Reverent scholars have demonstrated our sacred
literature to be a growth in obedience to simple laws natural and
historical; they have shown how some books of the Old Testament
were accepted as sacred, centuries before our era, and how others
gradually gained sanctity, in some cases only fully acquiring it
long after the establishment of the Christian Church. The same slow
growth has also been shown in the New Testament canon. It has been
demonstrated that the selection of the books composing it, and
their separation from the vast mass of spurious gospels, epistles,
and apocalytic literature was a gradual process, and, indeed, that
the rejection of some books and the acceptance of others was
accidental, if anything is accidental.
So, too, scientific biblical research has, as we have seen, been
obliged to admit the existence of much mythical and legendary
matter, as a setting for the great truths not only of the Old
Testament but of the New. It has also shown, by the comparative
study of literatures, the process by which some books were compiled
and recompiled, adorned with beautiful utterances, strengthened or
weakened by alterations and interpolations expressing the views of
the possessors or transcribers, and attributed to personages who
could not possibly have written them.
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