It is not necessary to enlarge upon the views of the traditional class of critics, for theirs are the views with which most Christians now living have been familiar since their childhood. In order to understand, however, the bearing of the nontraditional criticism upon the Christian view of the Old Testament it is necessary to consider the most important conclusions of the nontraditional class of evangelical criticism; and to these conclusions we may now turn our attention.
1. Modern criticism has placed into clearer light the progressive character of Old Testament revelation. God is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, but man has taken many advance steps; and as he advanced his spiritual capacities and powers of apprehension increased. This growth enabled him to secure, from generation to generation and from century to century, during the Old Testament dispensation, an ever-broadening and deepening conception of the nature and character of God and of his will. The Old { 86} Testament books, says Kent, are "the harmonious and many-sided record of ten centuries of strenuous human endeavor to know and to do the will of God, and of his full and gracious response to that effort."[14]
2. Formerly the beginning of the Old Testament canon was traced to Moses. He was thought not only to have written the books of the Pentateuch but to have given to them official sanction as canonical books. To these books were gradually added the other sacred writings of the Old Testament on the authority of the divinely chosen successors of Moses, like Joshua, Samuel, and the prophets. The close of the canon was ascribed to Ezra, who, according to later views, had to share the honor with the men of the Great Synagogue. Modern criticism assigns new dates to some of the Old Testament books; it believes that the exile was a period of great spiritual and intellectual activity, and a number of books are placed subsequent to Ezra and Nehemiah, which in itself would imply a denial of the view that the canon was finally closed in the days of Ezra. The modern critical view is that the Old Testament books were canonized--whatever the dates of their writing--gradually and at a comparatively late period. The canonization of the Law is placed at about B.C. 400, that of the Prophets between B.C. 250 and B.C. 180, while the third { 87} division of the Jewish canon, the Writings, is believed to have acquired canonical authority during the second and first centuries B.C.