Biblical Authority and the Impact of Higher Criticism in Irish Presbyterianism, ca. 1850–1930

The decades between 1850 and 1930 saw traditional understandings of Christianity subjected to rigorous social, intellectual, and theological criticism across the transatlantic world. Unprecedented urban and industrial expansion drew attention to the shortcomings of established models of church organization while traditional Christian beliefs concerning human origins and the authority of Scripture were assailed by new approaches to science and biblical higher criticism. In contradistinction to lower or textual criticism, higher criticism dealt with the development of the biblical text in broad terms. According to James Strahan, professor of Hebrew at Magee College, Derry, from 1915 to 1926, textual criticism aimed “at ascertaining the genuine text and meaning of an author” while higher “or historical, criticism seeks to answer a series of questions affecting the composition, editing and collection of the Sacred Books.” During the nineteenth century, the controversy over the use of higher critical methods focused for the most part upon the Old Testament. In particular, critics dismissed the Mosaic authorship and unity of the Pentateuch, arguing that it was the compilation of a number of early documentary fragments brought together by priests after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C. This “documentary hypothesis” is most often associated with the German scholar, Julius Wellhausen. Indeed, higher criticism had been fostered in the extensive university system of the various German states, which encouraged original research and the emergence of a professional intellectual elite. It reflected the desire of liberal theologians to adapt the Christian faith to the needs and values of modern culture, particularly natural science and history.