When Campbell's Delusions were published

Oh my Goodness, I had no idea that Alexander Campbell published his Delusions an analysis of the Book of Mormon already on February 7th, 1831, two days before Joseph Smith Jr received the first part of his revelation on the Law of Consecration (D&C 42). And Rigdon only converted in November of 1830. That's a three month turn-around time!

One thing that this implies is that Campbell in the Delusions, when speaking of common stock [via the Munster incident, RCK] (p.6), cannot criticize the Smith version of the common stock system of D&C 42---similarly to how his father, in his exchange with Rigdon, cannot have (Hayden 1875, p.217) [= (Howe 1834, pp.116-123), since that dates from February 4th, 1831, cannot have meant the Smith version (Howe 1834, p.121)---but must be targeting the Rigdon version that Campbell had only heard about at the Austintown Mahoning Society Meeting that summer (Hayden 1875, p.299).

Mormon Postmodernism

One of the oddest creatures is the Mormon post-modernist, the staunch defender of the most large scale narrative in Western history attacking the sceptics with the tools of anti-large scale narrative and epistemic investigations.

Alan Goff may be the most famous one: After writing his thesis at BYU on this issue, he continued to publish articles on this issue, up until the present. A favorite target of his is Dan Vogel and his interpretations of the way the Book of Mormon came about.

• 2005 review of Dan Vogel's Making of a Prophet
• 2014 article on The Inevitability of Epistemology in Historiography (which attacks Dan Vogel again, for many pages, and needs trimming)

Modern Counters to Bruce Malina

As was recently pointed out to me, even the updated version (3rd edition from 2002) of Bruce Malina's work has its issues and counter-arguments. Specifically, U. Bockmuehl of Cambrdige wrote in a review (in 2002):

Nonetheless, after more than two decades of remarkable popularity, the book's re-release does invite a number of critical reflections. First, for a third edition this book remains surprisingly unpolished in some respects. Typos old and new continue; so does a prose style that borders at times on the trite and repetitive -- even when allowing for undergraduate attention spans. There still is no comprehensive bibliography and no index of modern authors, so that specific references remain difficult to find. Although updated, the chapter bibliographies still suggest inadequate interaction with anthropological approaches critical of the author's own. While this may be understandable in a pioneering work that first brought the insights of cultural anthropology to the table of New Testament studies, in a third edition one might like to see a more nuanced picture. A good deal of recent classical scholarship on honour and shame, some of it rather critical of J.G. Peristiany's and J. Pitt-Rivers' old view that these 'pivotal values' governed every social transaction in the 'Mediterranean' world, is simply not cited here (e.g. B. Williams, Shame and Necessity (1993); D.L. Cairns, Aidos (1993); M. Herzfeld and M.A. Marcus in D.D. Gilmmore (ed.), Honor and Shame (1987)). It is instructive to look up the recent edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary under the relevant headings. 

As a result, astounding generalizations proliferate, seemingly unsupported by evidence and reminiscent of grand anthropological theories of a bygone day, when Polynesian cargo cults could be thought to shed the same inexhaustible light on the social realities of Steeple Bumpstead as of ancient Xanadu. We hear about what is characteristically, and it appears timelessly, 'Mediterranean' behaviour. But for every valid or at least plausible insight one stumbles over others burdened with rather too many unmentioned exceptions, be they ancient or modern or both. All the while, the cultural stereotypes merrily accumulate to an extent that would be unthinkable if the object were contemporary 'African' or 'native American' people groups. The Index of Ancient Authors is remarkably underpopulated for a book of such tall claims; and readers who, like the present author, come to the study of the New Testament from that of the classical world may well scratch their heads to find all ancient (and modern?) inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin thrown into the one cultural melting pot, as if Parthians, Carthaginians and Iberians all subscribed to exactly the same social dynamics and assumptions. A reader of Tacitus or Juvenal would find that Romans easily recognized major anthropological differences between themselves, the Greeks and the diverse barbarians and Scythians who inhabited the wider orbit of mare nostrum. What is more, they had a particular revulsion for Oriental cultures and customs -- especially Jewish ones. 

