Note 38 — Chapter III · THE DESTRUCTIVE CHARACTER OF MODERN BIBLE CRITICISM

Apologists do not explain at all convincingly why the Almighty could not, or preferred not to, make Himself understood. If He could say “Let there be light,” He could also have said “Let there be knowledge.” Besides, after all, what is there in the broad facts of modern science which could not be explained to an intelligent savage to-day? The shape and movements of the earth are explained in the most elementary geography books, and the theory of Evolution can be made quite clear to comparative children (I speak from personal experience). Recent discoveries have revealed to us that ancient nations must have reached an extraordinarily high state of civilisation. Six thousand years ago, in the valley of the Nile, there existed a standard of civilisation incomparably higher than that of the Jews at the time when God is alleged to have selected them as His chosen people. “The Old Testament,” says Canon C. H. Robinson, “is the history of a people insignificant in number, occupying a country about the same size as the county of Yorkshire; remarkable neither for their superior learning, civilisation, nor military power; remarkable, if for anything, for their obstinate, grasping, usurious character; who, nevertheless, were chosen out of all the nations of the ancient world to be the recipients of peculiar blessings and favours.”38 This incomprehensible selection of ignorant Jews to be the special recipients of Revelation only emphasises the contention that we have no right to assume that learned men of two thousand years ago could not have understood plain facts, or that it was necessary for them to believe in purely imaginary explanations of the cosmos, in a flat, stationary earth, in a blue-basin sky, in an “Adam and Eve” origin, in devil-possession, in absurd miracles, etc. Their ignorance, which was natural enough considering their opportunities, could easily have been dispelled when God graciously condescended to come and live among them. What a proof would that not have been of His Divinity!