Fallacies of Higher Critics

Techniques of textual critics exposed as the feeble conclusions and judgments of anti-Christs, who know not God nor have the Holy Ghost to guide them, but who delight in denying these things, which is unpardonable. Joseph Fielding Smith, Man, His Origin and Destiny, p.491-494: DURING the second half of the nineteenth century there was a determined effort launched on the part of certain scholars to tear asunder and destroy the authenticity of the holy scriptures. They were influenced by the same spirit which prompted the organic evolutionists. This plan has been called "Higher Criticism," but in reality it should be called "destructive criticism." The advocates of this theory assumed to have the wisdom by which they could discover, without Urim or Thummim, but by their own wisdom, a difference in style in the various books of the Bible...parts could not have been written at the time indicated by these books, Some of the passages, like that dealing with Isaiah's prophecy naming Cyrus (Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1-4), they maintained were written by authors after the prophetic events had taken place. To their way of thinking even God could not predict the birth of a man over one hundred years before he was born...Peter speaks: "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." (2 Peter 1:20-21.) These learned men do not claim to have the guidance of the Holy Ghost, but by their scientific training they have spoken and given utterance. In their contention, through their uninspired skill, they maintain that they were able to discover that the five books of Moses were not the works of Moses. Moreover, their doctrine was that the stories of creation, the Garden of Eden, Adam's fall, recorded in Genesis, were taken from the myths and legends of the Assyrians and Babylonians. It was the accepted view at that time that "the Mosaic age was outside the scope of written records."