And it is Jews, after all, whose role in the 'New Testament world' arguably matters more than most. Both in their own eyes and in those of their pagan critics, they were culturally unique. Little of that distinctness, however, comes into the fore in this book. Malina refers to ancient Jews and their literature in curiously arm-waving and unspecific terms ('Semites', 'Semitic subculture', 'Ben Zakaiists', 'late Israelites'), citing the Mishnah only twice and the Dead Sea Scrolls not at all, and virtually ignoring the first-century role of the Pharisees, who (rather than the priests) were in Josephus's view the real 'bearers of the Great Tradition'. A good many of Malina's cultural generalizations are plainly untrue for the followers of Jesus and for some or indeed most other religious Jews. For example, individual decision rather than family ties did matter for Jesus and at Qumran; Jews did not believe that 'stars were living beings, intelligent and powerful'; they did not wear tassels on their garments primarily to ward off the evil eye; at least the Dead Sea sect did prohibit marriage with nieces and cousins; 'Ben Zakaiists' (i.e. rabbis) did not develop 'a viable Israelite domestic religion... largely through interaction with post-Jesus groups' (i.e. Christians). And so forth. Exaggerated claims for a homogeneous and apparently timeless Mediterranean culture seriously compromise the anthropological and historical applicability of Malina's model to the highly specific and unusual context of religious first-century Palestinian Judaism. The contention that public honour and status mattered supremely to the elites of places like Corinth or Ephesus is at least plausible. The Palestinian Jewish 'New Testament world', however, was in fact a culture in which many, not least in the Jesus movement, prized humility more highly than secular conventions of honour, and saw social status and influence in a frame of reference that prioritised divine revelation and the judgment of the world to come.

Some of the criticism is not specific to Malina, but to his larger camp of co-researchers, the CONTEXT group that he belongs to. Zeba A. Crook of Carleton University, in her review of TODD D. STILL and DAVID G. HORRELL (eds.), After the First Urban Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later (London/New York: Clark, 2009), points out that the Horrell especially, in the introductory methodological essay, criticizes Malina's hard distinction: 

Arguing against Bruce Malina’s strongly articulated distinction (The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology [Atlanta: John Knox, 1981]), and taking his cue from two recent social-science works—one by a sociologist, Grace Davie (Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]), the other [p. 441] by an anthropologist, David E. Sutton (Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory [Oxford: Berg, 2001])—H. claims that the distinction between social description and social-scientific criticism is no longer sustainable and is not actually reflected in current work.

Crook disagrees with the assessment, but agrees that a revamping of Malina using newer literature is in order.

Internal Evidence Biblical Criticism

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, the early English Deists, Spinoza, and French criticism of the Bible are most useful for reconstructing the level of Biblical Criticism for the time of Joseph Smith Jr, because they all use internal evidence exclusively.

Once the different codices rise to the level of awareness and people begin to argue in terms of the languages used and in terms of the textual families, the situation becomes for the experts only and cannot be expected to find reflection in the theological discussions of Upstate New York. The professionalization and scientific status of the discipline eliminated the participation of the lay people.

David Friedrich Strauss cites Reimarus about how apologetic all of that Biblical analysis had been in the past (and this tack still covers a good range of what is presently happening, to my own mind, as it captures apologetics, e.g. Terry L. Givens).

Noch andere fangen wohl an, über ihren Glauben nachzudenken, und finden bald hier bald da einen Stein des Anstoßes; "aber ihre Untersuchung ist darum nicht aufrichtig, weil sie dabei nicht gleichgültig sind. Sie wünschen immer, daß ihr Endurtheil so ausfallen möchte, daß sie dasjenige, was sie bisher nach ihrem Katechismus geglaubt haben, wahr und gegründet finden könnten." Dies ist besonders bei den Gelehrten der Fall, …. (Strauss, Reimarus, p.48f)

Others clearly start to ponder their faith, and find one or another issue; "but their investigation is not honest, because they are interested in the outcome. They always wish to achieve a final judgement such that they can discover that which they have so far believed according to their Catechism, as true and founded." This is especially the case with scholars .... 

Apologists are often frustrated by this asymmetry, but it is to be expected; the claims raised by a book purporting to be a revelation are extraordinary, and thus the majority of these claims should be assumed to be false. Thus, the healthy skepticism of the dispassionate is not only the stance to be expected, but in some sense the correct stance. And that stance can not be short-circuited by appealing to the religious intuition (cf. Moroni 10:3-5).

