Zechariah: Visions and Prophecies by David BaronPage 1
Chapter 13: An Examination of the Modern Criticism in Reference to the Last Six Chapters——————————————————————————————–––––––––––––––––
Chapter 13: An Examination of the Modern Criticism in Reference to the Last Six Chapters
The aim which we set before us in these “Notes” on Zechariah was by God’s help to make this precious portion of Old Testament revelation intelligible, and spiritually profitable, to the ordinary intelligent English reader, and in doing so to avoid as much as possible minute critical points, and lengthy discussions of the questions of dates and authorship.
We might, therefore, have accepted the contention of the more “moderate” of the modern critical writers, that the contents and “religious” or spiritual value of these sacred oracles are independent of the question as to whether they were, or were not, actually composed by the person, or persons, and at the time “traditionally” attached to them —and have proceeded at once to the exposition of chap. ix. But this contention is only partially true. The ethical and spiritual character of a writing is not altogether independent of its authorship and the circumstances in which it originated; and then, too, as far as these chapters are concerned, it is not a question merely as to what “religious” value we can find in them for ourselves, or for the professed people of God at the present day. The true believer and disciple is anxious above all to understand the meaning of the divine oracles, which holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost; and we are concerned here not only with the application, but with the interpretation of these chapters. Both Jews and Christians have always believed that they contain fore-announcements of great and solemn events, and that we have in them divine forecasts of things which were to transpire at a time, or times, which from the prophets’ then point of view, at any rate, are contemplated as future.
Now in order rightly to understand or explain the prophetic element in these chapters, and to know whether these forecasts have already been fulfilled or not, much will depend on the question of the date of their origin. It makes all the difference, for instance, whether chaps. xii.—xiv. were composed by an unknown contemporary of Jeremiah, whose prophecies of a siege of Jerusalem, and “anticipations” of God’s manifest interposition on behalf of His people in the hour of their greatest extremity (which, however, were falsified by the events), refer to the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Chaldeans, or whether the writer is the inspired post-exilic prophet under whose name these chapters stand, who not only lived after the destruction of the Temple, but witnessed the rebuilding of the Temple after the partial restoration from Babylon, and who therefore must speak of another Temple and a yet future siege.
Now, while Zechariah’s authorship of the first eight chapters (with which I have already dealt so far) is universally acknowledged, strong objections have been raised in modern times against the assumed authorship and date of the last six chapters.
The Spirit of the Early English Criticism
On examining the great amount of criticism on this subject, we find that it divides itself into two separate streams, which are impelled by two different motives.
The earliest critics of the traditional authorship of these chapters were learned English divines, men who believed in the plenary inspiration of Holy Scripture, whose actuating motive was to justify the inerrancy of the citation in Matt. xxvii. 9, 10, which ascribes to Jeremiah a prophecy found in Zech. xi. Thus Joseph Mede[1] (the very first who sought to establish a pre-exilic authorship of these chapters) says, in his note on the above passage in Matthew: “It would seem the Evangelist would inform us that those latter chapters ascribed to Zachary. . . are indeed the prophecies of Jeremy, and that the Jews had not rightly attributed them:. . . there is no scripture saith they are Zachary’s, but there is a scripture saith they are Jeremy’s, as this of the Evangelist.” And proceeding from this point of view, he discovered, as he thought, internal proof that these chapters belonged not to Zechariah’s, but to Jeremiah’s time. He was followed by Hammond, Kidder, Newcome, etc.[2]
We shall see when we come (D.V.) to the exposition of chap. xi. as to whether there is any other possible explanation of the occurrence of Jeremiah’s name in that passage in Matthew; meanwhile, without entering more fully into this point here, we would adopt the words of another English Biblical scholar,[3] and say:
“Is it not possible, nay, is it not much more probable, that the word ιερεμιου (Jeremiah) may be written by mistake by some transcribers of Matthew’s Gospel, than that those of the Jewish Church, who settled the canon of scripture, should have been so grossly ignorant of the right author of these chapters as to place them under a wrong name? It is not, I think, pretended that these chapters have been found in any copy of the Old Testament otherwise placed than as they now stand. But in the New Testament there are not wanting authorities for omitting the word ιερεμιου (Jeremiah). Nor is it impossible to account plausibly for the wrong insertion of Jeremiah (Matt. xxvii. 9) by observing that exactly the same words occur in Matt. ii. 17, where we read Τοτε επλμρωθη το ρηθεν υπο (in some copies δια—see Wetstein) Ιερεμιου του προφητου λεγοντος, (Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying). Now supposing a transcriber to have had in his copy either δια του προφητου (through the prophet) only, or δια Ζαχαριου του προφητου (through Zechariah the prophet), yet carrying in his mind what he had written a little before, he might inadvertently and without intention have written the same over again, as will easily be granted by those who are at all used to transcribe.”
