your deeply 
 religious mind and nobly respectful attitude to- 
 wards the Catholic and Roman Church, and of 
 your rare competence in the subject-matter im- 
 mediately concerned. I shall attempt to answer 
 your inquiries concerning the decision itself and 
 the probable future of Roman Catholic Biblical 
 Scholarship, after first making it clear why I too 
 cannot help thinking that you and I have a right 
 to an emphatic opinion in this question that 
 there is even a strict duty incumbent upon us 
 just now to give public expression to these our 
 perplexities and conclusions. Thus my remarks 
 will fall under three heads : personal matters ; 
 
 27
 
 28 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 the answer of the Commission ; and the special 
 helps, hindrances, and outlook of Biblical Scholar- 
 ship in the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 It is the simple truth if I say that I would not 
 and could not consider this essentially two-sided 
 matter except with a man who thus combines a 
 deep respect for Rome's special greatness and 
 immense potential, indeed actual fruitfulness 
 in the noblest, deepest Christian life and truth, 
 with a rarely great competence in the subject of 
 the literary and historical character of the Penta- 
 teuch. When the American Presbyterian General 
 Assembly publicly tried, formally condemned, 
 and crippled you to the best of its ability, it did 
 so on the double ground of your Pentateuchal 
 positions and of your Popish heresies : you were 
 as explicitly condemned for insisting upon a 
 "Romish" Purgatory as for holding a "Rational- 
 ist " Hexateuch. And since then you have moved 
 out of the acuter Protestantism of Presbyterian- 
 ism into the Via Media of the Episcopal Church, 
 with its considerable Catholic affinities. Indeed, 
 no man who knows you could doubt the sincerity 
 and generosity with which you recognize, and 
 strive to spread the recognition of, many amongst
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 29 
 
 Rome's special rights and gifts. And if these 
 your irenic studies and endeavours now cover 
 some forty years : your splendidly close, coura- 
 geous, and persistent labours in Pentateuchal 
 matters must be fully as ancient. If any one 
 will study the proceedings of your trial, your 
 volume on the Hexateuch, and lastly your lion's 
 share in the great Hebrew Lexicon, in which you 
 study so minutely the successive terms, and suc- 
 cessive meanings of terms, of theological and 
 moral import in the Hebrew Old Testament, he 
 will see that I am not exaggerating ; and he will 
 realize, if need be, the massive factualness, the 
 serried, interdependent ranks of fact upon fact, 
 fact before, beside, behind fact ; the immense, 
 largely silent, unrecorded labour ; the patient test- 
 ing and continuous improvement of methods ; the 
 humble faith in God and deeply Christian rever- 
 ence for reality, however obscure-seeming, how- 
 ever scorned by the impatient, the sceptical, or 
 the complete in their own eyes he will realize all 
 this as the true subject-matter and the difficult, 
 but increasingly attainable, equipment of Old 
 Testament research. If any man, then, has a 
 right to speak on Pentateuchal research within 
 the Christian Churches, it is you. 
 
 As to myself, already, alas ! fifty-four years old, 
 I have, ever since eighteen, deeply, and I trust
 
 30 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 increasingly, loved and practised the Catholic 
 and Roman faith, and have striven my poor best 
 to serve and advance it. Born in Florence, my 
 imagination was early impressed with the great 
 figures of Dante and of Savonarola, and, later 
 on, by those of Marsilio Ficino and his fellow 
 Platonizers. The spacious outlook and virile 
 depth and tenacity of that early Catholic Renais- 
 sance still fire my blood ; neither Protestantism 
 as such (so pathetically understandable, yet so 
 largely unjust because ungenerous), nor a bitter 
 puny anti-Protestantism, a Catholicism con- 
 tracted to a mere negation of negations, or to 
 a system of the greatest possible exclusion of 
 trouble, trial, and danger can (so all my being 
 tells me) be the final, God-willed solution for all 
 the battles, heroisms, faults, sins, and glories of 
 so many centuries of Western Christendom. I 
 had already long loved and worked at Classical 
 and New Testament textual problems, when that 
 zealous Catholic Secular Priest and admirably 
 competent Hebrew Scholar and Old Testament 
 Critic, the late Professor Gustav Bickell, grounded 
 me in Hebrew, and confirmed me in my old, and 
 even then much-tested conviction that there are 
 here dangerously great arrears of work for 
 Christians to get through and of insight for them 
 to acquire, if the Christian faith is to be able again
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 31 
 
 to confront the world with a sincerity, knowledge, 
 and courage in such intellectual matters equal or 
 superior to that of its opponents or non-adherents. 
 He used to be impressively eloquent on the point 
 that only a large, organic, social religion, indeed 
 a Universal Church, had room for such a 
 thoroughly scholarly and critical conception and 
 execution of Biblical work, and how, as a matter 
 of simple fact, the great founders of Historical 
 and Biblical Criticism had been Catholics ; and 
 liked to tell, as indicative of this connection, how, 
 at the time of the Vatican Council, he had found 
 Dr. Dollinger full of an equally contemptuous 
 rejection of two things, the Papal Infallibility 
 Claims and Biblical Criticism, especially in its 
 analysis of the Pentateuch. I worked on after 
 this with a thorough Jewish scholar, and threshed 
 through the Pentateuch, mostly twice, and in 
 many parts three to six or seven times, throwing 
 up as I went along elaborate vocabularies and 
 analyses of the synonyms, styles and conceptions 
 characteristic of the several documents, and 
 carefully testing the greater part of the huge 
 mass of references and comparisons given and 
 instituted by Dillman. My Paper on the 
 Hexateuch, read at the Fribourg Catholic 
 Scientific Congress in 1898, and received with, 
 I believe, sincere applause and certainly no
 
 32 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 serious opposition, is but a fragment of the work 
 I have done in this great subject. Thus I feel 
 that I too have a right to speak. 
 