What Strauss thinks Reimarus read of the English Deists

In his description of the inspirations of Hermann Samuel Reimarus, David Friedrich Strauss mentions not only the obvious cases, such as Spinoza's Theological Political Tractatus (esp on prophecy), or Pierre Bayle's Historical Dictionary in the 1st edition, esp. on Abraham (cf. the entries on Sara and Abimelech) and King David, but a whole raft of English Deists---Strauss is clear (p.40) that the Deists were more like popular writers and journalists than scientists---to wit:

• Anthony Collins (1676-1729)
• A Discourse of Free Thinking (1713)
• A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of Christian Religion (1724)
• Thomas Morgan (????-1743)
• The Moral Philosopher: A Dialogue between Philaletes, a Christian Deist, and Theophanes, a Christian Jew, 3 volumes.
• Volume 1 (ed 1737), (2nd ed 1738) 
• Volume 2 (ed 1739), alternate
• Volume 3 (ed 1740), alternate
• Mathew Tindal (1653?-1733)
• Christianity as old as the Creation (ed 1730) (2nd ed 1732)
• John Toland (1670-1722)
• Christianity not Mysterious (1702) [Strauss p.41 claims the first edition was 1696]
• Tetradymus (1720)
• Thomas Woolston (????-1727)
• The Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate (3rd ed 1729)
• Supplement: Dissertation on Daniel's Weeks (2nd ed 1729)
• Supplement: Dissertation on Prophecies cited by the Bishop of Litchfield (ed 1731)
• Discourses on the Miracles of our Savior (2nd ed 1727)

The laundry list like enumeration hides some of the dependency in these writings. For example, the 2nd volume of Morgan's Moral Philosopher was a response to John Leland's The Divine Authority of the Old and New Testament Asserted, published in London (2nd ed 1739; 4th enlarged edition of 1739 in 5 vols: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, volume 5), which in turn was a response to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation.

This presentation also hides the temporal information, which will require a separate pass to sort out.

Of course Reimarus had read more than that: Charles Blount and Shaftsbury are mentioned as well (p.42f). Blount's supposed commentary on Apollonius of Tyana of 1680 was rapidly suppressed, with the effect that few English copies are now extant. However, the French translation (by Marc Michel Rey & Jean-Louis Castilhon) and re-issue in 1779 in Amsterdam in four volumes (volume 1, volume 2, volume 4) made the notes available more widely.

Fragments of Reimarus (Part II)

(continued from Fragments of Reimarus---Part 1)

Chapter V---Worldly Ambitions of the Apostles

• For Reimarus, the Apostles (p.85) where in it to become judges over Israel in the new Kingdom of Heaven. When the death of Jesus dashed those hopes, the doctrine (p.86) but not their motivations, underwent a change, Reimarus contends. After Easter, the apostles had nothing to look forward to (p.89), having lost their job infrastructure---boats, nets, etc.---and disgraced themselves as well. But preaching provided both sustenance, as their own travels and the wealthy women following Jesus had shown (p.90f), as well as glory, as the crowds had shown (p.91). Commonweal and alms (p.93) were tools to power, honor, and glory. Partially this worked because the other followers (p.94) did not want to be dupes either.
• [RCK: While Reimarus thinks that the apostles disposed of the body (p.95), the editor of the volume, Volsey, believes that Jesus was resuscitated by Joseph of Amarithea, and then fled into Galilee in the dress of the gardener, and that the disciples and Jesus were preparing for a return to glory.]
• Reimarus thinks the 50 days before Pentecost were the amount of time needed to make the body decay enough (p.96). Resurrection was generally accepted, esp by the Pharisees, and the number of eleven witnesses was sufficient to pass the threshold of three (p.97; p.102). Paul especially rode the pro-resurrection stance successfully (pp.97f; p.104), combining it with the batkol, the heavenly voice, which the Jews also expected and accepted (p.98). Reimarus notes how the Kingdom of Heaven was conceptualized as an earthly thing that would last a thousand years (p.100), a stock company in which everyone wanted to buy a small share by contributing to the common pot. The result was a state within the state (p.106). Reimarus retells the story of Ananias and Sapphira under the view point that Peter noticed that money was missing and brought about the death sentence (p.107) for the two. Reimarus wonders why there was no inquest when two wealthy members of the community die and are buried without their heirs receiving any of the money (p.108). In recounting the Pentecostal event, Reimarus wonders why God had not chosen a more suitable spot for the resurrection (p.110), rather then among the apostles, e.g. the synhedrion or similar. 
• Reimarus points out the complications in the Pentecostal story, such as the small room (p.115f), to the fact that the population of visitors to Jerusalem would have equalled the number of converts (p.117). Rather, Reimarus sees the shared wealth of the early community (p.119) as the source of the large number of members joining (Acts 4, 34f). 