The Rationalistic Criticism which Reduces Prophecy to Human Divination
The other stream of criticism directed against the date and authorship of these chapters rises from a different source, and is impelled by the same motive which, alas, underlies the whole of the so-called “modern criticism.” There are, no doubt, exceptions; but reading the many, and for the most part conflicting opinions of modern writers on this question, one is struck with the truth of Keil’s remarks, that the objections which modern critics offer to the unity of the book (and the same may be said also of much of their criticism of other books of the Bible) do not arise from the nature of these scriptures, but “partly from the dogmatic assumption of the rationalistic and naturalistic critics that the Biblical prophecies are nothing more than the productions of natural divination; and partly from the inability of critics, in consequence of this assumption, to penetrate into the depths of the divine revelation, and to grasp either the substance or form of their historical development so as to appreciate it fully.”[4]
In illustration of these remarks of Keil, it may not be out of place to quote a striking instance of the elimination of any reference to a distant future, and, indeed, of any supernatural element from the prophetic scriptures on the part of modern critics. Before me lies the last edition of what is regarded by many as a standard work on the Literature of the Old Testament. The author (Canon Driver) is esteemed as one of the more “moderate” of this school. Like many others, he divides chaps. xii.–xiv. from chaps. ix.–xi., but he follows those of the German rationalistic school, who ascribe a post-exilic origin to the second half of Zechariah, though he denies Zechariah’s authorship. These are his words on the last three chapters:
“As regards the occasion of the prophecy it is impossible to do more than speculate. It is conceivable that in the post-exilic period where our history is a blank (B.C. 518–458; 432–300) the family of David assumed importance in Jerusalem, and supplied some of the leading judges and administrators, and that they had been implicated with the people of the capital in some deed of blood (xii. 10–14), on the ground of which the prophet depicts Jehovah’s appearance in judgment. In the heathen invaders of xii.–xiv. he perhaps has not in view any actual expected foe, but pictures an imaginary assault of nations, like Ezekiel (c. 38–39), from which he represents Jerusalem, though not without severe losses, as delivered. In other features the prophecy appears to be one of those (cf. Isa. xxiv.–xxvii.) in which not merely the figurative, but the imaginative, element is larger than is generally the case, especially in the pre-exilic prophets. But even when allowance has been made for this, many details in the prophecy remain perplexing, and probably no entirely satisfactory explanation of it is now attainable.” The italics are Canon Driver’s.
We refrain from characterising the remarks which ascribe the origin of some of the sublimest prophecies in the Old Testament in reference to the last things to the exercise of the “imaginative” faculty of the writers, but let us, for lack of space, look at one point only. The first reference, which is so easily disposed of with a stroke of the pen, is chap. xii. 10-14. Now this passage begins with the words: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication; and they shall look unto Me Whom they have pierced: and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son, and they shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born”—and proceeds to describe an intense universal mourning throughout “the whole land,” when every tribe shall mourn apart, and “their wives apart.”
Even Jews believed that this is a prophecy of solemn events in the future—though, on grounds which we cannot stop here to indicate, they wrongly applied ver. 10 to a “Messiah ben Joseph,” who, according to them, was to precede the Messiah ben David.
Certainly the remarkable correspondence in this case, between the prediction and that part of it which has already been fulfilled in the Gospel narrative, is one of the most striking proofs of the divine inspiration of the prophecy, as well as of the Messiahship of our Lord Jesus of Nazareth. But for Canon Driver and the school which he represents, New Testament history is evidently non-existent, or, if it exists, it has no relation whatever to Old Testament prophecy; and rather than admit the possibility of a divine fore-announcement in reference to a distant future, this sublime scripture is made to refer to “some deed of blood” in which the leaders and the people were implicated some time before these chapters were written, which, according to him, was some time between 518 and 300 B.C.—of which “deed of blood” which could occasion such deep and universal mourning, history knows nothing!