 I know well, my dear Friend, how your work 
 stands largely upon the shoulders of three and 
 four generations of illustrious scholars ; and 
 that, for our time also, you have, especially in 
 Germany, England, and America, numerous 
 fellow-workers of admirable competence and 
 thoroughness. And I, on a markedly smaller 
 scale, can also rejoice that, among Catholics, 
 I am not alone ; there are among them other 
 Pentateuch-workers, some of them with more 
 penetration, others with more work to show than 
 I can claim. Abbe Loisy has given us deep and 
 delicate studies on select passages of Genesis 
 and on the relations of the early Chapters of 
 that Book and the Babylonian Legends. The 
 Jesuit Father von Hummelauer has carefully 
 worked through and published commentaries on 
 the whole Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua ; 
 and if his attribution of documents back to 
 Abraham, Noah, even Adam is strangely fan- 
 tastic, his knowledge of the Hebrew language 
 is thorough, and he has the courageous sincerity 
 to insist upon the presence of at least one large 
 document of a date long after Moses. The 
 Dominican Pere Lagrange read a Paper on the
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 33 
 
 Pentateuch, of remarkable competence and 
 vigour, at the Fribourg Congress in 1898 ; and 
 his valuable commentary on the Book of Judges 
 shows how firmly he has grasped the great fact 
 and principle of successive documents of widely 
 different ages, which treat repeatedly of the 
 same great national heroes and events, each 
 time according to the stage of religious and 
 moral practice, belief, and aspiration reached by 
 the writer, in part under the persistent stimulus 
 of those original occurrences. The Secular 
 Priests, the late Dr. F. R. Clarke and Professor 
 van den Biesen in England, Professor van 
 Hoenacker and Dr. Poels in Belgium and 
 Holland, Dr. Minocchi in Italy, and Dr. Gigot 
 in your own America, have also, in various de- 
 grees and forms, shown an understanding and 
 acceptance of these fundamental critical facts 
 and canons. If we speak then, both you and 
 I speak with much support from past and present 
 scholars. 
 
 Indeed, I cannot escape the feeling that it is 
 more than within our competence, that it is our 
 duty, both for you to ask and for me to answer ; 
 and this for two reasons. For one thing, I remain 
 as convinced as ever that religion requires a 
 social environment, an historical and institu- 
 tional training-ground, vehicle, and expression,
 
 34 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 a Church ; that the primary object and test of 
 such a Church is Religion and not Science or 
 Scholarship ; and that the Roman Catholic 
 Church not only contains de facto a great mass 
 of Christian faith, truth, and life this much will 
 now be conceded by all candid Protestants, and 
 can truthfully be asserted, in various degrees and 
 ways, by fair-minded Catholics, of other Chris- 
 tian bodies but that it represents, with a unique 
 fulness, consciousness and continuity, certain 
 fundamental, inalienable constituents, rights and 
 duties of complete religion. And alongside of 
 this persists the complementary conviction that 
 the different energizings and requirements of 
 man's multiform nature are, at bottom, too deeply 
 interdependent, for the whole man and religion 
 itself not infallibly to suffer in the long run, if 
 his instinct for Science and Scholarship is per- 
 sistently and gravely thwarted or deflected ; that 
 the deepest spirit and the logic immanental 
 to the presuppositions and final positions of 
 Catholicism positively require a sincerely his- 
 torical and thoroughly critical treatment of the 
 history and literature of the Bible : and yet there, 
 before me, are the facts of the Church-condemna- 
 tions of critics as great and epoch-making as 
 Richard Simon at the end of the Seventeenth 
 Century, and Alfred Loisy at the beginning of the
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 35 
 
 Twentieth, with many another trouble threatened 
 or executed, before, between and after these two 
 culminating points, from, say, the time of 
 Erasmus, right down to this last July. And 
 then, for a second thing, I cannot but note that 
 though the Commission's Answer has received 
 the Papal sanction, and hence that its proposals 
 should be criticized only under the pressure of 
 serious necessity and only by men thoroughly 
 conversant with the complex critical problems 
 directly concerned ; it is not put forward as a 
 Dogmatic Decision, but, apparently, as a simple 
 Direction and Appeal from scholars to scholars. 
 The endorsement of the Opinion by working 
 scholars, simply on the ground of scholarship, 
 would evidently be welcomed by the issuing 
 Authority ; and hence the contrary expressions 
 of difficulty or of sheer inability to apply the 
 proposed solutions to the concrete problems of 
 the case can hardly be taxed as necessarily 
 impertinent. And if the situation does spon- 
 taneously evoke such inability in such workers, 
 notwithstanding their sincere desire to find these 
 suggestions workable : then, to speak now may 
 be a painful, but is surely a strict duty on the 
 part of such of them as have the honour to be 
 Catholics and who love the Church. For the 
 danger here would lie in the situation itself, not
 
 36 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 in the respectfully frank admission of its exist- 
 ence : indeed this admission might help to pre- 
 vent its further accentuation, an accentuation 
 which could not fail to be profoundly damaging 
 to Rome. 
 
 ii 
 
 I do not see how I could materially challenge 
 or add to your Criticism of the present majority or 
 of the spokesmen of the Commission. I have not 
 studied Dom Janssen's works ; but I have no 
 reason to think you unfairly prejudiced against 
 him, and certainly he is no Historical Critic, no 
 Old Testament Scholar. Abbe Vigouroux's 
 signature is no doubt much less significant than 
 that of his junior, resident and very active col- 
 league ; for the Abb6 is now old, after doing 
 much work according to certain preconceptions 
 which younger, fresher minds have found to 
 break down under the stress of the facts when 
 fully and fairly faced. And you admit the sound 
 Hebrew scholarship of a minority of the Com- 
 mission, even as the Commission stands at present. 
 I will then pass at once to three points concern- 
 ing the composition and authorship of the Pen- 
 tateuch, which may help further to illustrate and 
 emphasize your main contentions.
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 37 
 