Fragments of Reimarus (Part I)

It is sort of amusing that I end up using an English translation of the Fragments, but it is convenient for works written in English. The work itself also makes use of David Friedrich Strauss' biography of Reimarus, Hermann Samuel Reimarus und seine Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, Leipzig (Brockhaus) 1862, for some pithy quotes of Reimarus' that argue that nonsense cannot be made into sense by adding God to the equation.

• Of concern is the worldly interpretation of the Jews and the disciples for the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus preached, leading Reimarus to suspect that Jesus knew their interpretation and did not dissuade them, and thus supported it (p.10-12), wanting to make a grand entrance into Jerusalem at Passover (p.18).
• Reimarus also worries that John the Baptist and Jesus, being cousins, were playing into each others hands purposefully in the Baptism scene to amplify their respective importance, including faking a batcol, a voice from Heaven (p.13-18).  
• Reimarus sees preparation for the grand Passover Entrance into Jerusalem in the secrecy of the miracles (p.19). With the preaching of John Jesus openly covets the position of Messiah (p.20) and calls himself that to the Samarian woman, the Synhedrion and Pilate (p.20). 
• When Jesus is ready, he borrows ass with foal and marches into Jerusalem, to fulfill the prophecy (p.21). In this scenario, his cleansing of the temple (p.22) and the attacks on the High Priests and Scribes (p.23) become moves in Jesus' assumption of power. 
• The fact that no big or famous person joined his movement, that miracles were not performed uniformly, all over Israel, and not upon the challenge of the High Priests and Scribes, leads Reimarus to believe that the miracles were not much to begin with (p.25). 
• When the influential people realized that he was yet another pretender to the Messiah title and no support materialized (p.26), Jesus was apprehended (with Judas' support) and executed before the Passover slaughtering of the lambs, frustrated in his attempt to setup the worldly Kingdom of Heaven (p.27).
• Reimarus notes that the transformation of the worldy Messiah into the heavenly obtainer of forgiveness for mankind hinges critically on the resurrection (p.30). Reimarus reconstruct the winding speeches [in Acts, Reimarus works uniformly with the entirety of the NT, RCK] of Stephanus (p.33f) and Paul (p.33-39). Reimarus points out the paucity of the Ps 2 scriptural proof that Paul's Acts marshals (p.39), that they do not overcome the straightfoward explanation that Ps 2 is talking about David rather than Jesus, and that the justification is circular and a petitio principii to boot.
• Reimarus has a similar problem with the prophetic interpretations of Mathews (p.45), which do not seem to match the OT that we have now or bend the words badly. Reimarus notes esp. (p.46) that Jonas spending three days and three nights inside the whale's belly squares up badly with Jesus being dead for one day and two nights (p.46) [though Reimarus seems to be unaware of how the Jewish calendar counts days]. In short, the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is to contradictory to carry such a heavy load of proof (p.47).
• Reimarus (p.48) now turns to the problem of the doctrine of the return of Jesus. Reimarus notes that the two-fold coming of the Messiah, once in poverty, once in glory, is accepted as valid by Tryphon in Justin Martyr's Dialogue, and also mentioned in the Talmud and other Rabbinic literature (p.48). Reimarus blames the allegorical interpretations of contradictory passages for the plurality of Messiahs expected (p.49). The Jews also expected the resurrection of all dead [emphasis RCK] after the coming of the Messiah in glory (p.50). 
• As would be expected, the delay of the parousia becomes topical now (p.51). Thus the promise that the Jews would witness the return before the "present generation" had passed away (p.52) in Mathews. And similarly that some would not taste death before the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven (p.54) [Mark 9:1, = Lk 9:27, = Mt 16:28]. But Jesus failed to return (p.54) and there is no alternate interpretation, e.g. sense extension to all Jews or similar (p.55) to make the prediction true. Furthermore, the assumption is pervasive, found in the epistles---Reimarus mentions Paul's 1 Thess (p.60) or to the Corinthians (p.61) [1 Cor 15:52]. But Paul had to deal with the parousia delay in 2 Thess (p.62) and Peter in 2 Peter (pp.63f), and Reimarus thinks the arguments in 2 Peter are better than in 2 Thess [which of course stems from the even longer delay of the parousia, RCK]. 
• And Reimarus is proud of himself (pp.67f) for tackling the real issues of Christianity, the resurrection and the return, and not dwaddling with side issues.

