Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 98:389 (Jan 1941)
Article: The Old Testament Problem Part 2
Author: A. Noordtzij

BSac 98:389 (Jan 41) p. 99

The Old Testament Problem
Part 2

Dr. A. Noordtzij

(Translated from the Dutch especially for Bibliotheca Sacra by Miner B. Stearns, Th.M.)

(Continued from the October-December Number, 1940)

{Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original printed edition were numbered 2–8, but in this electronic edition are numbered 1–7 respectively.}

[Translator’s Note: “Wellhausenism is dead,” affirms Dr. Kelso in his article A Résumé of Recent Archaeological Research in the last number of Bibliotheca Sacra (p. 476). This second installment of the translation of Dr. Noordtzij’s masterly study may therefore be considered as an autopsy, or postmortem examination of the mortal weaknesses of that school of “higher criticism” which dominated theological thinking for nearly fifty years. Unfortunately, however, many a theory which ought to be “dead,” killed by the impact of the evidence to the contrary, continues to survive and wreak havoc for many years. A notable case in point in the hypothesis of organic evolution. Similarly, Wellhausenism continues to exert its faith-deadening influence in a very wide sphere, largely because its own death and the reasons for it have not been sufficiently publicised. It is hoped that this presentation in English of Dr. Noordtzij’s crushing demonstration may help to banish forever Wellhausen’s outmoded theories.]

IV. The Weaknesses of Wellhausen’s System

Meanwhile, what seemed to be the strength of this solution of the Old Testament problem, which was brought forth with so much self-confidence, has appeared in the fifty years which have elapsed since then, ever more clearly to be its weakness. Although the synthesis of this solution was made in the last decades of the 19th century, it borrowed its basic ideas and material from a much earlier time. On the other hand, just at the end of the last century there came a mighty revolution in that broad field of research, of which the study of the Old Testament is just a small part; and totally different ideas came to light than those upon which the men of Wellhausen’s school had reared their proud edifice, because of which the foundations of that edifice were increasingly undermined, and more and more men turned away from Wellhausen.

Such a man as Rudolph Kittel, who had nevertheless for years been one of his strongest partisans, had to declare before a gathering of Old Testament scholars, on

BSac 98:389 (Jan 41) p. 100

September 29, 1921, that the movement named for, and repeatedly naming itself for, Wellhausen, now finds its adherents chiefly in the older generation-in the younger generation, with few exceptions, only with strong reservations....