 First, then, I would insist anew upon the im- 
 mense because strictly cumulative force of the 
 argument, grouped by yourself under four head- 
 ings, for the real existence and the widely differ- 
 ent ages of the several documents. It is not 
 merely that in one set of passages we find one 
 vocabulary, and in another set, another vocabulary ; 
 in a third set, one style, and in a fourth set, another 
 style ; in a fifth set, one type of institution and 
 conception of history, and in a sixth set, another 
 institutional type and historical conception ; and 
 in a seventh set, one group of theological and 
 moral ideas, and in an eighth set, another such 
 group. But the domains and frontiers of these 
 different kinds of variation all coincide, the 
 vocabulary, style, institution, history, ethics, and 
 theology all grow and change together ; all these 
 variable constituents are, within any one docu- 
 ment, at one peculiar stage, predominance or 
 mixture, and all these constituents are, in each of 
 the other documents, at another peculiar stage, 
 predominance and mixture. The vocabulary and 
 style can, of course, be fully realized only by the 
 careful student of the Hebrew text, in its living 
 warp and woof ; but good lists of the words and 
 phrases characteristic of the four documents are 
 given by yourself, by Dr. Driver, and by Car- 
 penter and Battersby's The Hexateuch, London,
 
 38 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 1900, vol. II, pp. 185-221, where J and E 
 together furnish 237 such linguistic peculiarities ; 
 D has 120; and P, 220. But these linguistic 
 differences are ever accompanied by differences 
 in the institutions : thus in the " Book of the 
 Covenant," Exodus xxiv. 4-8, incorporated by 
 E, we find the order to throw up an earthen altar 
 and to sacrifice to God thereon, wherever God 
 has vouchsafed some special favour to His wor- 
 shipper, be this worshipper priest or layman ; in 
 D there are the severest threats and penalties 
 against all sacrifices away from the one perma- 
 nent altar before the Tabernacle ; and in P the 
 sacrifices of all true Israelites have, as a matter 
 of course, to take place here, upon a permanent 
 altar of acacia-wood overlaid with brass, and the 
 priests alone may sacrifice the victims. And all 
 these linguistic and institutional differences are 
 ever accompanied by differences in the presenta- 
 tion of the past religious history. Thus in J we 
 get numerous, most ancient, God-loved sanc- 
 tuaries ; and non-localized, improvised, and lay- 
 altar-building and sacrifice is practised by 
 God's friends from the beginning: Abel, Noah, 
 Abraham, Isaac, Jacob all sacrifice in all sorts 
 of places in accordance with what we know 
 from the Books of Judges, Samuel and Kings to 
 have been practised by the Judges Gideon and
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 39 
 
 Manoah, by the Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, 
 and by the greatest of the non-literary prophets, 
 Elijah, on Mount Carmel, up to at least five cen- 
 turies after Moses. In D, represented as to history 
 chiefly by moralizing, hortatory framings to older 
 accounts of the Kings, the old Sanctuaries are, 
 especially from the finding of the "Book of the 
 Law," under King Josiah in 623 B.C. onwards, 
 represented as a snare ; and sacrifice away from 
 the central Jerusalem sanctuary appears as a rite 
 practised by Israelites in ignorance, or in a spirit 
 of schism. And in P the legitimate sacrifices are 
 sacrificed throughout at one place only, before 
 the Tabernacle or in the Temple Court, by 
 Aaronic priests alone, and hence as beginning 
 only with the Mosaic Sinaitic dispensation. 
 Hence in the composite account of the Deluge, 
 J makes Noah take seven pairs of every clean, 
 and only one pair of every unclean, animal into 
 the ark, since he requires the former also for the 
 sacrifice which J describes him as offering later 
 on ; whilst P gives Noah but one pair of every 
 clean and unclean kind, since in P Noah does 
 not sacrifice. And all these linguistic, institu- 
 tional, historiographical and historic changes are 
 accompanied throughout by growths in the moral 
 and theological ideas. Thus in J, Jahveh moulds 
 man out of red loam, and builds up woman later
 
 40 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 around a rib drawn from that man's side ; and 
 Jahveh Himself walks in the Garden in the cool 
 of the evening, and later on comes down to 
 Babel to see how the Tower-building is proceed- 
 ing. In P, Elohim creates mankind, male and 
 female, in one instant, at the same moment, by 
 His sheer Fiat ; and God's transcendence is so 
 carefully guarded that even the homely visitations 
 of the man-like angels, His representatives, so 
 frequent in J, are here nowhere to be found. 
 Multiply such simultaneous shiftings of four or 
 five sets of peculiarities by some fifty to a hun- 
 dred items within each set ; interconnect each 
 item and each set with all the others ; realize 
 that these shiftings presuppose their predecessors 
 and prepare their successors : and you will have 
 some notion how strong is this cumulative argu- 
 ment a rope not to be cut or broken, a steel 
 hawser of the most numerous, manifold and 
 closely-knit strands. 
 