Section 3: Miracles and Prophecies

• Reimarus is opposed to the notion that miracles can either make faith certain or detract from it (p.69); they cannot confirm, because they are improbably events that require their own confirmation and make no semantic contribution to the argument (p.70).
• Miracle writers are unconcerned about the side-parts of the details; Pharao's cattle is killed thrice over (p.71); the Israelites take all cattle of Pharao with them yet are hungry in the desert, requiring another miracle (p.71); the bottom of the Red Sea must have been impassable with corals and mud and sand to the Israelites with all their elderly, sick, furniture and animals (p.71). There is also no logic to the possibilities of that writer: "He blows and shouts down the strongest walls, although he cannot shout away the aggravating iron chariots any more than he can bid them stop." (p.71) Even the contemporaries did not believe them (p.72). 
• Though the miracles of the NT are less outrageous, concerning healing and the like, they are equally ensnared in contradictions (p.72), as Jesus could never work miracles upon demand by higher authority or where they did not believe in him (p.73). The authoring of the texts happened long after the witnesses were dead (p.73). But all religions exhibit miracles, so they do not form a differentia specifica of Christianity (p.74). As affirmations of faith, miracles are useless: one cannot deduce the trinity from the healing of a blind man (p.75); one cannot heal contradictions (p.76): "Contradiction is a devil and father of lies, who refuses to be driven out either by fasting and prayer, or by miracles." (p.76)
• The prophecies suffer from an equivalent problem (p.76). Clear prophecies, such as those in the NT describing the reign of the Messiah, never came to pass (p.77); all others require allegorical and non-standard interpretations to apply (e.g. Jonah). Indeed, as the life of Jesus showed, Reimarus argues, the applications of prophecies are always post-facto (p.80). 

(continued in Fragments of Reimarus---Part II)

Imperfect Books

The fundamental crux of the matter for a divinely inspired work, no matter along which dimension the analysis proceeds, has always been that any mistake makes the Divine look human. Thus, any grammatical, narrative, historical, scientific or aesthetic insufficiency undermines the very claim the work is trying to make.

The argument for the divine authorship of the Book of Mormon is constructed as an analogous argument, albeit with claim to superiority: The BoM is divinely inspired in the same way that the Hebrew Bible and the Greek NT are, but with the added twist that the translation of that book is also divinely inspired, and thus a more correct translation than say the KJV would be for the Christian Bible.

In the context of the literary criticism of the BoM since the 19th century---Lamb's The Golden Bible, B. Roberts Studies on the BoM, and Wunderli's Imperfect Book, to name just a few---this analogous argument is rejected on the basis that the literary, narrative, scientific and aesthetic qualities of the BoM are nowhere near where they need to be to support that argument of analogy.

In the same vein, some of the apologetic support of the BoM since the 19th century---Pratt's work on prophecy and fulfillment, Nibley cross-cultural studies and Welch's work on Chiasmus structures---has tried to counter that criticism, mostly along the lines that there is literary quality to the BoM in agreement with the literary quality of the ancient sources that the BoM purports to have as siblings, temporally and contextually.

The key way in which the analogy argument goes awry, however---and only Wunderli hints in that general direction when discussing Deutero-Isaiah and similar, without drawing the necessary consequences ---is that the source in this analogy is problematic as well. The Christian Bible can neither be conceptualized as divinely authored in the way that the BoM attempts to mirror, nor has it been held continuously as an especially impressive literary achievement.

Since these two observations have separate histories and implications, it behoves one well to consider them separately. Yet, it is important to understand though that these concerns were together problematic for apologists of the Bible, i.e. for Christian apologetics the lack of consistency in some parts of the Bible was no less embarrassing than the lack of literary quality.

As far as the literary style of the New Testament and the early Patristic literature was concerned, there had been a literary movement, called Atticism, which had established a renaissance of the Attic orators of the 5th century. In terms of these literary movements, most of the New Testament was decidedly Koine in language and style:

Mit der griechischen Kunstsprache, die seinerzeit als attische Prosasprache in der Literatur und Rhetorik erneuert wurde, hat die Sprache des NT wenig zu tun. (Koester, Einleitung, p.110)

The language of the NT has little in common with the Greek artistic language,  which had recently had a renaissance as the Attic language of prose in literature and rhetoric.

There are some hints of attic education in the NT: The author of Hebrews had some schooling (p.110); the author of 2 Peter attempts to write in the high style (p.110f). Luke is capable of the elevated koine style, cleans up his sources with respect to foreign terminology, looks to literary exemplars and employs even the optative mood, a form not part of the Koine, when useful (p.111). The pastoral letters, including the non-canonical 1 Clement, exhibit many literary expressions of style. By the middle of the 2nd century, when the attic influence is beginning to be felt in the literary Koine style, Justin Martyr and Athenagoras employ it without difficulties. Around 200, the Diognet Letter, a Christian apologetic writing, exhibits a high degree of literary style; and with Clement of Alexandria, the mastery of the Attic style is so high that he can subvert the rules at will (p.111).

With Luke and Hebrews accounted for, the remaining writings of the New Testament are mostly solid Koine in style. Paul seems to have had some education in the cynic-stoic tradition:

Dieses Können verdankt Paulus einer gewissen rhetorischen Bildung und einer Ausbildung im Diskussionsstil der kynisch-stoischen Diatribe und im Predigtstil der hellenistischen Synagoge. (p.112)

Paul possesses this [literary, RCK] ability because of some rhetorical education, and schooling in the style of the discussion of the cycnic-stoic diatribe, and in the style of sermon of the hellenistic synagogue. 

The least sophisticated texts of the NT and the patriarchic period are Mark, Revelations, the Pastor of Hermas, and the Diadache (p.112). Helmut Köster notes:

Im Markusevangelium sind die Kennzeichen der Vulgär-Koine in der Tat so kraß, daß die Kirche damit nicht vor einer mittleren bürgerlichen Bildung bestehen konnte, .... (p.112)

In the Gospel of Mark, the signs of vulgar Koine are so bad that the Church could not have survived vis-a-vis a mid-level civil service education, .... [RCK: Note that Köster's notion of "bürgerlich" cannot mean bourgeois, which is a concept that did not exist in Antiquity.]

Thus not only Luke, but Matthew as well were called upon to turn some of the constructions into Greek anyone educated would have recognized (p.113). John's limited repertoire of literary devices is part of the shared Koine, e.g. similar to Epictetus, and is applied consistently and repetitively.

Another problematic aspect of the NT texts, as viewed from the high Koine or Atticism, are constructions that show the proximity to the Semitic languages. Koester distinguishes between Hebraisms, Aramaisms, Biblizisms, and the bi-lingual heritage of some of the authors (p.114-115); of course the import of non-Greek vocabulary or turns of phrase would have been problematic in the Attic style.

As far as the criticism of the Bible is concerned, already in the 2nd century AD learned and literary people exposed inconsistencies---some perceived, some de facto---in the plurality of narratives in the New and the Old Testament. Famously, Justin Martyr's Discourse with the Jew Tryphon challenges the virgin birth.

And the Apocriticus of Macarius, believed to be written against Porphyr of Tyre, not only reports that the opponents challenged the divergences in the Passion narrative (Book II, Chapter XII), but in Book III, Question III challenges the notion that Moses had prophesied the coming of the Messiah (adversos John 5, 46f), based on the insight that Ezra had redacted the Old Testament:

Again the following saying appears to be full of stupidity : "If ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote concerning me." He said it, but all the same nothing which Moses wrote has been preserved. For all his writings are said to have been burnt along with the temple. All that bears the name of Moses was written 1180 years afterwards, by Ezra and those of his time. And even if one were to concede that the writing is that of Moses, it cannot be shown that Christ was anywhere called God, or God the Word, or Creator. And pray who has spoken of Christ as crucified?

Macarius' opponents also point out the delay in the return of the "latter times" (Book IV, Chapter II) in Paul's apocalypse in 1 Thess and in St Mathews expectation in Mt 24,14 that the Gospel preached everywhere would bring the end of the world (Book IV, Chapter III).

Porphyr raised the hackles of Jerome in his commentary on Daniel with the assertion that it was a Hellenistic book which had no prophecies except the then-existing history of Hellenistic Asia (Jerome had himself argued that Daniel had non-Hebrew interpolations).

Porphyry wrote his twelfth book against the prophecy of Daniel, (A) denying that it was composed by the person to whom it is ascribed in its title, but rather by some individual living in Judaea at the time of the Antiochus who was surnamed Epiphanes. He furthermore alleged that "Daniel" did not foretell the future so much as he related the past, and lastly that whatever he spoke of up till the time of Antiochus contained authentic history, whereas anything he may have conjectured beyond that point was false, inasmuch as he would not have foreknown the future.

...

But among other things we should recognize that Porphyry makes this objection to us concerning the Book of Daniel, that it is clearly a forgery not to be considered as belonging to the Hebrew Scriptures but an invention composed in Greek. This he deduces from the fact that in the story of Susanna, where Daniel is speaking to the elders, we find the expressions, "To split from the mastic tree" (apo tou skhinou skhisai) and to saw from the evergreen oak (kai apo tou prinou prisai), (D) a wordplay appropriate to Greek rather than to Hebrew. 

(Jerome, Prologue)

Porphyr also annoyed St. Augustine (see Letter to Deogratia, Question VI) by pointing out that the story of Jonas and the Whale provides no clear clues on where the allegory starts or ends.

Thus, a study of the apologetic literature of the 2nd-4th century clearly shows that many of the then working Neo-Platonic philosophers and Pagans recognized problems in the Biblical Text that the Church Fathers not only felt compelled to respond to in their writings, but that express concerns modern scholarship shares.

Though the competition for the ear of the emperors did not fully end by the 5th century, even after Constantin and Theodosius, as the History of Zosimus indicates, with the collapse of the Western Empire and the reduction of the Eastern Empire after the onslaught of the Persians and Islam, the time for these kinds of discussions seems to have been over, basically. By the 8th century, when the re-Christianization of the West takes place, the internal ecclesiastical concerns have taken precedence over discussions of the literary style or the internal consistency of the Holy Writings.

I can only assume that it was the religious wars of the 17th century, both in England and on the Continent, that made it interesting to bring about a detailed analysis of the Biblical book as to wrest it from the control of any political party. Thus, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch d'Espinosa and Richard Simon questioned the Old Testament's inspirational status, and Reimarus the status of the New Testament. However, these processes moved slowly, and were often checked by the political difficulties of taking the positions these authors took. For example, Holbach's Ecce Homo, sometimes considered to be the first historical Jesus book, was not available in New York, in the translation of George Houston, until 1827. Thus, this may have been more of a European phenomenon than one might realize. Even in 1879, when Rev Volsey published the translation of Lessing's Fragmente eines Wolfenbüttelschen Ungenannten in New York, he noted:

The name of Reimarus is scarcely known in this country beyond a very select circle of English students, while his writings, so far as I know, have never been popularly known, nor frequently quoted by English commentators. The reason for this will perhaps become apparent to any one who will take the trouble, or give himself the pleasure, of reading this book. Reimarus is too thorough, too uncompromising, too faithful to his task, to suit the present attitude of mind and heart towards the central figure of the orthodox religion. (p.iii)

The Fragment-War had only played out in the 1780s, but then the Americans were busy with their War of Independence from the British Empire.

That the Pentateuch was a confused mess, often in the most important parts, such as the giving of the Law, seems to have occurred to the young Goethe already in the late 1770s, when he tried to get a dissertation on the Mosaic tables of law accepted in Strasbourg (cf. Levinson's essay). Goethe recycled those arguments as a young man in his anonymous publication "Zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte biblische Fragen: zum erstenmal gründlich beantwortet, von einem Landgeistlichen in Schwaben" (see the discussion in Thomas Tillmann's book).

David Friedrich Strauss' 1835 on the historic Jesus, Das Leben Jesu, was not yet that critical of the style; it was his later works, possible the Alter und Neuer Glauben, which complained about the village feeling that the Gospel inspired.

When John Kselmann reviewed John Welch's essay collection Chiasmus in Antiquity, Hildesmheim, 1981, his excitement for a literary-aesthetic approach to the OT, NT and BoM should not be misunderstood as a rejection of source criticism:

While not ignoring or rejecting the continued importance of the historical-critical method, more and more scholars are turning their attention to the literary qualities of the Old and New Testament.

With the rejection of "the style" after the World Wars, literary qualities are now identified in a descriptive fashion rather than in a normative way. The strongest statement remaining is that not all books of the BoM or the Bible have an equal number of identifiable cases (normalized by length).

It is thus ironic that the Bible and the BoM share something that is not in focus, namely that they are both largely written by members of backwater communities of their respective eras, and will not compare well with either the narrative, scientific or literary achievements of the larger world at those times or thereafter. The Bible may be the less "imperfect book" (to take Wunderli's title) of the two, but it is far from a perfect book itself.