Now, to quote another author:
“The human authorship of any books of Holy Scripture —and so of these chapters of Zechariah—is, in itself, a matter which does not concern the soul. It is an untrue imputation that the date of books of the Bible is converted into matter of faith. In this case Jesus has not set His seal upon it; God the Holy Ghost has not declared it. But, as in other cases, what lay as the foundation of the theory was the unbelief that God, in the way above nature, when it seemed good to Him, revealed a certain future to His creature man. It is the postulate (or axiom, as appears to these critics), that there is no superhuman prophecy, which gives rise to their eagerness to place these and other prophetic books, and portions of books, where they can say to themselves that they do not involve such prophecy. To believers it has, obviously, no religious interest at what time it pleased Almighty God to send any of His servants the prophets. Not the dates assigned by any of these self-devouring theories, but the grounds alleged in support of those dates, as implying unbelief of God’s revelation of Himself, make the question one of religious interest, namely, to show that these theories are as unsubstantial as their assumed base is baseless.”[5]
That it is not unjust to say that to most of these critics either prophecy in the Christian sense of the term does not exist; or, to quote one of them, that “all definite prophecy relates to an immediate future” and has reference to events which, as men imbued with the ethical principles which determine God’s dealings with men and nations, and as careful observers of the signs of the times, the prophets could well conjecture, or “anticipate,” as likely to come to pass—the following quotation from one of the chief fathers of the modern criticism shows:
“That which is most peculiar in this prophet” (writes Ewald, of the supposed unknown author of the last six chapters of Zechariah) “is the uncommon high and pious hope of the deliverance of Jerusalem and Judah, notwithstanding all visible greatest dangers and threatenings. At a time when Jeremiah, in the walls of the capital, already despairs of any possibility of a successful resistance to the Chaldees and exhorts to tranquillity, this prophet still looks all these dangers straight in the face with swelling spirit and divine confidence; holds, with unbowed spirit, firm to the like promises of older prophets, as Isa. xxix.; and anticipates that, from that very moment when the blind fury of the destroyers would discharge itself on the sanctuary, a wondrous might would crush them in pieces, and that this must be the beginning of the Messianic weal within and without.”[6]
Chap. xiv. is, according to Ewald, a modification of the earlier “anticipations” of this prophet.
“This piece,” he says, “cannot have been written till somewhat later, when facts made it more and more improbable that Jerusalem would not anyhow be conquered, and treated as a conquered city, by coarse foes. Yet then, too, this prophet could not part with the anticipations of older prophets, and those which he had himself at an earlier time expressed so boldly, amid the most visible danger, he holds firm to the old anticipation (in remembrance of) the great deliverance of Jerusalem in Sennacherib’s time (Isa. xxxvii.), which appeared to justify the most fanatic hopes for the future (comp. Ps. lix.). And so now the prospect moulds itself to him thus, as if Jerusalem must indeed actually endure the horrors of the conquest, but that then, when the work of the conquerors was half-completed, the great deliverance already suggested in that former piece would come, and so the sanctuary would notwithstanding be wonderfully preserved, the better Messianic time would notwithstanding still so come.”
Principal George Adam Smith, to whose work, The Book of the Twelve Prophets, we shall have occasion to return presently, and who, like Canon Driver, follows those German critics who ascribe a post-exilic origin to these chapters, though denying Zechariah’s authorship, after mentioning some grounds for a later date, says:
“But though many critics judged these grounds to be sufficient to prove the post-exilic origin of Zech. ix–xiv., they differed as to the author and exact date of these chapters. Conservatives, like Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, Keil, Kohler, and Pusey, used the evidence to prove the authorship of Zechariah himself after 516, and interpreted the references to the Greek period as pure prediction. . . . But on the same grounds Eichhorn saw in the chapters not a prediction, but a reflection, of the Greek period. He assigned chaps. ix. and x. to an author of the time of Alexander the Great; xi–xiii. 6 he placed a little later, and brought down xiii. 7–xiv. to the Maccabæan period.”
But it is a sad fact that the grounds, when closely examined, on which Eichhorn and the others, who, admitting a post-exilic origin of these chapters, yet deny that they were written by Zechariah, are neither “the geographical references” nor the historical or philological indications in the scripture in question, but the underlying presupposition on the part of these critics that “pure prediction” is an impossibility, and the attempt to eliminate or explain away the supernatural element in the prophetic scriptures. And since, as an instance, there is too marked and striking a resemblance between the historic events connected with the march and conquest of Alexander the Great through Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, with the description in chaps. ix. and x., they cannot be prophetic of these events (for that would be admitting the possibility of “pure prediction”), but must be “a reflection,” or, in other words, a description of the events after they had taken place.
But to come back to Ewald and those who ascribe a pre-exilic origin to the second part of Zechariah, it must be pointed out that the prophecy, had it preceded the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, could not have been earlier than the reign of Jehoiakim, since the mourning for the death of Josiah is spoken of as a proverbial sorrow of the past. But in that case the prophecy which “anticipates” a miraculous interposition of God for the deliverance of Jerusalem would have been in direct contradiction to Jeremiah, “who for thirty-nine years in one unbroken dirge predicted the evil” which should come upon the city; and the inventive prophet would have been “one of the false prophets who contradicted Jeremiah, who encouraged Zedekiah in his perjury, the punishment whereof Ezekiel solemnly denounced, prophesying his captivity in Babylon as its penalty; he would have been a political fanatic, one of those who by encouraging rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar brought on the destruction of the city, and in the name of God told lies against God.