 Next, I would point out the unworkableness 
 of the solution suggested by the Commissioners, 
 viz. that Moses entrusted contemporaries of his, 
 say, Aaron, Nadab, or Joshua, with the writing 
 of certain documents, which writings were then 
 revised and issued by Moses himself even sup- 
 posing that the great documents of the Penta- 
 teuch could be taken as not post-Mosaic. For
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 41 
 
 such a view, for one thing, gives a strangely 
 elastic interpretation to the strict affirmation of 
 Mosaic authorship: it insists upon Mosaic author- 
 ship, even literary authorship, and this, primarily 
 in order thus to satisfy the great "tradition," 
 and yet explains the authorship in a manner 
 that cannot satisfy that " tradition" if taken as 
 evidencing what it is here declared to prove. 
 That tradition is rather of God dictating to 
 Moses, than of Moses dictating to Joshua ; of 
 Moses inspired by God, not of Joshua inspired 
 by Moses. What strictly Rabbinical Jew, what 
 correct Mahommedan, would accept such an 
 "Authorship" as the one suggested by the 
 Commission ? And if he would not, why let 
 him help to determine us upon so frail and 
 fantastic a construction? For such an hypothesis 
 turns out indeed to be well founded in the case 
 of a prolific modern Novelist, who actually did 
 surround himself with subordinate scribes to 
 whom he allotted the filling-in of the outlines 
 of such and such stories, and whose work was 
 then revised by himself and issued under his 
 name ; but we cannot, surely, think of Moses 
 doing so, in proportion as we insist upon the 
 profound importance and the inspired, indeed 
 revealed character of his work and message and 
 upon their completion within his own life-time.
 
 42 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 And we have a further, an insuperable diffi- 
 culty in the fact that all four documents give 
 us characteristically varying versions of solitary 
 interviews and dialogues between Jahveh or 
 Elohim and Moses: since how could Moses com- 
 mission three other writers to chronicle, each in 
 varying fashion and each in a manner somewhat 
 different to his own, things experienced only by 
 himself? 
 
 And thirdly, I would insist with you upon how 
 that immensely powerful cumulative evidence, 
 so impressively reinforced by massive Biblical 
 testimony external to the Pentateuch, simply 
 precludes the possibility of contemporary com- 
 position for those great documents. We might 
 as well conceive, in English Constitutional His- 
 tory, the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred, who died in 
 901 A.D., commissioning the drafter of Magna 
 Charta under the Norman King John, in A.D. 
 1215, the writer of the Articles of Reform under 
 the Plantagenet King Edward II, in A.D. 1310, 
 the Lord Chancellor More under the Tudor 
 King Henry VIII (More died in A.D. 1535), and 
 the drafter of the Petition of Rights under the 
 Stuart King Charles I in A.D. 1628, to draw up 
 certain laws and histories for him, which he, 
 King Alfred, would then revise and issue under 
 his own name. Or Charlemagne could be taken
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 43 
 
 as starting-point, with the Emperor Charles V as 
 term of another parallel ; or again, St. Louis of 
 France at the head and Napoleon I at the end 
 of another illustrative line of continuity and 
 growth. And seeing that we cannot bring Moses 
 below, say, 1300 B.C. ; that D appears to have 
 been the Book of the Law found in 628 B.C. ; 
 and that P cannot well have been complete be- 
 fore about 400 B.C. : these three illustrations 
 would not err on the side of excess. 
 
 Just a word in addition as to two pit-falls in 
 the way of those who attempt to rebut these con- 
 clusions. Nothing here said by us or known to 
 me requires or indeed permits us to consider the 
 laws and customs contained in these documents 
 as necessarily or even only generally no older 
 than the dates we are driven to assign to the 
 documents themselves. It is in many cases de- 
 monstrable that those laws are considerably, 
 sometimes immensely, older than their formula- 
 tion or framework now before us, and some great 
 central enactments doubtless go back to Moses 
 himself. Nor do these our positions of themselves 
 decide anything concerning the historical exacti- 
 tude of this or that narrative : such an account 
 may, in its present form, be very late, and yet 
 may transmit important details of factual truth ; 
 another may be very early and yet be little more
 
 44 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 than a symbol or parable, the vehicle of some 
 spiritual or moral experience and truth. Hence 
 no proof as to the probable or certain antiquity 
 of such and such laws, or of the factual exactitude 
 of such and such details of a narrative, still less 
 the simple presence in a story of certain proper 
 names now vouched for by inscriptions as his- 
 torical, are, of themselves, of any conclusiveness 
 against the late dates of composition of the 
 documents concerned. And on the other hand, 
 a certain schematic selection and resetting among 
 the factual simultaneities and successions of past 
 history, for purposes of illustration and enforce- 
 ment of the stage of spiritual insight reached by 
 the respective ages and writers of the documents 
 concerned, cannot in honesty be denied. This prag- 
 matism doubtless reaches its highest point in the 
 admittedly very late Book of Chronicles; but even 
 in P it is already most powerfully operative. In 
 this respect also P is closely akin to the priest- 
 prophet, Ezechiel : for just as Ezechiel, though 
 a true prophet and deep spirit he it is who first 
 proclaims God as the Good Shepherd, foresees 
 the future according to mathematically precise 
 spatial measurements, not one of which came 
 about, so P is a true, indeed deeply spiritual 
 seer of the past and of its spiritual significance 
 to him we owe the magnificent Six-Days' Creation
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 45 
 
 picture, and yet his mathematically precise in- 
 sistences as to time, place, number, succession, 
 and other seemingly factual contexts must be 
 interpreted as liberally and symbolically as they 
 were originally taken by this priest-interpreter. 
 
 in 
 
 But if even we single scholars have mostly 
 reached such complex conclusions only with 
 difficulty and under the slow pressure of the 
 manifold facts of the case, what chance is there, 
 you may well ask, of the immensely conservative 
 Roman Catholic Church ever accepting, or even 
 frankly and finally tolerating, such historical 
 method, or even only its more assured results ? 
 And if we will but look at what has actually hap- 
 pened, where is there any encouragement to be 
 found? In answer I shall point out four most 
 powerful motives and affinities, ineradicable, im- 
 manental, which are ever at work to render any 
 full or final exclusion of historic method from 
 Biblical subjects impossible for Catholicism ; and 
 shall then consider what facts can be brought 
 forward to rebut certain final misgivings derived 
 from two great matters of fact. 
 
 Four necessities, then, are working within 
 Catholicism as such towards a final acceptance,
 
 46 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 however slow and cautious, of a consistent and 
 sincere historico-critical method for the Bible 
 also. 
 
 Catholicism, for one thing, is essentially not a 
 simple Illuminism or Fideism, but a Religion 
 which, in its completeness, is simultaneously 
 Historical and Institutional, Critical and Specu- 
 lative, Mystical and Operative, thus calling into 
 play the whole man and his various faculties 
 sense-perception and memory ; analytic and syn- 
 thetic reason, and feeling ; intuition, and volition. 
 But if so, it is wedded, amongst other things, to 
 history, and hence to historic proofs and methods. 
 And in the long run it will be found simply 
 impossible to have one standard of historic 
 method and proof for, say, the legendary char- 
 acter of Pope Joan, or the authenticity and 
 Catholic meaning of St. Irenaeus's testimony to 
 the Roman Church, or the factual reality of the 
 Roman sojourn and martyrdom of St. Peter; 
 and another, a conflicting standard of historical 
 method and proof for, say, the reality of the 
 person of Moses and of his spiritual experience 
 and proclamation of the foundations of the 
 Jewish Law ; or the authenticity of the writings 
 of Jeremiah and Ezechiel ; or the approximate 
 date of the glorious " Deutero-Isaiah " (Isa. XL. 
 to LXVI.). We can and should be even more
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 47 
 
 careful, thorough, and modest in our work here 
 than in that there; we should never make an 
 end in improving our dispositions, method, and 
 results ; but it is, at bottom, a sheer logical 
 impossibility, and a psychical condition of the 
 most unstable equilibrium or sceptical effect, both 
 to appeal to these latter facts, persons, and docu- 
 ments as downrightly historical and to refuse to 
 submit them to thorough historical investigation. 
 Every system stands self-condemned that moves, 
 as to its fundamental logic, in a demonstrable 
 vicious circle : nowhere can man both eat his 
 cake and have it. 
 
 Catholicism, again, is essentially a missionary, 
 an aggressively universalistic religion, hence in- 
 evitably a spirituality that learns as well as 
 teaches, that gets and assimilates as well as 
 moulds and gives. For you cannot teach whom 
 you do not understand, and you cannot win the 
 man with whom you cannot share certain funda- 
 mental presuppositions. Hence even if Catholi- 
 cism, in so far as not missionary, could enmesh 
 itself in the vicious circle just described, it cannot 
 do so, if it would retain a message for, and a 
 hearing from, the educated West-European world, 
 since nothing is more certain than that this culti- 
 vated non-Roman Catholic world is, in part 
 unconsciously, often slowly yet everywhere surely,
 
 48 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 getting permeated and won by critical standards 
 and methods. A system cannot both claim to 
 teach all the world and erect an impenetrable 
 partition-wall between itself and the educated 
 portion of that world. 
 
 Catholicism, once more, is essentially a "Church 
 and Bible," not a "Bible only" religion. Its 
 genius, history, and most elementary defence pre- 
 suppose the Bible to be a complex and difficult, 
 not a simple and easy literature ; a library, not a 
 book ; a succession of literary precipitates of 
 religion a religion which, already lived and 
 loved, both corporately and individually, before 
 such registration, comes in time, and now more 
 corporately than individually, to sort out and 
 canonize those precipitates, as so many models 
 and crystallizing-points for further corporate and 
 individual religious life and love. The Church, 
 the Community of believers, first Jewish and then 
 Christian, produced the Bible even more than the 
 Bible produced the Church. And hence the old 
 war-cry of Protestantism, "the Bible and the 
 Bible only," is ceasing, one gladly thinks, to 
 characterize the actual religious convictions of 
 the more historically-trained present-day Protes- 
 tants. In any case such Bibliolatry is not Catholic. 
 And if the Catholic conception and practice of 
 religion in general, and of the Bible as part of
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 49 
 
 that larger whole, is not, of course, without its 
 special trials and difficulties, these latter would 
 become speedily unbearable if doubled, indeed 
 trebled, by the addition of some such un-Catholic 
 super-exaltation of the Bible. For thus the 
 unhappy mind would have to bear not only two 
 burdens, each sufficiently heavy by itself, but 
 also the straining, complicating contradiction 
 between the two conceptions. 
 
 And finally, Catholicism is essentially a life 
 and an organism that has grown and is growing. 
 Already Vincent of Lerins compares this life to 
 the growth of the human body, self-identical 
 throughout its great changes from one age to the 
 other, an identity resulting from the continuous 
 indwelling of the one body-weaving, body-mould- 
 ing soul. Indeed, already the Fourth Gospel 
 presents Our Lord as insisting upon the "many 
 things " which His disciples could not bear 
 during His earthly life-time, and upon the Spirit 
 of truth which, later on, would guide them into 
 all truth. Christ as the spreading Vine, and the 
 Kingdom of God as leaven in the paste, would 
 thus not merely extend themselves externally, 
 remaining, within the human apprehensions and 
 wills that accept them, at the same stage of 
 apprehendedness and application ; but these our 
 human understandings and elaborations of those
 
 50 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 divine realities and influences would pass through 
 various forms and stages. Only in some such 
 way can we understand and defend the strikingly 
 different, though not contradictory variations in 
 the history of even the fundamental Christian and 
 Catholic life and doctrine. Such a development, 
 throughout the strictly revelational period of the 
 Old and New Testaments, has ever been acknow- 
 ledged by Catholicism on a scale so large as to 
 cover the immense changes from Polygamy to 
 Monogamy and from the Lex Talionis to the 
 Law of Forgiveness, since the Church, with 
 grand profundity and courage, refused to follow 
 Marcion and proclaimed the Old Testament to 
 come from the same God as the New. And 
 development, of more than a simply logical, 
 analytical order, is being more and more admitted 
 in detail by Catholics for the much slighter 
 changes observable in Christian Church History. 
 There but remains the scholarly tracing out of 
 the numerous, slow, intermediate steps within 
 the Old Testament right on into the Deutero- 
 canonical Books and even Philo, and the ad- 
 mission of lesser or different though still real 
 growth and variety of apprehension within the 
 New Testament itself. However rightly we may 
 find a certain true uniqueness and the final norm 
 for spiritual truth and practice in Our Lord's
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 51 
 
 Person, Life, and Teaching, and however legiti- 
 mately we may talk of a period of Revelation 
 followed by one of simple Assistance : there will, 
 between Christ and His Spirit and the nowhere 
 utterly God-forsaken world into which they have 
 come, ever be a sufficient affinity for the former 
 to be able to penetrate, appropriate, satisfy, and 
 measure all the goodness, truth, and spiritual 
 hunger variously yet ever present in the world. 
 From Moses back to prehistoric times, forward 
 to Christ and on from Christ to the end of time, 
 we thus get one great chain of slow, varying, 
 intermittent yet true development occasioned by 
 God in man, and moving from man towards God. 
 And if so, then the chief difficulty raised by the 
 critical view of the various documents disappears : 
 for such a truly dynamic conception would en- 
 globe and spiritualize it all. 
 
 You yourself, my dear Friend, more or less 
 accept these four great principles, I think, and 
 will admit them to be immanent to the logic of 
 the Catholic position. But two final, matter-of- 
 fact objections might plausibly be urged against 
 us both. First, then, is not your plea for "peace" 
 really an invitation to further war? Is it an 
 appeal for the union, in these Biblical matters, 
 of still by far the greater number of zealous 
 believers in the several Christian bodies ? No ;
 
 52 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 it is a call for the acceptance, on the part of all 
 these simple traditional Christians, whether 
 Catholic or Protestant, of the conclusions of the 
 critics, whether Protestant or Catholic ; and 
 those believers are a compact many, and these 
 critics are a scattered few. Would it not be 
 right and great for the Pope, the supposed 
 enemy of the Bible, to help to save the Bible for 
 the Anti-Papists also? And it is certain that, 
 what with the older Protestantism having taken 
 over much of even the non-obligatory, current 
 mediaeval and antique Catholic teaching in the 
 matter, and post-Tridentine Catholic theologians 
 having largely lived to fight fighting Protestants 
 and thus become strangely like them, such 
 an alliance of all the " Traditionalists," or 
 " believers," against all the scholars, or 
 "Rationalists," such a combination is already 
 more or less in operation. Yet such a com- 
 bination could not be formally organized or 
 strongly emphasized without speedily revealing 
 its impracticable character. For the immanental 
 peculiarities of the Catholic position would soon 
 break up such an alliance from the Roman side ; 
 whilst on the Protestant side, even such strongly 
 individualistic Bible-Protestants as the Congre- 
 gationalists, the descendants of Cromwell and 
 Milton, are steadily maturing a critically-trained
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 53 
 
 body of Ministers. Hence if by peace you mean 
 a solid and abiding concord between such ele- 
 ments and conceptions as have expansive force 
 and a fruitful future in them, then you are right, 
 even if, to one who would refuse to look elsewhere 
 than back and upon the surface of events, we 
 might appear as but so many isolated malcontents 
 or idealists who can safely be left to themselves. 
 
 And next, and here we have by far the most 
 formidable objection, and one which only the 
 actual course of events and Rome's own action 
 can adequately solve, are we not indeed 
 dreamers and impotent optimists? Is there no 
 such thing as a law of existence by which all 
 institutions, however divinely inspired may have 
 been their services and however elemental may 
 be the necessities to which they ministered, pass, 
 in our poor human world of change, through an 
 inevitable cycle of beautiful upward growth and 
 expansion, of splendid maturity and balance, and 
 of pathetic ossification and of lingering but sure 
 decay ? The Roman Catholic Church is indeed 
 the mother of West-European civilization ; but 
 can a man enter a second time into his 
 mother's womb? The Roman Catholic system 
 of life may indeed involve the four positions we 
 have described ; but what if its life be insufficient 
 to one more such mighty renovation ? This
 
 54 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 Opinion of the Biblical Commission, is surely 
 but one link in a chain of official attempts 
 at the suppression or emasculation of Science 
 and Scholarship, beginning" indeed with Erasmus 
 and culminating with Richard Simon and Alfred 
 Loisy, but never entirely absent, as witness count- 
 less workers' lives, well-known to their fellow- 
 workers. When and where has Rome quite 
 finally abandoned any position, however informal 
 and late its occupation, and however demonstrated 
 its untenableness ? Where, in particular, is the 
 case of its permission to hold critical and historical 
 views even distantly comparable in their deviation 
 from " tradition " to those here presented by us ? 
 And if no such cases can be found, then, surely, 
 Rome stands utterly discredited : for a body that 
 clings, in spite of any and all evidence, to simply 
 everything, has of itself discounted its persistence 
 in any contention whatsoever. 
 
 Now here I cannot fully arrest this blow : 
 Rome alone can do so, and not by words, but by 
 deeds. Yet I can break it sufficiently, I think, 
 to encourage men who attempt to combine re- 
 ligion and science and only to such men would 
 I speak in working on at such attempts, even 
 on the ground of the demonstrable facts and 
 events ready to the hand of him who will candidly 
 seek and face them. I would then point out
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 55 
 
 first that all Religious Institutions without ex- 
 ception are at their worst in the matter of their 
 relations with Science and Scholarship, doubtless 
 chiefly because they exist, at bottom, as the 
 incorporations and vehicles of requirements and 
 realities, deeper and more immediately important 
 and necessary than are even Science and Scholar- 
 ship. Man has to live as a man, to keep and 
 constitute himself a spiritual being", fighting inch 
 by inch against dissolution into a mere shifting 
 phenomenalism, or against those passions that 
 would turn him into an ape or tiger ; and he has 
 to die the physical death, letting slip away all he 
 sees and touches and facing the darkness with 
 unshaken trust. And he never did, he never will 
 nor can, thus live and die, and immolate his 
 clamorous selfishness for his own ever largely 
 latent personality, for those swift - passing 
 shadows, his fellow men, or for the truth even of 
 Science itself, from motives simply of Science, 
 but only from the far more immediate and 
 elemental incentives and certainties of spiritual 
 faith and devotedly creative love. All these 
 Religions and Churches are not, then, mistaken 
 in the primary objects of their work, or in hold- 
 ing them to be thus primary, the highest and 
 deepest given to man ; nor do they fail to reach 
 these great objects, even if, measured by other
 
 56 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 ends and standards, they all look like sorry 
 failures. Certainly it is not for Protestant eccle- 
 siastical bodies to throw the stone at Rome in 
 these matters : if Rome has had Erasmus, Simon, 
 Loisy, the others have had Colenso, Robertson- 
 Smith, and yourself. Thus even now, Catholics 
 have not had any solemn condemnation of Pen- 
 tateuchal criticism, and the Protestant Churches 
 have had three. 
 
 I would point out next, that Science and 
 Scholarship, after having for some four centuries 
 slowly proved their formidable power, mostly as 
 though this power were unlimited and destructive 
 only, are themselves now coming to discover fully 
 their own respective essential methods, ends, 
 levels and limitations. If they are, in the long 
 run, simply irresistible within these limits of their 
 own, they as demonstrably presuppose and re- 
 quire a fuller, deeper world of reality and life 
 than is theirs ; and religion will be able to find 
 room for these other levels of life, on the day 
 when it has fully learnt, on its side, that it cannot 
 henceforth attain again to its own deepest fruit- 
 fulness, unless it can and will frankly accept and 
 encourage such autonomies within its own ampler 
 life. Theology will only slowly and approxi- 
 mately be able to resolve the antinomies thus 
 occasioned, but the religious soul will again be
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 57 
 
 conscious of how much fuller are the religious life 
 and reality than are even their best analyses ; and 
 the sciences themselves will then be pointing to, 
 without themselves directly reaching, religion as 
 thus practised and understood. 
 
 And finally, I would note the vicissitudes of two 
 long critical campaigns, and how, if we take their 
 quite recent final upshot together, they certainly 
 amount, on the part of Rome, to an ultimate 
 docility to established facts and to a power of 
 intellectual rejuvenation equal in amount to any- 
 thing here expected by us. There was the long- 
 drawn controversy as to the date and authorship 
 of the Areopagite writings. For well-nigh a 
 millennium this considerable mass of documents 
 was held throughout Latin Christendom to be 
 the work of St. Paul's Athenian Convert Diony- 
 sius, composed in about 90 A.D. St. Thomas 
 Aquinas incorporates them all ; he, as the entire 
 Middle- Ages, builds his Mystical Theology upon 
 Dionysius ; the Areopagite stands here im- 
 mediately after Scripture and before Aristotle 
 himself. Indeed, the great Spanish Mystics of 
 the sixteenth century are still full of Dionysian 
 influence. Not till the fifteenth century is a 
 single voice raised against the attribution ; and 
 even as late as 1845 and 1865, could a Catholic 
 future Archbishop and a Jesuit, the Abbe Darboy
 
 58 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 and the Pere Dulac, be found stoutly to defend 
 the authenticity, the last of these believers being 
 the Anglican Rev. James Parker, who in 1897 
 still stoutly rejects as * 'rationalism," " conceit," 
 etc., the scholarly labours of some four centuries. 
 Yet now the chief living authorities on the sub- 
 ject are the Jesuit Father Stiglmayr and the 
 Secular Priest, Dr. Hugo Koch, who, with full 
 ecclesiastical authorization, have finally demon- 
 strated those writings to be the work of some 
 Greek Christian Bishop, taken largely all but 
 verbatim from the Heathen Neo-Platonist Proclus, 
 in about 490 A.D. It is true that these pseudo- 
 Areopagite writings never claimed to be Scrip- 
 ture ; yet they were of incomparably more direct 
 influence with Christians during those thirty and 
 more generations, than the Pentateuch has ever 
 been. There was again the equally long con- 
 troversy as to the authenticity of the "Comma 
 Johanneum," the text of the " Three Heavenly 
 Witnesses" in the First Epistle of St. John. Eras- 
 mus had rejected it ; Richard Simon in 1689 had 
 plainly shown the hopelessness of any critical 
 defence of it ; and in England Richard Por- 
 son gave it, in 1790, so effectually the coup de 
 grace, that when in 1881 the Revisers of the 
 Authorized Version simply excluded the verse, not
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 59 
 
 even that jaunty, undaunted Tory, Dean Burgon, 
 had a word to say against their action. 
 
 Simon had indeed been condemned wholesale 
 by Rome ; yet Catholic scholars also had con- 
 tinued to help to prove the necessity of such an 
 exclusion, the most thorough being the Abbe 
 Paulin Martin, in 1886. But on January I3th, 
 1897, there appeared, approved and confirmed 
 by Pope Leo XIII, a Decree of the Holy Office, 
 the highest Roman tribunal next after the Pope 
 himself, and which, unlike the Biblical Com- 
 mission, claims directly doctrinal authority, 
 giving a negative answer to the question, 
 "Whether it is safe to deny, or at least to call 
 in doubt, the authenticity of the text of St. John, 
 in the First Epistle, chapter v., verse 7, ' For 
 there are three that give testimony in heaven : 
 the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and 
 these three are one.' " Well, and what happened 
 then ? Catholic scholars promptly pointed out 
 the unworkableness of an insistence upon this 
 text's original appurtenance to that Epistle, or 
 indeed to any other part of the New Testament. 
 And eight years later (1905), the Catholic Priest, 
 Professor Dr. Kiinstle, issued a dissertation 
 " Das Comma Johanneum " ; it bore the Im- 
 primatur of the Archbishop of Freiburg, and
 
 60 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 was printed and published by the great Papal 
 publishers, Herder. This brochure formally 
 demonstrates what Abbe Martin and Dom 
 Amelli, O.S.B., had already respectively more 
 or less guessed and propounded, that the 
 " Comma" was composed in Spain, in 390 A.D., 
 by the Heresiarch Priscillian, to propagate his 
 Pan-Christian Heresy ; and that this gloss, 
 slightly retouched, then found its way, in part 
 rapidly, into the Latin New Testament. The 
 text, as you know, has, for a thousand years, 
 been one of the chief Biblical testimonies to the 
 doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the Latin 
 Church ; and for some two centuries and a half 
 scholastic theologians have, with their usual 
 tough and cheery absoluteness, ignored or re- 
 jected the adverse conclusions of all competent 
 critics within and without the Church. Did it 
 not then look as if that high and clear Roman 
 Decree had finally canonized the contention of 
 the theologians in a matter of historical criticism 
 against all the critics, and that a Catholic as 
 such stood strictly pledged henceforth to deny 
 his scientific conscience or to leave the Church ? 
 What would so greatly have rejoiced all anti- 
 Roman spirits did not happen. And why not ? 
 Simply because the necessities and laws im- 
 manent to this kind of subject-matter and of its
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 61 
 
 proof had been overlooked from zeal for other, 
 in their place, most vital interests ; and because 
 those immanental necessities operated on and 
 on, quietly, inevitably, at their own more super- 
 ficial level of work and reality, in much the same 
 way as, at the deepest level of experience and 
 life, forces are ever energizing for religion and 
 the Church herself. In neither case are these 
 laws and forces the arbitrary inventions of men, 
 nor so much clay in their hands ; along the 
 shallower, the scientific level they are no more 
 produced by captious conceit or by a libertine 
 private judgment on the part of scholars, than 
 at the deepest, spiritual level, they are effected 
 by priestly tyranny and greed. 
 
 What happened with respect to the Areopagite 
 and the "Comma Johanneum " will doubtless 
 happen with respect to the authorship of the 
 Pentateuch. For if in the latter case we are 
 dealing with Scripture, as against the Areopa- 
 gite who only claimed to be sub-apostolic ; and 
 with a problem of far greater extent and compli- 
 cation than that of the " Comma" : yet both the 
 Areopagite and the "Comma" by their contents 
 interested theologians far more directly than ever 
 the Pentateuch did ; the Areopagite had to be 
 admitted as chiefly made up from heathen sources, 
 whereas the Pentateuch remains a distinctly,
 
 62 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 overwhelmingly Jewish book; and the "Com- 
 ma's " authenticity had been insisted upon by a 
 doctrinally far more weighty tribunal than is the 
 Commission, whilst the particular negative solu- 
 tion now formally allowed, goes much further to 
 the left than anything required by solid criticism 
 of the Pentateuch, which remains as Biblical and 
 inspired as before. 
 
 Indeed, it is the simple fact that the chief 
 trials to faith in the Pentateuch are only now 
 and thus removed, and certain powerful aids to 
 belief are only thus acquired. For we now 
 have no more a single, all but hopelessly self- 
 contradictory work, but a library of successive 
 documents, each thoroughly consistent with itself. 
 And we have not a single direct divine revelation 
 fiercely insistent upon endless ritual details, centu- 
 ries before they were wanted and before they 
 ceased to be fully contravened by God's closest 
 friends in Israel ; but we have a succession of 
 divinely willed and blessed expansions and adap- 
 tations of an original, divinely suggested and 
 sanctioned nucleus of fundamental truths and 
 ordinances a succession occurring in proportion 
 as these developments were wanted to strengthen 
 the Jewish faith and community, and to keep 
 them pure from absorption by the heathen, unto
 
 AND THE PENTATEUCH 63 
 
 the day when they would form the cradle 
 and first environment of the universal religion, 
 Christianity. 
 
 Let me also, my dear Friend, finish upon this 
 note of Christianity and its immanental affinity 
 with all the Beautiful, the True and the Good 
 throughout this beautiful, true, good world of 
 God. Whatever the Christian spirit continues to 
 penetrate (we both feel this deeply), is endowed 
 with undecaying vitality, with the power of ever 
 breaking anew through the sterilizing isolation of 
 selfishness and self-sufficiency, through any and 
 all substitutes for the simple service of the ser- 
 vants of God. We both know how deep is the 
 world's debt to the great Saints and Pontiffs of the 
 Roman Church. And as to the present Holy 
 Father, we are both of us well aware of how 
 zealously he encourages the scholarly translation 
 and wide distribution of the Gospels in Italy ; 
 indeed, you have the high honour of knowing him 
 personally, and of vividly realizing how selfless 
 are his motives, and how truly evangelical are his 
 ends. We assuredly can and ought, both of us, to 
 pray, will and work that God may abundantly 
 bless these great aims and ends of him who for 
 you also is the chief Bishop of Christendom ; 
 and that his advisers, in the manifold mixed
 
 64 THE PAPAL COMMISSION 
 
 subject-matters which they have to prepare and 
 to bring before him, may have a vivid realization 
 of the difficulty and complexity, the importance, 
 rights, and duties of those other departments of 
 life Science and Scholarship lest these forces, 
 ignored' or misunderstood, bring inevitable ob- 
 struction and eclipse to those direct and central 
 interests and ideals which are the fundamental 
 motives of all spiritual life, and the true main- 
 spring and impregnable citadel of the Christian, 
 Catholic and Roman Church. 
 
 Yours, my dear Professor, 
 Ever sincerely, 
 
 FRIEDRICH VON HUGEL. 
 
 PLYMOUTH 
 WILLIAM BRBKDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY