Pen'tateuch the collective title commonly given to the first five books of the O.T. In the present article we treat this important section of Scripture as a whole, in the light of modern criticism and discussion, reserving its component books for their separate heads. See Moses.
I. The Name. — The above is the Greek name given to the books commonly called the Five Books of Moses (ἡ πεντάτευχος sc. βιβλος; Pentateuchus sc. liber; the fivefold book; from τοῦχος, which, meaning originally "vessel, instrument," etc., came in Alexandrine Greek to mean "book"). In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah it was called "the Law of Moses" (Ezr 7:6); or "the book of the Law of Moses" (Ne 8:1); or simply "the book of Moses" (Ezr 6:18; Ne 13:1; 2Ch 25:4; 2Ch 35:12). This was beyond all reasonable doubt our existing Pentateuch. The book which was discovered in the Temple in the reign of Josiah, and which is entitled (2Ch 34:14) the book of the Law of Jehovah by the hand of Moses," was substantially, it would seem, the same volume. In 2Ch 34:30 it is styled "the book of the Covenant," and so also in 2Ki 23:2,21, while in 2Ki 22:8 Hilkiah says, I have found "the book of the Law." Still earlier, in the reign of Jehoshaphat, we find a "book of the Law of Jehovah" in use (2Ch 17:9). This was probably the earliest designation, for a "book of the Law" is mentioned in Deuteronomy (31:26), though it is questionable whether the name as there used refers to the whole Pentateuch or only to Deuteronomy. The modern Jews usually call the whole by the name of Torah (תּוֹרָה), i.e. "the Law," or Torath Mosheh (תּוֹרִת משֶׁה), "the Law of Moses." The rabbinical title is חֲמַשָּׁה חוּמשֵׁי הִתּוֹרָה the five fifths of the Law." In the preface to the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, it is called "the Law," which is also a usual name for it in the New Testament (Mt 12:5; Mt 22:36,40; Lu 10:26; Joh 8:5,17). Sometimes the name of Moses stands briefly for the whole work ascribed to him (Lu 24:27). Finally, the whole Old Testament is sometimes called a potiori parte, "the Law" (Mt 5:18; Lu 16:17; Joh 7:49; Joh 10:34; Joh 12:34). In Joh 15:25; Ro 3:19, words from the Psalms, and in 1Co 14:21, from Isaiah, are quoted as words of the Law. SEE LAW.
II. Present Form. — The division of the whole work into five parts has by some writers been supposed to be original. Others (as Leusden, Havernick, and Lengerke), with more probability, think that the division was made by the Greek translators. For the titles of the several books are not of Hebrew, but of Greek origin. The Hebrew names are merely taken from the first words of each book, and in the first instance only designated particular sections and not whole books. The MSS. of the Pentateuch form a single roll or volume, and are divided not into books, but into the larger and smaller sections called Parshiyoth and Sedarim. Besides this, the Jews distribute all the laws in the Pentateuch under the two heads of affirmative and negative precepts. Of the former they reckon 248; because, according to the anatomy of the rabbins, so many are the parts of the human body; of the latter they make 365, which is the number of days in the year, and also the number of veins in the human body. Accordingly the Jews are bound to the observance of 613 precepts; and in order that these precepts may be perpetually kept in mind, they are wont to carry a piece of cloth foursquare, at the four corners of which they have fringes consisting of eight threads apiece, fastened in five knots. These fringes are called צַיצית, a word which in numbers denotes 600: add to this the eight threads and the five knots, and we get the 613 precepts. The five knots denote the five books of Moses. (See Bab. Talmud. Maccoth, sect. 3; Maimon. Pref. to Jad Hachazakah; Leusden, Philol. p. 33.) Both Philo (de Abraham. ad init.) and Josephus (c. Apion. 1:8) recognize the division now current. Vaihinger supposes that the symbolical meaning of the number five led to its adoption; for ten is the symbol of completion or perfection, as we see in the ten commandments (and so in Genesis we have ten "n generations"), and therefore five is a number which, as it were, confesses imperfection and prophesies completion. The Law is not perfect without the Prophets, for the Prophets are in a special sense the bearers of the Promise; and it is the Promise which completes the Law. This is questionable. There can be no doubt, however, that this division of the Pentateuch influenced the arrangement of the Psalter in five books. The same may be said of the five Megilloth of the Hagiographa (Canticles, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), which in many Hebrew Bibles are placed immediately after the Pentateuch. In some Jewish writers, however, there are found statements indicating that the Pentateuch was formerly divided into seven portions (comp. Jarchi, ad Proverb. 9: 1; ibique Breithaupt). In the Jewish canon the Pentateuch is kept somewhat distinct from the other sacred books of the Old Testament, because, considered with reference to its contents, it is the book of books of the ancient covenant. It is the basis of the religion of the Old Testament, and of the whole theocratical life. SEE OLD TESTAMENT.
For the several names and contents of the five books we refer to the articles on each book, where questions affecting their integrity and genuineness separately are also discussed.
III. Unity of the Pentateuch. —
1. This is evinced in its general scope and contents. With a view to this point, we need only briefly observe here that this work, beginning with the record of creation and the history of the primitive world, passes on to deal more especially with the early history of the Jewish family. It gives at length the personal history of the three great fathers of the family; it then describes how the family grew into a nation in Egypt, tells us of its oppression and deliverance, of its forty years' wandering in the wilderness, of the giving of the law, with all its enactments both civil and religious, of the construction of the tabernacle, of the numbering of the people, of the rights and duties of the priesthood, as well as of many important events which befell them before their entrance into the Land of Canaan, and finally concludes with Moses's last discourses and his death. The unity of the work in its existing form is now generally recognised. It is not a mere collection of loose fragments carelessly put together at different times, but bears evident traces of design and purpose in its composition. Even those who discover different authors in the earlier books, and who deny that Deuteronomy was written by Moses, are still of opinion that the work in its present form is a connected whole, and was at least reduced to its present shape by a single reviser or editor (see Ewald, Geschichte, 1:170; Stfahelin, Kritische Unters. p. 1).
The question has also been raised whether the book of Joshua does not, properly speaking, constitute an integral portion of this work. To this question Ewald (Geschichte, 1:175), Knobel (Genesis, Vorbem. § 1, 2), Lengerke (Kenaan, 83), and Stahelin (Kritische Unlters. p. 91) give a reply in the affirmative. They seem to have been led to do so, partly because they imagine that the two documents, the Elohistic and the Jehovistic, which characterize the earlier books of the Pentateuch, may still be traced, like two streams, the waters of which never wholly mingle though they flow in the same channel, running on through the book of Joshua; and partly because the same work which contains the promise of the land (Genesis 15) must contain also — so they argue — the fulfillment of the promise. But such grounds are far too arbitrary and uncertain to support the hypothesis which rests upon them. All that seems probable is that the book of Joshua received a final revision at the hands of Ezra, or some earlier prophet, at the same time with the books of the law. The fact that the Samaritans, who it is well known did not possess the other books of Scripture, have besides the Pentateuch a book of Joshua (see Chronicon Samaritanum, etc., ed. Juynboll, Lugd. Bat. 1848), indicates no doubt an early association of the one with the other, but is no proof that they originally constituted one work, but rather the contrary. Otherwise the Samaritans would naturally have adopted the canonical recension of Joshua. We may therefore regard the five books of Moses as one separate and complete work.
2. More particularly, the order which pervades the book manifests its unity, although this is not, indeed, tediously formal or monotonous.
(1.) Chiefly its chronological order, the simplest of all, and such as might be expected to be predominant in a book which is in a large measure historical. This characteristic is obvious in respect to the position of the two books of Genesis and Deuteronomy at the beginning and the end; the former serving as an introduction, and the latter as a recapitulation. In like manner the story of the family of Abraham expands, when we come to Exodus, into that of the people of Israel: first, enslaved Israel attains to redemption, and next redeemed Israel is consecrated to the service of its Lord, who meets his people, delivers his law of life to them, and instructs them to set up his tabernacle in the midst of them. The book of Leviticus contains scarcely any history, and is occupied with the rules for the service of God in this tabernacle: it is the code for the spiritual life of Israel as the congregation of the Lord code published almost at once, and in a form substantially complete. The fourth book, that of Numbers, resumes the thread of the history, and conducts the redeemed and consecrated and organized host from Mount Sinai through the wilderness to the Land of Promise; including further legislation, of which they stood in need if they were to take a suitable place among the kingdoms of the world.
(2.) Yet obviously this book is not a dry series of annals, in which the chronological order is alone observable; still less is it the mere leaves of a journal in which the narrative of the three middle books was written down at the dates of the several occurrences, and left unchanged in all time coming. Whatever may have been written down in the form of a journal at the first (of which we have possibly an instance in Numbers 33), would be revised, extended, abbreviated, and rearranged by the author, ere it came from his hands a finished history. Therefore we find a systematic order, according to the internal or logical connection of the parts, even in the purely narrative portions. Thus Genesis 38 furnishes the account of transactions in the family of Judah which cannot but have stretched over a long course of time, of years apparently, including the greater part of the time that Joseph was alone in Egypt, and which very probably extended back to a date considerably earlier than that at which his captivity began: the entire series of events, however, being recorded in this one chapter, with a twofold advantage — that of being itself more distinctly set before us, and that of not interrupting the thread of Joseph's history in Egypt. Sometimes indeed we may be unable to determine whether the order in which events are narrated is the order of time or that of logical sequence; an uncertainty which meets us in other portions of sacred history, as well as outside of the Bible. But it is not surprising that this logical order predominates in the legislation; though even here the chronological order is by no means uncommon, because the laws sprang, to a considerable extent, out of the circumstances in which the people were placed from time to time. This peculiarity has given rise to repetitions, enlargements, rearrangements, and even in a limited degree to modifications, of earlier enactments, of which we have an instructive example in the varied order in which the parts of the tabernacle and its furniture are mentioned, first in the directions given to Moses in the mount, and, secondly, in the narrative of its actual construction.
(3.) A third principle of arrangement is the rhetorical, of which the instances are fewer. Indeed it is very much confined to Deuteronomy, in which Moses appears as the great prophet of Israel. It was a corollary from the plan of these discourses that Moses should present the topics in the form likeliest to tell upon the audience to whom he was giving a parting address; that he should group incidents and laws according to certain affinities or contrasts for the purpose of effect; that he should pass over some subjects in entire silence, should touch upon others lightly, and on another class still should enlarge at some length; and that he should often present them under peculiar aspects, in forms somewhat different from those in which we should have seen them if we had known them only from the earlier books. Yet such variety, subordinate in its amount, and existing for a special purpose, is in reality an additional proof of the unity of the Pentateuch, and of the comprehensiveness of the plan on which it has been written.
IV. Authority and Date of Composition. — This is preeminently the subject which calls for discussion here, as it has been largely disputed. The reply we give is the old and common one, namely, by Moses, during the wandering in the wilderness. We shall endeavor to state plainly and fairly the views and reasons both for and against it.
1. History of the Controversy. —
(1.) Adverse Writers. — At different times suspicions have been entertained that the Pentateuch as we now have it is not the Pentateuch of the earliest age, and that the work must have undergone various modifications and additions before it assumed its present shape.
So early as the 2d century we find the author of the Clementine Homilies calling in question the authenticity of the Mosaic writings. According to him the Law was only given orally by Moses to the seventy elders, and not consigned to writing till after his death; it subsequently underwent many changes, was corrupted more and more by means of the false prophets, and was especially filled with erroneous anthropomorphic conceptions of God, and unworthy representations of the characters of the patriarchs (Hom. 2:38, 43; 3:4, 47; Neander. Gnost. Systeme, p. 380). A statement of this kind, unsupported, and coming from a heretical, and therefore suspicious source, may seem of little moment; it is however remarkable, so far as it indicates an early tendency to cast off the received traditions respecting the books of Scripture; while at the same time it is evident that this was done cautiously, because such an opinion respecting the Pentateuch was said to be for the advanced Christian only, and not for the simple and unlearned.
Jerome, there can be little doubt, had seen some difficulty in supposing the Pentateuch to be altogether, in its present form, the work of Moses; for he observes (contra Helvid.): "Sive Mosen dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi sive Esram ejusdem instauratorem operis," with reference apparently to the Jewish tradition on the subject. Aben-Ezra († 1167), in his Comment. on De 1:1, threw out some doubts as to the Mosaic authorship of certain passages, such as Ge 12:6; De 3:10-11; De 31:9, which he either explained as later interpolations, or left as mysteries which it was beyond his power to unravel. But for centuries the Pentateuch was generally received in the Church without question as written by Moses. In the year 1651, however, we find Hobbes writing: "Videtur Pentateuchus potius de Mose quam a Mose scriptus" (Leviathan, c. 33). Spinoza (Tract. Theol.-Polit. c. 8, 9, published in 1679) set himself boldly to controvert the received authorship of the Pentateuch. He alleged against it (1) later names of places, as Ge 14:14 comp. with Jg 18:29; (2) the continuation of the history beyond the days of Moses, Ex 16:35 comp. with Jos 5:12; (3) the statement in Ge 36:31, "before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." Spinoza maintained that Moses issued his commands to the elders, that by them they were written down and communicated to the people, and that later they were collected and assigned to suitable passages in Moses's life. He considered that the Pentateuch was indebted to Ezra for the form in which it now appears. Other writers began to think that the book of Genesis was composed of written documents earlier than the time of Moses. So Vitringa (Observ. Sacr. 1:3), Le Clerc (De Script. Pentateuchi, § 11), and R. Simon (Hist. critique du V. T. lib. i, c. 7, Rotterdam, 1685). According to the last of these writers, Genesis was composed of earlier documents, the laws of the Pentateuch were the work of Moses, and the greater portion of the history was written by the public scribe who is mentioned in the book. Le Clerc supposed that the priest who, according to 2Ki 17:27, was sent to instruct the Samaritan colonists, was the author of the Pentateuch.
It was not till the middle of the last century, however, that the question as to the authorship of the Pentateuch was handled with anything like a bold criticism. The first attempt was made by a layman, whose studies we might have supposed would scarcely have led him to such an investigation. In the year 1753 there appeared at Brussels a work entitled Conjectures sur les memoires originaux, dont ii paroit que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le livre de Genese. It was written in his 69th year by Astruc, doctor and professor of medicine in the Royal College at Paris, and court physician to Louis XIV. His critical eye had observed that throughout the book of Genesis, and as far as the 6th chapter of Exodus, traces were to be found of two original documents, each characterized by a distinct use of the names of God; the one by the name Elohim, and the other by the name Jehovah. Besides these two principal documents, he supposed Moses to have made use of ten others in the composition of the earlier part of his work. Astruc was followed by several German writers on the path which he had traced; by Jerusalem, in his Letters on the Mosaic Writings and Philosophy; by Schultens, in his Dissertatio qua disquiritur, unde Moses res in libro Geneseos descriptas didicerit; and with considerable learning and critical acumen by Ilgen ( Urkunden des Jerusalemischen Tempelarchivs, 1er Theil, Halle, 1798) and Eichhorn (Einleitulng in d. A. T.).
But this "documentary hypothesis," as it is called, was too conservative and too rational for some critics. Vater, in his Commentar uber den Pentateuch (1815), and A. T. Hartmann. in his Linguist. Einl. in d. Stud. der Buicher des A. Test. (1818), maintained that the Pentateuch consisted merely of a number of fragments loosely strung together without order or design. The former supposed a collection of laws, made in the times of David and Solomon, to have been the foundation of the whole: that this was the book discovered in the reign of Josiah, and that its fragments were afterwards incorporated in Deuteronomy. All the rest, consisting of fragments of history and of laws written at different periods up to this time, were, according to him, collected and shaped into their present form between the times of Josiah and the Babylonian exile. Hartmann also brings down the date of the existing Pentateuch as late as the exile. This has been called the "fragmentary hypothesis." Both of these have now been superseded by the "supplementary hypothesis," which has been adopted with various modifications by De Wette, Bleek, Stahelin, Tuch, Lengerke, Hupfeld, Knobel, Bunsen, Kurtz, Delitzsch, Schultz, Vaihinger, and others.
They all alike recognize two documents in the Pentateuch. They suppose the narrative of the Elohlst, the more ancient writer, to have been the foundation of the work, and that the Jehovist, or later writer, making use of this document, added to and commented upon it, sometimes transcribing portions of it intact, and sometimes incorporating the substance of it into his own work.
Yet though thus agreeing in the main, they differ widely in the application of the theory. Thus, for instance, De Wette distinguishes between the Elohist and the Jehovist in the first four books, and attributes Deuteronomy to a different writer altogether (Einl. ins A. T. § 150 sq.). So also Lengerke, though with some differences of detail in the portions he assigns to the two editors. The last places the Elohist in the time of Solomon, and the Jehovistic editor in that of Hezekiah; whereas Tuch puts the first under Saul, and the second under Solomon. Stahelin, on the other hand, declares for the identity of the Deuteronomist and the Jehovist, and supposes the last to have written in the reign of Saul, and the Elohist in the time of the Judges. Hupfeld (Die Quellen der Genesis) finds, in Genesis at least, traces of three authors, an earlier and a later Elohist, as well as the Jehovist. He is peculiar in regarding the Jehovistic portion as an altogether original document, written in entire independence, and without the knowledge even of the Elohistic record. A later editor or compiler, he thinks, found the two books, and threw them into one. Vaihinger (in Herzog's Encyklopadie) is also of opinion that portions of three original documents are to be found in the first four books, to which he adds some fragments of the 32d and 34th chanters of Deuteronomy. The fifth book, according to him, is by a different and much later writer. The pre-Elohist he supposes to have flourished about 1200 B.C., the Elohist some 200 years later, the Jehovist in the first half of the 8th century B.C., and the Deuteronomist in the reign of Hezekiah.
Delitzsch agrees with the writers above mentioned in recognising two distinct documents as the basis of the Pentateuch, especially in its earlier portions; but he entirely severs himself from them in maintaining that Deuteronomy is the work of Moses. His theory is this: the kernel or first foundation of the Pentateuch is to be found in the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 19-24), which was written by Moses himself, and afterwards incorporated into the body of the Pentateuch, where it at present stands. The rest of the laws given in the wilderness, till the people reached the plains of Ioab, were communicated orally by Moses and taken down by the priests, whose business it was thus to provide for their preservation (De 17:11, comp. 24:8; 33:10; Le 10:11, comp. 15:31). Inasmuch as Deuteronomy does not pre-suppose the existence in writing of the entire earlier legislation, but on the contrary recapitulates it with the greatest freedom, we are not obliged to assume that the proper codification of the law took place during the forty years' wandering in the desert. This was done, however, shortly after the occupation of the land of Canaan. On that sacred soil was the first definite portion of the history of Israel written; and the writing of the history itself necessitated a full and complete account of the Mosaic legislation. A man, such as Eleazar the son of Aaron, the priest (see Nu 26:1; Nu 31:21), wrote the great work beginning with the first words of Genesis, including in it the Book of the Covenant, and perhaps gave only a short notice of the last discourses of Moses, because Moses had written them down with his own hand. A second — who may have been Joshua (see especially De 32:44; Jos 24:26; and comp. on the other hand 1Sa 10:25), who was a prophet, and spake as a prophet, or one of the elders on whom Moses's spirit rested (Nu 11:25), and many of whom survived Joshua (Jos 24:31) — completed the work, taking Deuteronomy, which Moses had written, for his model, and incorporating it into his own book. Somewhat in this manner arose the Torah (or Pentateuch), each narrator further availing himself when he thought proper of other written documents.
Such is the theory of Delitzsch, which is in many respects worthy of consideration, and which has been adopted in the main by Kurtz (Gesch. d. A. B. i, § 20, and ii, § 99, 6), who formerly was opposed to the theory of different documents, and sided rather with Hengstenberg and the critics of the extreme conservative school. There is this difference, however, that Kurtz objects to the view that Deuteronomy existed before the other books, and believes that the rest of the Pentateuch was committed to writing before, not after, the occupation of the Holy Land. Finally, Schultz, in his recent work on Deuteronomy, recognises two original documents in the Pentateuch, the Elohistic being the base and groundwork of the whole, but contends that the Jehovistic portions of the first four books, as well as Deuteronomy, except the concluding portion, were written by Moses. Thus he agrees with Delitzsch and Kurtz in admitting two documents and the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy, and with Stahelin in identifying the Deuteronomist with the Jehovist.
One other theory has, however, to be stated before we pass on. The author of it stands quite alone, and it is not likely that he will ever find any disciple bold enough to adopt his theory: even his great admirer Bunsen forsakes him here. But it is due to Ewald's great and deserved reputation as a scholar, and to his uncommon critical sagacity, briefly to state what that theory is. He distinguishes, then, seven different authors in the great Book of Origins or Primitive History (comprising the Pentateuch and Joshua). The oldest historical work, of which but a very few fragments remain, is the Book of the Wars of Jehovah. Then follows a biography of Moses, of which also but small portions have been preserved. The third and fourth documents are much more perfect: these consist of the Book of the Covenant, which was written in the time of Samson, and the Book of Origins, which was written by a priest in the time of Solomon. Then comes, in the fifth place, the third historian of the primitive times, or the first prophetic narrator, a subject of the northern kingdom in the days of Elijah or Joel. The sixth document is the work of the fourth historian of primitive times, or the second prophetic narrator, who lived between 800 and 750. Lastly comes the fifth historian, or third prophetic narrator, who flourished not long after Joel, and who collected and reduced into one corpus the various works of his predecessors. The real purposes of the history, both in its prophetical and its legal aspects, began now to be discerned. Some steps were taken in this direction by an unknown writer at the beginning of the 7th century B.C.; and then in a far more comprehensive manner by the Deuteronomist, who flourished in the time of Manasseh, and lived in Egypt. In the time of Jeremiah appeared the poet who wrote the Blessing of Moses, as it is given in Deuteronomy. A somewhat later editor incorporated the originally independent work of the Deuteronomist, and the lesser additions of his two colleagues, with the history as left by the fifth narrator, and thus the whole was finally completed. "Such," says Ewald (and his words, seriously meant, read like delicate irony), "were the strange fortunes which this great work underwent before it reached its present form."
(2.) Writers in favor of the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch. — On the other side, however, stands an array of names certainly not less distinguished for learning, who maintain not only that there is a unity of design in the Pentateuch — which is granted by many of those before mentioned-but who contend that this unity of design can only be explained on the supposition of a single author, and that this author could have been none other than Moses. This is the ground taken by Hengstenberg, Havernick, Drechsler, Ranke, Welte, and Keil. The first mentioned of these writers has no doubt done admirable service in reconciling and removing very many of the alleged discrepancies and contradictions in the Pentateuch: but his zeal carries him in some instances to attempt a defense, the very ingenuity of which betrays how unsatisfactory it is; and his effort to explain the use of the divine names, by showing that the writer had a special design in the use of the one or the other, is often in the last degree arbitrary. Drechsler, in his work on the Unity and Genuineness of Genesis (1838), fares no better, though his remarks are the more valuable because in many cases they coincide, quite independently, with those of Hengstenberg. Later, however, Drechsler modified his view, and supposed that the several uses of the divine names were owing to a didactic purpose on the part of the writer, according as his object was to show a particular relation of God to the world, whether as Elohim or as Jehovah. Hence he argued that, while different streams flowed through the Pentateuch, they were not from two different fountain-heads, but varied according to the motive which influenced the writer, and according to the fundamental thought in particular sections; and on this ground, too, he explained the characteristic phraseology which distinguishes such sections. Ranke's work (Untersuchungen uber den Pentateuch) is a valuable contribution to the exegesis of the Pentateuch. He is especially successful in establishing the inward unity of the work, and in showing how inseparably the several portions, legal, genealogical, and historical, are interwoven together. Kurtz (in his Einheit der Genesis [1846], and in the first edition of his first volume of the Geschichte des Alten Bundes) followed on the same side; but he has since abandoned the attempt to explain the use of the divine names. on the principle of the different meanings which they bear, and has espoused the theory of two distinct documents. Keil, also, though he does not despair of the solution of the problem, confesses (Luther. Zeitschr. [1851-2] p. 235) that "all attempts as yet made, notwithstanding the acumen which has been brought to bear to explain the interchange of the divine names in Genesis on the ground of the different meanings which they possess, must be pronounced a failure." Ebrard (Das Alter des Jehova-Namens) and Tiele (Stud. und Krit. 1852-1) make nearly the same admission. It is not fair, however, to require the advocates of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch to explain positively the reasons which impelled him to the peculiar use of these names. The causes of such a selection are often inscrutable, even to the writer himself. A sufficient reason is perhaps given in the supposition that Moses made use of documents written by different persons which contained those peculiarities. The want of uniformity observable in the same section in this respect shows that it is due to a twofold influence. It must be borne in mind that this peculiar distinction in the use of the sacred names is mostly confined to the book of Genesis (q.v.).
2. Direct Testimony of the Book to its own A uthorship and Date of Composition. —
(1.) Of this character is Ex 17:14, "And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua; for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven:" a statement which becomes the more pointed if we read, as we have little hesitation in doing, not "in a book," but "in the book" (בִּסֵּפֶר). This passage shows that the account to be inserted was intended to form a portion of a more extensive work, with which the reader is supposed to be acquainted. It also proves that Moses, at an early period of his public career, was filled with the idea of leaving to his people a written memorial of the divine guidance, and that he fully understood the close and necessary connection of an authoritative law with a written code, or זכרון. At any rate, the direct testimony to the fact that particular passages were written by Moses is of vast importance as a presumption that other passages were written by him also, although the contrary assertion has often been put forward: nay, many passages may be inferred a fortiori to have come from his pen. Or, where the inference might be unsafe, as in the instance now given, it is because of the extraordinary emphasis of the testimony in such a passage; not merely that the doom of Amalek was written by Moses in the book of the Lord for Israel, but also its being so expressly recorded that it was written. See also Ex 24:4-7; Nu 33:1-2; De 17:18-19 (a remarkable passage); 28-30, which repeatedly mention the written blessings and curses; De 27:1-13, a command to "write all the words of this law" on plastered stones, preparatory to the solemn reading of the blessings and the curses beside the altar which was to be erected when the people took possession of the center of the Promised Land (comp. the account of the fulfillment, Jos 8:30-35). The most remarkable passage, however, is at De 31:9: "And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and unto all the elders of Israel," and charged these ecclesiastical and civil heads of the community to read it to the assembled congregation of Israel during the eight days of the Feast of Tabernacles, on the occasion when it was most largely attended in the seventh year, the year of rest. Further (ver. 24-27): "And it came to pass when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it in [or rather at] the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God; that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death?" It has often been said that no assertion could be more explicit, or made in more solemn circumstances, or with additions more calculated for discovering and demonstrating its falsehood unless the truth had been notorious. With this mass of evidence we must connect the warnings against adding to what Moses commanded, or taking from it (De 4:2; De 12:32); the circumstantial statement as to the discourses being addressed by Moses to the people (De 1:1-5); and along with these opening words of Deuteronomy, the closing words of Numbers (Nu 36:13), as also the last words of Leviticus (Le 27:34; also 25:1; 26:46). If all these statements are not to be set aside as an idle dream or a tissue of deliberate falsehoods, the very least which can be inferred from them is that the Pentateuch (at all events the part of it from the time when the people came to covenant with God at Mount Sinai) is from one writer; that the divine legislation was in the first place given from that mount, the substance or essence of which was concluded in the book of Leviticus; that there were appendices to this, recorded in the book of Numbers, on to the time when Israel stood upon the eastern bank of the Jordan, ready to cross over upon Jericho; and that there was a very solemn renewal of the covenant on the part of the generation which had grown up in the wilderness, to whom, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses repeated much of the legislation and addressed his parting counsels. It may be made a question whether the hand of a later writer, who finished the Pentateuch, is perceptible from De 31:24 (comp. 33:1, and ch. 34), or whether the words in De 31:24-30 are still the words of Moses. In the former case we have two witnesses, viz. Moses himself, and the continuator of the Pentateuch; in the latter case, which seems to us the more likely, we have the testimony of Moses alone.
It is true that the above passages do not define the limits of the book, nor prove its absolute identity with the existing copies of the Pentateuch. But other evidences will be found to supply this proof. We have already the fact that a book was written by Moses under the immediate authority of God, and that this book was intended to be of perpetual obligation. Now, supposing that the scriptural testimony of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch had ended here, although we shall see this is not the case, yet, even so, no moral doubt could exist that this design was carried into effect, and that the books thus preserved were substantially identical with those which have come down to us. For at this period the Jewish people suddenly take their place amid the settled nations of the world, and enter upon that grand and mysterious national life which has continued till our own day. It will not be denied by any that this race was distinguished from all others by many peculiar characteristics. Some of their national habits exhibited affinity in various points of detail with the surrounding polytheism amid which they dwelt; but their whole system was sharply separated, alike by the grandeur of its religious monotheism and by its complex social and civil organization, from that of all other nations. Their code of laws was penetrating enough to affix its indelible peculiarities on the race who lived under them, and to endow it with a force and elevation, a perpetuity of national life, and a world-wide influence, to which no parallel can be found in history, Such an effect would itself prove the existence of a cause as permanent as itself, for the precise ritual and ceremonial enactments of the system could never have been maintained without an authorized code of directions. When we inquire into the nature of that peculiar polity to which it is to be attributed, we find it in the books of Moses. The Pentateuch contains a system which explains the national life of the Jewish race, and which, in its turn, is equally explained by it. As we know, on the one side, that the Pentateuch was reduced by Moses to a written form, and, on the other side, that the phenomena of national Jewish life can only be explained by the influence of a positive written code, it is impossible not to put the two facts together, and identify the Mosaic books of the law with the code of subsequent times. In other words, the permanence of the effect proves the permanence of the cause. The subsequent history of the Jewish race would have sufficed to prove that the Mosaic code must have existed in a permanent form from that period till the present, even if no positive external proofs of the fact had existed.
From the passages adduced above it is apparent, indeed, that the most numerous and direct testimonies occur in Deuteronomy; and the opinion has had learned advocates that these testimonies are to be restricted to this one book, which is therefore admitted to be from the pen of Moses, whereas it is alleged that there is no clear evidence as to the authorship of the other four. But he who takes up this position in good faith is likely soon to discover that Deuteronomy presupposes the existence of the others, and the general knowledge of their contents, by its incidental reference to subjects which are intelligible only when we turn to the fuller accounts given in these books: for example, the dispersion and settlement of the nations by the hand of God; the call of Abraham, that in his seed the families of the earth might be blessed; the patriarchal history generally, and the result of it, the sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt; the destruction of Sodom and the neighboring cities; the relationship of the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites to Israel; the laws in reference to leprosy; the entire rules for the sacrificial services; the consecration of Aaron's family, and of the whole tribe of Levi in a wider sense, to these services; and the method of their support; and the laws on the subject of murder and manslaughter. Besides, the age of generalizations, such as we find in Deuteronomy, must be preceded by the age of particular enactments. Hence there are scarcely any who have intelligently believed that Deuteronomy is the work of Moses, who have not come to feel the necessity of acknowledging him to be (substantially at least) the author of the entire Pentateuch.
(2.) Pressed by these arguments, some of the sceptical critics have resorted to the opposite conclusion that the book of Deuteronomy itself, in which these striking testimonies are so largely found, is likewise not the production of Moses. It is of importance therefore to consider this question separately.
All allow that the Book of the Covenant in Exodus, perhaps a great part of Leviticus, and some part of Numbers were written by Israel's greatest leader and prophet. But Deuteronomy, it is alleged, is in style and purpose so utterly unlike the genuine writings of Moses that it is quite impossible to believe that he is the author. But how, then, set aside the express testimony of the book itself? How explain the fact that Moses is there said to have written all the words of this law, to have consigned it to the custody of the priests, and to have charged the Levites sedulously to preserve it by the side of the ark? Only by the bold assertion that the fiction was invented by a later writer, who chose to personate the great Lawgiver in order to give the more color of consistency to his work! The author first feigns the name of Moses that he may gain the greater consideration under the shadow of his name, and then proceeds to re-enact, but in a broader and more spiritual manner, and with true prophetic inspiration, the chief portions of the earlier legislation. But such a hypothesis is devoid of all probability. For what writer in later times would ever have presumed, unless he were equal to Moses, to correct or supplement the Law of Moses? And if he were equal to Moses, why borrow his name (as Ewald supposes the Deuteronomist to have done) in order to lend greater weight and sanction to his book? The truth is, those who make such a supposition import modern ideas into ancient writings. They forget that what might be allowable in a modern writer of fiction would not have been tolerated in one who claimed to have a divine commission, who came forward as a prophet to rebuke and to reform the people. Which would be more weighty to win their obedience, "Thus saith Jehovah," or "Moses wrote all these words?" It has been argued indeed that in thus assuming a feigned character the writer does no more than is done by the author of Ecclesiastes. He in like manner takes the name of Solomon that he may gain a better hearing for his words of wisdom. But the cases are not parallel. The Preacher only pretends to give an old man's view of life, as seen by one who had had a large experience and no common reputation for wisdom. Deuteronomy claims to be a law imposed on the highest authority, and demanding implicit obedience. The first is a record of the struggles, disappointments, and victory of a human heart. The last is an absolute rule of life, to which nothing may be added, and from which nothing may be taken (4:2; 31:1).
But, besides the fact that Deuteronomy claims to have been written by Moses, there is other evidence which establishes the great antiquity of the book.
(a) It is remarkable for its allusions to Egypt, which are just what would be expected supposing Moses to have been the author. It is a significant fact that Ewald, who will have it that Deuteronomy was written in the reign of Manasseh, is obliged to make his supposed author live in Egypt, in order to account plausibly for the acquaintance with Egyptian customs which is discernible in the book. Without insisting upon it that in such passages as De 4:15-18, or 6:8, and 11:18-20 (comp. Ex 13:16), where the command is given to wear the law after the fashion of an amulet, or De 27:1-8, where writing on stones covered with plaster is mentioned, are probable references to Egyptian customs, we may point to more certain examples. In De 20:5 there is an allusion to Egyptian regulations in time of war; in De 25:2, to the Egyptian bastinado; in De 11:10, to the Egyptian mode of irrigation. The references which Delitzsch sees in De 22:5 to the custom of the Egyptian priests to hold solemn processions in the masks of different deities, and in De 8:9 to Egyptian mining operations, are by no means so certain. Again, among the curses threatened are the sicknesses of Egypt (De 28:60; comp. 7:15). According to De 28:68, Egypt is the type of all the oppressors of Israel: "Remember that thou wast a slave in the land of Egypt," is an expression which is several times made use of as a motive in enforcing the obligations of the book (5:15; 24:18, 22; see the same appeal in Le 19:34, a passage occurring in the remarkable section Leviticus 17-20, which has so much affinity with Deuteronomy). Lastly, references to the sojourning in Egypt are numerous: "We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt," etc. (Le 6:21-23; see also Le 7:8,18; Le 11:3); and these occur even in the laws, as in the law of the king (Le 17:16), which would be very extraordinary if the book had only been written in the time of Manasseh.
(b) The phraseology of the book, and the archaisms found in it, stamp it as of the same age with the rest of the Pentateuch. The form הוא, instead of היא, for the feminine of the pronoun (which occurs in all 195 times in the Pentateuch), is found thirty-six times in Deuteronomy. Nowhere do we meet with היא in this book, though in the rest of the Pentateuch it occurs eleven times. In the same way, like the other books, Deuteronomy has נִעִר of a maiden, instead of the feminine נִעֲרָה, which is only used once (22:19). It has also the third pers. pret. חִי, which in prose occurs only in the Pentateuch (Ewald, Lehrbuch, § 142 b). The demonstrative pronoun הָאֵל (which, according to Ewald, § 183 a, is characteristic of the Pentateuch) occurs in De 4:42; De 7:22; De 19:11, and nowhere else out of the books of Moses, except in the late book, 1Ch 20:8, and the Aramaic Ezra, 5:15. The use of the ה locale, which is comparatively rare in later writings, is common to Deuteronomy with the other books of the Pentateuch; and so is the old and rare form of writing תַּמצֶאן, and the termination of the future in אּיּן. The last, according to Konig (A.-T. Stud. 2 Heft), is more common in the Pentateuch than in any other book: it occurs fifty-eight times in Deuteronomy. Twice even in the preterite (De 8:3,16) a like termination presents itself; on the peculiarity of which Ewald (§ 190 b, note) remarks, as being the original and fuller form. Other archaisms which are common to the whole five books are: the shortening of the Hiphil, לִראֹת, 33; לִעשֵׁר, De 26:12, etc.; the use of קרה קרא, "to meet;" the construction of the passive with אֵה of the object (for instance, 20:8); the interchange of the older כֶּשֶׂב (De 14:4) with the more usual כֶּבֶשׂ; the use of זָכוּר. (instead of זָכָר), De 16:16; De 20:13, a form which disappears altogether after the Pentateuch; many ancient words, such as שׁגִר יקוּם אָבַיב (שֶׁגֶי, Ex 13:12). Among these are some which occur besides only in the book of Joshua, or else in very late writers, like Ezekiel, who, as is always the case in the decay of a language, studiously imitated the oldest forms; some which are found afterwards only in poetry, as אֲלָפַים (7:13; 28:4, etc.) and מתַים, so common in Deuteronomy. Again, this book has a number of words which have an archaic character. Such are, חֶרמֵשׁ (for the later מִגָּל), טֶנֶא (instead of סִל); the old Canaanitish הִצּאֹן עשׁתּרוֹת, "offspring of the flocks;" ישֻׁרוּן, which as a name of Israel is borrowed, Isa 44:2; הֵהַין (1:41), "to act rashly," הִסכַּית, "to be silent;" הֶעֵַניק, (15:14), "to give," lit. "to put like a collar on the neck;" הַתעִמֵּר, "to play the lord;" מִדוֶה, "sickness."
(c) A fondness for the use of figures is another peculiarity of Deuteronomy. See 29:17. De 18; De 28:13,44; De 1:31,44; De 8:5; De 28:29,49. Of similar comparisons there are but few (Delitzsch says but three) in the other books. The results are most surprising when we compare Deuteronomy with the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 19-24) on the one hand, and with Psalm 90 (which is said to be Mosaic) on the other. To cite but one example: the images of devouring fire and of the bearing on eagles' wings occur only in the Book of the Covenant and in Deuteronomy. Comp. Ex 24:17 with De 4:24; De 9:3; and Ex 19:4 with De 22:11. So again, not to mention numberless undesigned coincidences between Psalm 90 and the book of Deuteronomy, especially chap. 32, we need only here cite the phrase מִעֲשֵׂה יָדִיַם (Ps 90; Ps 17), "work of the hands," as descriptive of human action generally, which runs through the whole of De 2:7; De 14:29; De 16:15; De 24:19; De 28:12; De 30:9. The same close affinity, both as to matter and style, exists between the section to which we have already referred in Leviticus (chap. 17-20, so manifestly different from the rest of that book), the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 19-24), and Deuteronomy.
(d) In addition to all this, and very much more might be said — for a whole harvest has been gleaned on this field by Schultz in the Introduction to his work on Deuteronomy — in addition to all these peculiarities which are arguments for the Mosaic authorship of the book, we have here, too, the evidence strong and clear from post-Mosaic times and writings. The attempt, by a wrong interpretation of 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34, to bring down Deuteronomy as low as the time of Manasseh fails utterly. A century earlier the Jewish prophets borrow their words and their thoughts from Deuteronomy. Amos shows how intimate his acquaintance was with Deuteronomy by such passages as De 2:9; De 4:11; De 9:7, whose matter and form are both colored by those of that book. Hosea, who is richer than Amos in these references to the past, while full of allusions to the whole law (Ho 6:7; Ho 12:4, etc.; Ho 13:9-10), in one passage (Ho 8:12) using the remarkable expression, "I have written to him the ten thousand things of my law," manifestly includes Deuteronomy (comp. 11:8 with De 29:22), and in many places shows that that book was in his mind. Comp. 4:13 with De 12:2; De 8:13 with De 28:68; De 11:3 with De 1:31; De 13:6 with De 8:11-14. Isaiah begins his prophecy with the words, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth," taken from the mouth of Moses in De 32:1. In fact, echoes of the tones of Deuteronomy are heard throughout the solemn and majestic discourse with which his prophecy opens. (See Caspari, Beitr age zur Eninl. in d. Buch Jesaia, p. 203-210., The same may be said of Micah. In his protest against the apostasy of the nation from the covenant with Jehovah, he appeals to the mountains as the sure foundations of the earth, in like manner as Moses (De 32:1) to the heavens and the earth. The controversy of Jehovah with his people (Mic 6:3-5) is a compendium, as it were, of the history of the Pentateuch from Exodus onwards, while the expression עֲבָדַים בֵּית, "slave-house" of Egypt, is taken from De 7:8; De 13:5. In 6:8 there is no doubt an allusion to De 10:12, and the threatenings of 6:13-16 remind us of Deuteronomy 28 as well as of Leviticus 26. Since, then, not only Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah speak in the words of Deuteronomy, as well as in words borrowed from other portions of the Pentateuch, we see at once how untenable is the theory of those who, like Ewald, maintain that Deuteronomy was composed during the reign of Manasseh, or, as Vaihinger does, during that of Hezekiah.
(e) But, in truth, the book speaks for itself. No imitator could have written in such a strain. We scarcely need the express testimony of the work to its own authorship. But, having it, we find all the internal evidence conspiring to show that it came from Moses. Those magnificent discourses, the grand roll of which can be heard and felt even in a translation, came warm from the heart and fresh from the lips of Israel's lawgiver. They are the outpourings of a solicitude which is nothing less than parental. It is the father uttering his dying advice to his children, no less than the prophet counseling and admonishing his people. What book can vie with it either in majesty or in tenderness? What words ever bore more surely the stamp of genuineness? If Deuteronomy be only the production of some timorous reformer, who, conscious of his own weakness, tried to borrow dignity and weight from the name of Moses, then assuredly all arguments drawn from internal evidence for the composition of any work are utterly useless. We can never tell whether an author is wearing the mask of another, or whether it is he himself who speaks to us. In spite, therefore, of the dogmatism of modern critics, we declare unhesitatingly for the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. SEE DEUTERONOMY.
3. Testimony of other Witnesses to the Author. —
(1.) Our Lord and his Apostles. — Their language is such that the hypothesis of the Pentateuch not being the work of Moses must create a very painful feeling in the mind of every true and simple-hearted follower of Christ. Comp. Mt 15:1-9 and Mr 7:1-13, where the fifth commandment and the law which sentenced to death the man who cursed his parents are ascribed indifferently to God and to Moses, and are put in opposition to the commandments of men which had grown up by a course of traditions. In Mt 22:24 we read of the Sadducees attempting to puzzle our Lord about the resurrection: "Master, Moses said," etc., or as it is in Mark and Luke, "Moses wrote unto us," referring to the law in De 25:5-10. Jesus answered them, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God... But as touching the resurrection of the dead. have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God,
saying," etc.; or as in Mark, "Have ye not read in the book of Moses;" or as in Luke, "That the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord," etc.; all three quoting from Ex 3:6. Again, in Mt 19:4-5, in answer to the Pharisees who tempted him on the subject of divorce, our Lord said to them, "Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said," etc., quoting Ge 2:24. Upon this they asked him, "Why did Moses then commanded to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?" referring to De 24:1. He replied, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives." The language is not less distinct in the parallel passage (Mr 10:2-9). There is also the testimony of the risen Savior to the written law of Moses as distinguished from the other Scriptures, namely, the Prophets and the Psalms (Lu 24:27,44-45). Without insisting on others of less distinctness (such as Lu 2:23-24; Joh 8:17; Ac 7:37,44; Ac 15:21; Ro 10:5,19; 1Co 9:9; Heb 8:5), we ask particular attention to two statements by our Lord. In Lu 16:29,31, "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. .... If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." Without even the slight intervention of a parable, our Lord said (Joh 5:46-47), "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? "In illustration of our Lord's argument, and as a last testimony to Moses by the apostles, we quote the confession of Paul to king Agrippa (Ac 26:22), "Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this (lay, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come;" and his earlier confession to Felix (24:14), "After the manner which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets." These two statements by Paul make it plain that what he meant by the writings of Moses was the written law as received among the Jews of his day, and not any shorter work, such as critics have imagined to be the genuine work of Moses and the germ which expanded into our present Pentateuch; a hypothesis which is also contradicted by the fact that the quotations of our Lord and his apostles are as freely made from the portions which the critics ascribe with greatest confidence to later writers as from the other portions which they concede to be more ancient.
In reference to these testimonies we observe,
(a) the habitual reply has indeed been that it was not the business of our Lord and his apostles to teach Biblical criticism. But the rejoinder of Witsius is as satisfactory as ever, though the precise matter in debate has somewhat shifted since his time. "Certainly Christ and his apostles were not teachers of criticism, such as those men demand that they themselves shall be considered, who at the present day claim as their own the realm of literature in every branch of knowledge whatsoever: yet they were teachers of the truth, and they did not permit themselves to be imposed upon by the ignorance of the masses or by the astuteness of the ruling class. They certainly did not come into the world to foster vulgar errors and to protect them by their authority, and to spread them, not among the Jews alone, but also far and wide among the nations who depended exclusively upon them."
(b) A fairer reply has been that the name "the law of Moses," or the expression "Moses wrote," etc., implies no more than "the psalms of David," "David said," etc.; and that if the latter class of phrases may be used without affirming the entire psalter to be David's own composition, or without decisively attributing to David the particular psalm which is quoted, we are justified in taking the former class of phrases equally in an indeterminate sense. It is probably in this way that a man's mind most readily finds relief when critical objections disturb his faith in the composition of the Pentateuch by Moses. and at the same time he holds fast his faith in Scripture as a whole; and it is well that there are such halting-places where one may rest in a downward course, and from which he may start in the hope of recovering himself. But we cannot concede that the phrases are really parallel. Were there no other difference, there is plainly a broad distinction between a collection of devotional poetry, which may be partly or wholly anonymous without injury to its character and usefulness, and the authoritative history of the commencement of Israel's national existence, of its covenant relation to God, and of its constitution and laws as a state; for this is a document whose value is intimately connected with the age and circumstances of its author.
(2.) The Rest of the Old-Testament Scriptures. — These were in existence centuries before these testimonies of Jesus and his apostles, and they contain copious evidence that the Pentateuch was written at the time of Moses, and by himself or under his directions. Beyond all doubt there are numerous most striking references both in the prophets and in the books of Kings to passages which are found in our present Pentateuch. One thing is certain, that the theory of men like Von Bohlen, Vatke, and others, who suppose the Pentateuch to have been written in the times of the latest kings, is utterly absurd. It is established in the most convincing manner that the legal portions of the Pentateuch already existed in writing before the separation of the two kingdoms. Even as regards the historical portions, there are often in the later books almost verbal coincidences of expression, which render it more than probable that these also existed in writing. All this has been argued with much learning, the most indefatigable research, and in some instances with great success, by Hengstenberg in his Authentie des Pentateuchs. We will satisfy ourselves by pointing out some of the most striking passages in which the coincidences between the later books and the Pentateuch (omitting Deuteronomy here) appear.
(a) Beginning with the historical books, the references to the law of Moses as a written work of supreme authority in Israel are particularly numerous and distinct in the book of Joshua, as might be expected in the history of the personal friend of Moses, and the close attendant upon him, to whom, by divine direction, Moses intrusted the completion of the work of conquering the Promised Land, and settling the people in it, and establishing among them the worship and the laws of God. The evidence is so abundant and indubitable that the only resource of our opponents has been an allegation, without any evidence, that the book of Joshua is comparatively of very recent origin, written perhaps after the Exile, or at least not long before it; an allegation which has been somewhat modified by others, but only to make it more arbitrary and improbable, when they pronounce it to be a sixth book of that history of the original of the Hebrew nation which has come down to us under the name of the five books of Moses, with certain ancient elements in it, yet wrought up to its present form only in a very late age, much as they imagine the Pentateuch to have been. The book of Judges has been said to want such clear evidence to the Pentateuch; if so, the reason must be sought, partly in the greater distance from it in point of time, and still more in its nature, as a series of sketches of the defections of the people and the chastisements which followed in order to lead them to repentance. Yet the entire work is meant to bring the conduct and condition of the people to the test of the law of God, as the known and acknowledged standard of duty: the opening account of the criminal neglect which left so many remnants of Canaanites in the midst of the tribes of Israel is meaningless except on the supposition that the law of Moses and the transactions of Joshua are already known; and some parts of it, such as the histories of Gideon and of Samson, abound in admitted references both to the facts of the Pentateuch and to its language. Nay, the cases of, grossest divergence from the law of Moses which it records are no proof that this law was unknown, or destitute of authority, at the time its author lived, as has been rashly asserted: on the contrary, they carry evidence within themselves that they were sinful; because they were the acts of men whose whole conduct was vile and disorderly, or because it is noticed that they drew down divine judgments on those who were concerned in perpetrating them. The succeeding historical books of Ruth, Samuel, and Kings present similar evidence. In the books of Kings we have references as follows: 1Ki 20:42 to Le 27:29; Le 21:3 to Le 25:23; Nu 36:8; Nu 21:10 to Nu 35:30 (comp. De 17:6-7; De 19:15); 22:17 to Nu 27:16,11; 2Ki 3:20 to Ex 29:38, etc.; 4:1 to Le 25:39, etc.; 5:27 to Ex 4:6; Nu 12:10; Nu 6:18 to Ge 19:11; Ge 6:22 to Le 26:29; Le 7:2,19 to Ge 7:14,3 to Le 13:46 (comp. Nu 5:3).
(b) Especially remarkable is the testimony arising from the existence of the line of prophets in Israel; men who spoke in the style of the law of Moses, and used its language, and enforced and applied its lessons, without any civil support, often in opposition to the habits of the people and the wishes of the government; not without suffering persecution occasionally, yet without one word being uttered against the authority of the prophetic office and their abstract right to prophesy in the name of Jehovah and in support of his law. In Joel, who prophesied only in the kingdom of Judah; in Amos, who prophesied in both kingdoms; and in Hosea, whose ministry was confined to Israel, we find references which imply the existence of a written code of laws. The following comparison of passages may satisfy us on this point: Joe 2:2 with Ex 10:14; Ex 2:3 with Ge 2:8-9 (comp. 13:10); 2:17 with Nu 14:13; Nu 2:20 with Ex 10:19; Ex 3:1 [2:28, E.V.] with Ge 6:12; Ge 2:13 with Ex 34:6; Ex 4 [3], 18 with Nu 25:1. — Again, Am 2:2 with Nu 21:28; Nu 2:7 with Ex 23:6; Le 20:3; Le 2:8 with Ex 22:25, etc.; 2:9 with Nu 13:32, etc.; 3:7 with Ge 18:17; Ge 4:4 with Le 24:3, and De 14:28; De 12:12 with Nu 35:31 (comp. Ex 23:6 and Am 2:7; Am 5:17 with Ex 12:12; - 5:21, etc., with Nu 29:35; Le 23:36; Le 6:1 with Nu 1:17; Nu 6:6 with Ge 37:25 (this is probably the reference: Hengstenberg's is wrong); 6:8 with Le 26:19; Le 6:14 with Nu 34:8; Nu 8:6 with Ex 21:2; Le 25:39; Le 9:13 with Le 26:3-5 (comp. Ex 3:8). — Again, Ho 1:2 with Le 20:5-7; Le 2:1 [i. 10] with Ge 22:17; Ge 32:12; Ge 2:2 [i. 11] with Ex 1:10; Ex 3:2 with Ex 21:32; Ex 4:8 with Le 6:17, etc., and 7:1, etc.; 4:10 with Le 26:26; Le 4:17 with Ex 32:9-10; Ex 5:6 with Ex 10:9; Ex 6:2 with Ge 17:18; Ge 7:8 with Ex 34:12-16; Ex 12:6 [A.V. 5] with Ex 3:15; Ex 12:10 [9] with Le 23:43; Le 12:8 [14] with Ge 9:5. This fact is the more worthy of consideration, inasmuch as these prophets were to be found actively at work, not merely in the kingdom of Judah, in which the process of elaborating the Pentateuch is imagined to have been carried on, but also in the kingdom of the ten tribes, in which the true spirit of the theocracy was confessedly at a very low ebb. Those of the prophets who have left their writings as a portion of Scripture have furnished references to facts and phrases in the books of Moses, sometimes longer and more direct, sometimes briefer and more incidental, but so various and multiplied that it has been found necessary to frame the hypothesis that the prophetic writings were the originals out of which our present Pentateuch was formed: a supposition in itself sufficiently unnatural, and, if it were admitted, still forcing us back upon the question, What, then, was the foundation of divine authority, as acknowledged by the people of Israel, on which the prophetic office rested, and to which the prophets in their teaching appealed?
(c) A strong support is also furnished by two books of Scripture which are of a very different nature from any that have yet been noticed — the books of Psalms and of Proverbs: the one dealing with the devotional feelings, the other with the practical life of the people of Israel, and both often naming the law, and continually referring to it, or tacitly assuming that it was known and reverenced.
(d) It is unnecessary to speak of the testimony of books written after the return from Babylon, as Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles: a testimony which is admitted to be so full and explicit that there is no way of destroying its force, or of even materially diminishing its value, unless by affirming boldly that these are such late writings that they are he authorities upon the question; as in fact the history given in the books of Chronicles is often pronounced incorrect and untrustworthy.
(e) But now if, as appears from the examination of all the extant Jewish literature, the Pentateuch existed as a canonical book; if; moreover, it was a book so well known that its words had become household words among the people; and if the prophets could appeal to it as a recognized and well- known document — how comes it to pass that in the reign of Josiah, one of the latest kings, its existence as a canonical book seems to have been almost forgotten? Yet such was evidently the fact. The circumstances, as narrated in 2Ch 34:14, etc., were these: In the eighteenth year of his reign, the king, who had already taken active measures for the suppression of idolatry, determined to execute the necessary repairs of the Temple, which had become seriously dilapidated, and to restore the worship of Jehovah in its purity. He accordingly directed Hilkiah the highpriest to take charge of the moneys that were contributed for this purpose. During the progress of the work, Hilkiah, who was busy in the Temple, came upon a copy of the book of the Law — which must have long lain neglected and forgotten — and told Shaphan the scribe of his discovery. The effect produced by this was very remarkable. The king, to whom Shaphan read the words of the book, was filled with consternation when he learned for the first time how far the nation had departed from the law of Jehovah. He sent Hilkiah and others to consult the prophetess Huldah, who only confirmed his fears. The consequence was that he held a solemn assembly in the house of the Lord, and read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord." How are we to explain this surprise and alarm in the mind of Josiah, betraying as it does such utter ignorance of the book of the Law, and of the severity of its threatenings, except on the supposition that as a written document it had well-nigh perished? This must have been the case, and it is not so extraordinary a fact, perhaps, as it appears at first sight. It is quite true that in the reign of Jehoshaphat pains had been taken to make the nation at large acquainted with the law. That monarch not only instituted "teaching priests," but we are told that as they went about the country they had the book of the Law with them. But that was 300 years before a period equal to that between the days of Luther and our own; and in such an interval great changes must have taken place. It is true that in the reign of Ahaz the prophet Isaiah directed the people, who in their hopeless infatuation were seeking counsel of ventriloquists and necromancers, to turn "to the law and to the testimony;" and Hezekiah, who succeeded Ahaz, had no doubt reigned in the spirit of the prophet's advice. But the next monarch was guilty of outrageous wickedness, and filled Jerusalem with idols. How great a desolation might one wicked prince effect, especially during a lengthened reign! To this we must add that at no time, in all probability, were there many copies of the law existing in writing. It was probably then the custom, as it still is in the East, to trust largely to the memory for its transmission. Just as at this day in Egypt persons are to be found, even illiterate in other respects, who can repeat the whole Koran by heart, and as some modern Jews are able to recite the whole of the five books of Moses, so it probably was then: the law, for the great bulk of the nation, was orally preserved and inculcated. (See Mr. Grove's very interesting paper on Nablus and the Samaritans in Vacation Tourists, 1861. Speaking of the service of the yom kippur in the Samaritan synagogue, he says that the recitation of the Pentateuch was continued through the night, "without even the feeble lamp which on every other night of the year but this burns in front of the holy books. The two priests and a few of the people know the whole of the Torah by heart" [p. 346].) The ritual would easily be perpetuated by the mere force of observance, though much of it doubtless became perverted, and some part of it perhaps obsolete, through the neglect of the priests. Still it is against the perfunctory and lifeless manner of their worship, not against their total neglect, that the burning words of the prophets are directed. The command of Moses, which laid upon the king the obligation of making a copy of the law for himself, had of course long been disregarded. Here and there, perhaps, only some prophet or righteous man possessed a copy of the sacred book. The bulk of the nation were without it. Nor was there any reason why copies should be brought under the notice of the king. We may understand this by a parallel case. How easy it would have been in England, before the invention of printing, for a similar circumstance to have happened. How many copies, do we suppose, of the Scriptures were made? Such as did exist would be in the hands of a few learned men, or more probably in the libraries of monasteries. Even after a translation, like Wickliffe's, had been made, the people as a whole would know nothing whatever of the Bible; and yet they were a Christian people, and were in some measure at least instructed out of the Scriptures, though the volume itself could scarcely ever have been seen. Even the monarch, unless he happened to be a man of learning or piety, would remain in the same ignorance as his subjects. Whatever knowledge there was of the Bible and of religion would be kept alive chiefly by means of the liturgies used in public worship. So it was in Judah. The oral transmission of the law and the living testimony, of the prophets had superseded the written document, till at last it had become so scarce as to be almost unknown. But the hand of God so ordered it that when king and people were both zealous for reformation, and ripest for the reception of the truth, the written document itself was brought to light.
If this direct verbal testimony had been absent, the entire structure of the scriptural books from Joshua to Malachi would have necessitated the same conclusion. These books never could have been written in their existing form, unless by men familiarly conversant with the Pentateuch. Thence are derived the ultimate principles which underlie the whole. They are united to it by a mass of reference so complex, intricate, and minute, as to constitute a study in itself. The grand monotheism which pervades the whole, the overruling Providence which is everywhere thrown into the foreground; the national election of the Jew, and his relation to his forefathers in the perpetual covenant sealed between God and them, would all be inexplicable without this reference to the transactions of the past. Throughout the prophetical books especially the tone of thought and feeling, the language employed, the illustrations used, the accents of blended reproach, warning, and promise, the allusions to the past, and the predictions of the future, would be unintelligible to the student if the Pentateuch were not in his possession to interpret them. This is as true, and perhaps more forcibly evident in regard to the N.T. and the teaching of our Lord and his apostles than it is in the O.T. and in the language of the prophets. The Pentateuch is the thread of gold which runs, now latent, now prominent, throughout the whole body of the Scriptures. Retain it in its place, and the whole is united by a consistent purpose from end to end; take it away, and all the rest of revelation becomes a mass of inextricable confusion. The recognition of this bearing of the authority of the Pentateuch on the authority of the other scriptural books is most necessary. For the purpose, however, of succinctly stating the positive argument in favor of the authorship and divine authority of the five books of Moses, it is sufficient to trace the line of testimony down to the time of Malachi, for here we find that firm footing in the acknowledged facts of profane history which enables us to close every avenue against the objections of unbelief.
To take the facts of the books subsequent to the Pentateuch, and reduce them to anything like consistency, on the supposition that the Pentateuch itself is mythical, framing a connected and credible story out of them, is a task which baffles all human ingenuity. The only alternative appears to be to make a clean sweep of the history altogether; but this is no sooner proposed to the mind than both the past and the present lift up their protest against it. The past forbids it, because at many points the history of the Jew has come into contact with the history of the other great nations of antiquity, and to destroy the one would involve the destruction of the other likewise; for modern research has conclusively proved the harmony of sacred history with profane in a very considerable number of instances. The Mosaic authorship is expressly affirmed by Hecataeus, Manetho, Lysimachus, Tacitus, Juvenal, and Longinus. In regard to the Pentateuch itself, the Mosaic cosmogony, the scriptural account of the deluge, and the dispersion of mankind at Babel receive confirmation from Berosus the Chaldaean; the ethnological list in Genesis is strongly corroborated by the Babylonian monuments; the account of the exodus, by the distorted narrative of Manetho the Egyptian. Coming to later times, the Jewish conquest of Canaan is confirmed by an ancient Phoenician inscription noticed by three old writers; David's conquest of Syria by two heathen writers of repute; the history of his relations with Hiram, king of Tyre. by Herodotus, Dius, and Menander. Similar points of contact occur all down the history, till, in the period of the captivity, we emerge from the darkness of prehistoric times to the period of authentic history (see Rawlinson's Bamnpton Lectures and Ancient Monarchies). If the Jewish history be all fabulous. what becomes of the profane? and how is it that the ancient Babylonian monuments, now yielding their precious stores of information to the diligence of modern inquiry, corroborate in so many points the statements of the sacred books. The two branches of history, the sacred and the profane, are so interwoven that the denial of the one must involve likewise the denial of the other. Say that the past history of the Jew before the times of the Ptolemies is a myth altogether, and the history of the Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Assyrian must become at least equally apocryphal. Acknowledge the history to be true, and the truth of the history involves the divine authority of the Pentateuch which records it.
But the argument is at least equally strong when we trace the line of proof upward from the time of the Ptolemies, in regard to the existence of the Jewish Scriptures, as in regard to the facts of Jewish history. The still extant Septuagint proves the existence of the O.-T. Scriptures in their completed form at this date, and that they were universally received by the Jewish race as the authoritative and divinely inspired compositions of the authors to whom they are ascribed. The Pentateuch, for instance, was implicitly received as being the work of Moses, and as supplying the divinely ordained platform on which the whole superstructure of Jewish polity and religion had been reared, and as the authoritative record of it. To cast a doubt on its genuineness and sacred authority would have been esteemed blasphemy. The case is strengthened by the position held by the Pentateuch as the most ancient of their writings, and as underlying, so to speak, all the rest. For they were accepted not only as existing from former times, but as the first of a long series of sacred books, united by a regular historical sequence with each other, and all of them received from the tradition of the preceding times. The supposition, therefore, that the Pentateuch is unhistorical does not end with the destruction of the sacred authority of the Mosaic books, but destroys the authority of all the rest of the O.-T. Scriptures likewise; for all these without exception are founded on the authority of the Pentateuch, and the historic reality of the events recorded in it. If this is denied, either the later books must be considered part of the same imposture as that which produced the Pentateuch in its connected form; or their authors must have knowingly endorsed and availed themselves of this imposture; or, lastly, they must ignorantly have received human and imaginary compositions as veritable and divinely inspired history.
The enormous difficulty of even conceiving the possibility of a fraud under such circumstances is increased by the wide dispersion of the Jewish race, and the mighty separation which had divided the original people into two jealous if not hostile nations. If one portion of the dispersed had been disposed to acquiesce in the fraud, or, in the depth of their superstitious ignorance, had been induced to accept a religious romance composed by some member of the college of the prophets as the ancient Scriptures of their nation, still it is inconceivable that all the communities of Jews established in the different cities of the known world could have been brought to the same conclusion. Or if the exclusive and intense spirit of nationality by which they were actuated, and which becomes on this supposition itself an effect without a cause, can be believed to have accomplished even this result, it still remains to be conceived how the Samaritan people could have been induced to adopt the same belief, instead of indignantly protesting, as a people so sensitively jealous would inevitably have done, against what must have been either an enormous folly or a criminal imposture. Yet an independent Samaritan version of the Pentateuch carries the evidence for the national acceptance of the Mosaic writings as high as the times of Solomon and David, within little more than 400 years of the conquest of Canaan. Every theory hitherto suggested to explain the existence of the Jewish Scriptures, and the profound veneration entertained for them during all periods by the historic Jew, bristles with difficulties which contradict every experience of human history and every known principle of human conduct.
(3.) Proof of the early composition of the Pentateuch exists in the fact that the Samaritans had their own copies of it, not differing very materially from those possessed by the Jews, except in a few passages which had probably been purposely tampered with and altered; such, for instance, as Ex 12:40; De 27:5. The Samaritans, it would seem, must have derived their book of the Law from the ten tribes, whose land they occupied; on the other hand, it is out of the question to suppose that the ten tribes would be willing to accept religious books from the two, unless these were already in general circulation and of long-established authority. Hence the conclusion seems to be irresistible that the Pentateuch must have existed in its present form before the separation of Israel from Judah; the only part of the O.T. which was the common heritage of both. There is not indeed any historical notice of a rupture between the Jews and Samaritans prior to the return from Babylon, except so far as the schismatic calf-worship, and the mongrel character of the inhabitants introduced by the Assyrian conquerors, would naturally produce it; and there are traces of a religious association, more or less close, during the later period of the Hebrew monarchy; but the notable fact that none of the prophetical writings were admitted by the Samaritans strongly argues that their copy dates from a very early period. This view is confirmed by the fact that it is written in the ancient character, which certainly was not in use after the Exile. The only objection of any considerable weight to this conclusion is the fact that it agrees remarkably with the existing Hebrew Pentateuch, and that, too, in those passages which are manifestly interpolations and corrections as late as the time of Ezra. Hence many incline to the view of Prideaux (Connect. bk. vi, ch. iii) that the Samaritan Pentateuch was in fact a transcript of Ezra's revised copy. The same view is virtually adopted by Gesenius (De Pent. Sam. p. 8, 9). SEE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH.
(4.) The unvarying conviction of the Jews, and of the Christian Church also, has been that the Pentateuch, substantially as we have it now, and without any alterations beyond what are conceded to be admissible in all books which have been handed down from remote antiquity, is the writing of Moses. As we have seen above, until near the end of last century the universality of this conviction may be pronounced absolute; the alleged exceptions are so trifling or so dubious that the mere mention of them, as they have been carefully hunted out, gives us an impression of the strength of the traditional belief such as we might not otherwise have had. The case of some obscure early heretical sects among so-called Christians would scarcely be to the point, even if it could be established: but really they do not seem to have denied that Moses was the author of the book; their denial had reference to its divine origin and authority. The first distinct adverse statement was made by Carlstadt, the Reformer with whom Luther was associated for a time, but from whom he was compelled to separate on account of his rashness and want of good sense. Carlstadt admitted that Moses had received the law from God, and that he communicated it to the people; but he doubted whether the words and the thread of discourse in the Pentateuch did not proceed from some later writer, though he rejected the notion that Ezra was the writer. Masius, a learned Roman Catholic, whose commentary on Joshua was published in 1574, after his death, held that at least there was rearrangement and supplementing by Ezra or some other inspired person. These two Christian writers perhaps had a predecessor among the Jewish rabbins, the learned Aben-Ezra, of Toledo, who lived probably A.D. 1095-1168; he hinted his opinion that a few passages had not come from the hand of Moses, and he notices the similar opinion, as to one passage, of another rabbin in the 11th century, a man, however, who is otherwise wholly unknown to us. Finally, about the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, there were a few theologianis, both Romanist and Reformed — Pevrerius, Richard Simon, Van Dale, and Le Clerc — who adopted the opinion, more or less decidedly, that Ezra was the author of the Pentateuch. The last of these, an eminent man among the Dutch Arminianls, is by far the best known of the whole number; and he professed himself convinced by subsequent discussions that he had been in error, and in his commentary on the Pentateuch retracted his opinion.
4. Confirmation of the Mosaic Authorship. — Of this confirmatory evidence we offer the following specimens, in addition to the considerations urged above to prove the unity of the entire five books.
(1.) Internal indications occur that the Pentateuch does belong to the age of Moses. —
(a.) References to matters somewhat earlier than his own time, which he might well have opportunities of knowing, and which might be expected to attract the interest of the generation of Israelites who came out of Egypt and entered Canaan, while they would less probably have been incorporated into his history by a writer of a much later period. Such are the details in Genesis xiv of the wars between the four kings of the East and the five kings of Sodom, etc.; the peculiar list of nations in Canaan during the earlier part of Abraham's sojourn (Ge 15:19-21), differing very considerably from the ordinary list of these nations in the age of Moses, several centuries later; the designation of Abraham's original home as "Ur of the Chaldees" (Ge 11:31), though really in Mesopotamia (Ac 7:2), in the mountains of which country it seems that the Chaldees were settled at a remote period, whereas later Jewish history represents them as settled much farther south, in the plains of Babylonia; the curious notices scattered throughout Deuteronomy 2 of the old nations in and around Canaan, who had been dispossessed by the Philistines, the Edomites, the Moabites, and the Ammonites — notices well fitted, and we believe intended, to encourage Israel in rooting out their enemies the Canaanites with the promised special help of God, although the higher criticism has induced its votaries to pronounce them ill-judged interpolations.
(b.) The record of particulars respecting the origin of the people that have every token of verisimilitude, at once from the simplicity with which they are related, and from the absence of features which characterize the fabulous accounts of early things by the Greeks and others.
(c.) The prominence given to many events, and the minuteness and vividness of the descriptions, such as are common in the narratives of eye- witnesses and men personally engaged in the transactions; with which may be associated the evidence of intimate (yet not obtruded) acquaintance with both Egypt and the wilderness.
(d.) Confirmatory evidence may be found in many of the laws which were applicable to the Israelites only while in motion through the wilderness, or while gathered close together in the camp; as indeed "the camp" is very frequently mentioned in the course of these laws, for instance in Le 13:46; Le 14:8; Le 16:26; Le 17:3; Nu 5:3. So also the commands are many a time laid, not upon the priests as a body, but upon Aaron personally, or upon "Aaron and his sons." To this may be added what has already been said of certain slight modifications of laws in Deuteronomy, which were natural with the progress of events during the forty years; compare also Deuteronomy 14 and Leviticus 11, Leviticus alone mentioning the permission to eat the locusts, which would be common in the wilderness, etc.
(e.) Add to this the antique forms of words and expressions which are generally conceded to occur throughout the Pentateuch. This is no doubt a kind of argument which must be handled with care and moderation; and it has been employed very frequently, and been pushed to a most extravagant length, by many Continental scholars in support of views which they have really adopted on other grounds. But three things may be asserted very confidently, and they are sufficiently plain to be appreciated by the mere English reader, although he is not in circumstances to verify them. First, that there are many traces of very early simple language in the Pentateuch, as the habitual use of הוּא for "he" and "she," נִעִר for "young man" and "young woman," without the distinction of gender invariably found in the rest of the Old Testament. Secondly, that the differences of the Elohistic and the Jehovistic and the Deuteronomic vocabulary (to use the barbarous words descriptive of peculiar notions which have been introduced into this controversy) are reduced to extremely narrow limits by such a competent scholar as Delitzsch, whose peculiar theory leads him to occupy an intermediate or neutral place in these discussions. Thirdly, that a difference is at once plainly discernible when we pass from the vocabulary of the Pentateuch to that of the books generally reckoned nearest to it in point of age — namely, Joshua and Judges.
(2.) If we deny that Moses was the author of this book, it is impossible to fix with satisfaction on any later age for the date of composition. — This will be evident on a slight examination of the various dates proposed.
(a.) The inclination is very strong to fix the date of the composition of Deuteronomy, as well as the final arrangement of the other four books, somewhere perhaps in the reign of Hezekiah — the character of whose administration, however, is inconsistent with the admission of religious novelties (emphatically in the rule of faith), since he was bent upon removing all the abuses which had crept into the institutions of Moses; or in the reign of his profligate son Manasseh, although the heathenish party in Judah were at the time so completely in the ascendant that their opponents were at their mercy, and they are thought to have subjected the prophets of Jehovah to bloody persecution; or perhaps in the reign of Josiah, when the corruption was still deeper and more widespread, and when so distinguished a prophet as Jeremiah was impotent to stem the tide of evil. It may be asserted very confidently that no one of these reigns was more favorable for interpolating or annexing a new section of the law of Moses than the age of the Reformation would have been for adding another epistle to the New Testament. Any of these dates is ridiculously ill- suited for the composition in Deuteronomy of those consecutive chapters (6, 7, 8) which are filled with warnings against worldliness in consequence of peacefully possessing the land, and an improper toleration of the doomed nations of Canaan, and pride in victories achieved and wealth enjoyed.
(b.) Or shall we assume an earlier date, the period of the first and best times of the kingdom, before the death of Jehoshaphat, which is generally regarded by the critics as a time of prophetic activity in composing the early history of the nation? The Pentateuch, however, cannot well have been composed later than the schism in religion, and the rise of two hostile kingdoms, after the death of Solomon; for it uniformly supposes Israel to be in an undivided condition, both civilly and ecclesiastically. There is never a hint of the existence of such a division; nay, after that division had taken place many of the laws must have met with impediments in their execution. Again, had the book been composed later than the date of the schism, the ten tribes would have protested, and justly too, against such laws as bore hard upon them; while at the same time we are warranted in inferring from the strong language in the acknowledged writings of the prophets, that, had they been the writers of the legislation, its language would have been found to be distinct and pointed against the schism. Similar remarks may be made upon the historical portions of the Pentateuch. A prophetic historian in the kingdom of Judah would have been likely to identify more distinctly than is done "the land of Moriah," where Abraham was ready to offer Isaac, with "Mount Moriah," where the Temple was built; and he would have been likely to assign less religious prominence in the patriarchal and early national history to Shechem, the scene of the revolt and the seat of Jeroboam's government. Nor could we expect him to say nothing in praise of Levi, in Jacob's dying blessing; nor in the blessing of Moses, while mentioning Levi, to give so slight a blessing to Judah in comparison with that given to Ephraim and Manasseh.
(c.) Nor yet is the earlier age of David and Solomon satisfactory as the assumed date of this composition. If the Pentateuch had been a recent work, of the age of these kings, it would have been wholly thrown aside by Jeroboam, who must have found inconvenience and positive danger from it; and in casting it away he would have easily and naturally represented himself as a reformer of religion, delivering the people from one of the yokes of bondage which the house of David had been imposing on them, and restoring to them their primitive civil liberty and religious simplicity, according to the genuine institutions of Moses. Instead of this, it is evident that from the first Jeroboam was condemned and resisted by the prophets and the priests and the Levites, and generally by multitudes of the people, whose hearts were reverent towards the acknowledged and established law of God. The entire law of the kingdom (Deuteronomy 17), which has been represented as furnishing evidence of late authorship, is on the contrary a witness to a much earlier date of composition. In the days of David and Solomon there would have been no need to forbid the appointment of a foreigner to the throne, since it was established in this family of the tribe of Judah, and this with divine sanctions and promises of perpetuity; while the language in which the multiplication of horses and wives and silver and gold is prohibited would have needed to be very different to suit that age. The oft-repeated command to extirpate the Canaanites, and not to let them dwell in the midst of Israel (so far from being a production of the age of David and Solomon), was no longer applicable, after it had been neglected for so many centuries: in their totally altered circumstances the remains of these nations appear to have become converts to the worship of Jehovah, and in some sense members of the congregation of Israel; and a fearful curse fell upon Saul and his bloody house on account of his zeal in exterminating the Gibeonites.
(d.) If we are thus driven back to a period indefinitely anterior to the time of David, there is no other age than that of Moses himself at which we can rest with reason or satisfaction. There is no one whose name could be suggested as the author, with any degree of probability, during the disturbed period of the judges, in the course of which religion was rather retrograding, and the revivals of it were very far from favoring new legislation. SEE JUDGES. Samuel has indeed been named, and there is no doubt of the eminent position which he occupied at the crisis in which the Hebrew republic passed into a monarchy; still there is no evidence that he was competent to write the Pentateuch. Besides there are two special objections: his closeness to the age of David and Solomon, than which the book seems much more ancient; and the necessity of supposing a known and acknowledged law of God in Israel as the basis on which all his labors rested, and the rule of life and worship to which it was his aim to bring the people back.
(e.) There are not wanting traces which point to the patriarchal age as the time in which the writer of the Pentateuch lived. A writer subsequent to the time at which "the laws of Moses" (rightly or wrongly so called) had taken hold of the national mind, would have been little likely to represent their ancestor Abraham as marrying his sister, half-sister though she might be; and Jacob as setting up his pillar and anointing it. The primitive age of the writer is evinced by his entire silence on the subject of temples for the worship of false gods, as well as of any house for Jehovah. It may be doubted. too, whether a later legislator would have spoken of priests in Israel prior to the institution of Aaron's priesthood, and of young men of the children of Israel offering the sacrifices, under the direction of Moses, at the establishment of the covenant in Sinai (Ex 19:24; Ex 24:5).
(f.) Moreover, that "law of Moses" was very burdensome in its ritual, in respect to both trouble and expense and no one could have introduced it, thereby in fact accomplishing an unparalleled social revolution, if he had not had the support of overwhelming authority as the recognized messenger of Jehovah. Nor, when once established. could that legislation have been altered throughout successive ages by numberless nameless authors such as the critics have discovered.
(g.) The prophetic passages, those of Moses himself, and those of Balaam, have puzzled the critics when attempting to fix a later date for them.
(h.) A most tempting subject for any one who wishes to turn upon the critics is the irreconcilable diversity of the hypotheses which they have framed, in spite of every imaginable advantage enjoyed by them — learning, leisure, mutual concert, and entire absence of any belief in the need of evidence for their endless suppositions. We noticed, at an early part of our argument, that there is a fundamental difference among them: much the greater number believing, as we do, that Deuteronomy was composed later than the other four books, while a small minority, comprising some distinguished scholars, invert the relation of the two parts, assigning the higher antiquity to Deuteronomy, and considering the legislation in the preceding books to be developed from it. By both schools "the Deuteronomist" is regarded as a different person from "the Elohist" and "the Jehovist" (or the older and younger Elohistic and Jehovistic writers, according to those critics who make each of these names represent a class rather than an individual), to whom is assigned the composition of almost the whole of the first four books and a small portion of history towards the close of the fifth. It would occupy too much space to reckon up the variety of opinions as to the number of these imaginary authors and the ages in which they respectively flourished: those who wish to see this practice of making hypotheses in its most extravagant and self-sufficient form may find it in the commencement of Ewald's History of the People of Israel. We wish, however, to remind our readers that these varieties in the hypotheses are not to be overlooked, as if they were mere differences of detail. To us, on the contrary, they appear to be essential or fatal defects in these critical schemes; for when Moses has been denied to be the author, there is nothing on which to depend except critical sagacity; and since this critical sagacity not unfrequently contradicts itself, and is ever contradicting the sagacity of some other critic quite as much to be respected as the one we are studying at the time, it furnishes convincing evidence that it is itself an unsafe guide. The critics allege, indeed, that their testimony agrees in many points; and this is true, so long as they confine themselves to generalities, because they start from the same false principles, as to miracles, prophecy, etc. They do also agree in a great many particulars; but this is not wonderful, considering how they read one another's productions, compare them, and dovetail their statements together, altering and amending as often as they are charged with error or confusion, by one another or by those who adhere to the old opinion. We do not blame them for this procedure; but it makes their agreement, so far as it goes, of very little worth as concurrent testimony.
(i.) There are gaps in "the fundamental document" which need to be filled up; and there are references in it to the so-called later or supplementary matter, which we therefore believe to be a composition as early as the other which they pronounce to be alone the original. The individual proofs of this assertion we cannot here adduce; and indeed, as often as instances are given, some new critic starts up to make a different arrangement of the original and the supplementary matter which escapes from the objection charged upon the scheme of his predecessor — a process which is not so difficult after all, as nothing more is required than his own unsupported assertion.
It is to be remembered, however, that a person may hold the common opinion that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and yet along with this may also hold (rightly or wrongly) that there are extents in it which are not from the hand of Moses, but which have come to be incorporated with it by accidents to which all very ancient books are liable. Thus there are various ways of dealing with near half a dozen difficulties, such as the mention of Dan, or of the district called Havoth-jair "unto this day," or the testimony to the surpassing meekness of Moses, or the geographical and antiquarian statements in Deuteronomy 2. If the mind of any. one remains unsatisfied with the explanations offered, he has it in his power to cut the knot which he is not able to untie. He may say that the general and direct evidence, on account of which he believes Moses to be the author of the Pentateuch, is overwhelming; and in regard to these few incidental passages which puzzle him, he may incline to consider them glosses or explanations thrown in by some copyist or annotator, whether authorized or not, and he can imagine these removed without any serious alteration in the book, as it reverts precisely to the form in which he conceives it to have come from Moses. That unauthorized copyists might make such changes is a notion for which parallels more or less satisfactory can be adduced; yet it might be preferable to think of an editor whose annotations or alterations were authoritative, and such an editor Ezra is supposed to have been by many who follow old Jewish traditions. How far the influence of such an editor might alter the work is a matter for those to settle who embrace this opinion; certainly it ought not to be supposed to extend far, or they run the risk of virtually injuring their faith in Moses as the author. On the other hand, of course, those who adhere most strenuously to the old opinion deny that they are committed by their views to the absurdity of believing that Moses wrote the account of his own death and burial. There is a tradition in the Talmud that Joshua wrote the last eight verses of Deuteronomy; although it is now more commonly supposed that the work of Moses ends at ch. 31:23 (or even earlier, at verse 8; Baumgarten says at ch. 30:20), and that Joshua, or whoever recorded these closing details, inserted the song and the blessing of Moses, along with the accounts of his final charge, his view of the Promised Land, his death, etc.
5. Objections against the Mosaic Authorship. — These have been numerous and vehemently urged, especially by rationalists, as we might expect from the importance of the subject. On the opposite side, these critical doubts respecting the authenticity of the Pentateuch have produced in modern times several works in defense of its genuineness; such as Kanne's Biblische Untersuchungen (1820, 2 vols.); the observations by Jahn, Rosenmüller, and Bleek; Ranke's Untersuchungen uber den Pentateuch (2 vols.); Hengstenberg's Beitr agqe zur Einleitung (vols. ii and iii); Havernick's Einleitung in daas Alte Testament (vol. i); Drechsler's Ueber die Einheit und Authentie der Genesis; Kinig's Alt-testamentliche Studien (No. ii); Sack's Apolegetik, etc. From the most recent of these we extract the following, as presenting a condensed view of the argument (see RawlinSoLn's Historical Evidence, p. 51 sq.). As above stated the ancient, positive, and uniform tradition of the Jews assigned the authorship of the Pentateuch, with the exception of the last chapter of Deuteronomy, to Moses (see Horne's Introd. 1:51-56; Graves, Lectures; Stuart, O.T. Canon, p. 42); and this tradition is prima facie evidence of the fact, such at least as throws the burden of proof upon those who call it in question. It is an admitted rule of all sound criticism that books are to be regarded as proceeding from the writers whose names they bear, unless very strong reasons indeed can be adduced to the contrary (comp. Gladstone, Homer, 1:3, 4). In the present instance, the reasons which have been urged are weak and puerile in the extreme; they rest in part on misconception of the meaning of passages (e.g. De Wette, Einl. § 147, with regard to בּעֵבֶר, which means as well "this side" as "the other side" of Jordan; Buxtorf, Lex. p. 527); in part upon interpolations into the original text, which are sometimes very palpable (e.g. Ge 36:31-39; Ex 16:35-36; and perhaps De 2:14; comp. Fritzsche, Prufung, p. 135). Mainly, however, they have their source in arbitrary and unproved hypotheses: as that a contemporary writer would not have introduced an account of miracles (De Wette, Einl. § 145); that the culture indicated by the book is beyond that of the age of Moses (ibid. § 163); that if Moses had written the book, he would not have spoken of himself in the third person (Hartmann, Forschungen, p. 545; Norton, Genuineness, 2, 444; comp. Spinoza, Tractatus Theo.-Pol. p. 154); that he would have given a fuller and more complete account of his own history (De Wette, § 167); and that he would not have applied to himself terms of praise and expressions of honor (Hartmann, l.c.; comp. Spinoza, l.c.). It is enough to observe of these objections that they are such as might equally be urged against the genuineness of Paul's epistles (which is allowed even by Strauss, Leben Jesu, 1:60) — against that of the works of Homer, Chaucer, and indeed of all writers in advance of their age — against Caesar's Commentaries and Xenophon's Expedition of Cyrus — against the Acts of the Apostles (which even Strauss allows may be the work of Luke, Leben Jesu, 1:60), and against the Gospel of John. For Paul relates contemporary miracles; Homer and Chaucer exhibit a culture and a tone which, but for them, we should have supposed unattainable in their age; Caesar and Xenophon write throughout in the third person; Luke omits all account of his own doings at Philippi; and John applies to himself the most honorable of all titles, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (Joh 13:23; Joh 14:26). In fact a priori conceptions as to how an author of a certain time and country would write, what he would or would not say, or how he would express himself, are among the weakest of all presumptions, and must be regarded as outweighed by a very small amount of positive testimony to authorship. Moreover, for an argument of this sort to have any force at all, it is necessary that we should possess, from other sources besides the author who is judged, a tolerably complete knowledge of the age to which he is assigned, and a fair acquaintance with the literature of his period. In the case of Moses, our knowledge of the age is exceedingly limited, while of the literature we have scarcely any knowledge at all, beyond that which is furnished by the sacred records next in succession — the books of Joshua and Judges with (perhaps) that of Job — and these are so far from supporting the notion that such a work as the Pentateuch could not be produced in the time of Moses that they actually presuppose the contrary by constantly appealing to it or as being evidently based upon it. We propose to examine these objections here in detail, as they relate more or less to all the books of the Pentateuch. For other difficulties, see each book in its place.
We mention here one objection of a general character. The history of the art of writing among the Hebrews has often been appealed to in order to disprove the authenticity of the Pentateuch. It is true that in our days no critic of good repute for learning ventures any longer to assert that the art of writing was invented subsequent to the Mosaical age (Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, p. 64 sq.); but it is questioned whether the Hebrews were acquainted with that art. Such a doubt proceeds from erroneous ideas concerning the condition of this people, and concerning the civilization necessarily imparted to them in Egypt. The reality of this civilization is proved by indubitable testimony. It is said that a work of such extent as the Pentateuch was beyond the means of the primitive modes of writing then existing. But various testimonies, not merely in the Pentateuch itself, but also derived from other sources, from the period immediately subsequent to that of Moses, prove that a knowledge of the art of writing was widely diffused among the Hebrews (comp. Jg 8:14).
If there were any knowledge of this art, its application would entirely depend upon the particular circumstances of a given period. Some writers seem to entertain the opinion that the materials for writing were yet, in the days of Moses, too clumsy for the execution of larger works. This opinion is refuted by the fact that the Hebrews became acquainted, just in the Mosaical period, with the use of very good materials for writing, such as papyrus, byssus, parchment, etc. (comp. Herodotus, v. 58). There are, indeed, mentioned in the Pentateuch some more solid materials for writing, such as tables of stone (Ex 24:12; Ex 31:18; Ex 34:1, etc.); but this does not prove that in those days nothing was written except upon stone. Stone was employed, on account of its durability, for specific purposes. SEE WRITING.
The arguments on which the authorship of the Pentateuch is denied to Moses are, it will be perceived, wholly of an internal character (except that noticed above, and the one drawn from 2Ch 34:14 sq.). They have varied considerably with the taste and the information of those who urged them. There are some which were advanced very confidently a generation ago, but now are scarcely mentioned. But of those which have been urged with greatest confidence and plausibility, and still continue to be so, we believe the following to be the chief:
(1.) The supernatural character of much of the book — namely, the miracles and prophecies occurring abundantly in the history. This really is the great objection, even in many minds which have not been fully aware that it was so; and they have therefore been propping up their opinion with other arguments, that would never have had much of even apparent solidity and strength if they had been destitute of this foundation. But this objection need not be discussed in this article, for it concerns the entire Bible. SEE MIRACLE; SEE PROPHECY.
(2.) The alleged inaccuracies and impossibilities in the history, even apart from the miracles with which it is interspersed. This is a line of argument which has in general been found very difficult to manage; and in connection with which, therefore, there has not been very much attempted by learned and cautious writers. It has, however, recently attained to a temporary prominence and importance by the writings of bishop Colenso. The particular instances are not of a nature which really requires much consideration, though the most important may be briefly noticed.
(a.) The vast increase of Jacob's descendants in Egypt, and the difficulty as to the proportion between the whole number of them and that of the first- born. On these and some other matters, SEE NUMBERS.
(b.) The chronological difficulty that the census was not taken till the second month of the second year of the Exodus, while yet the tabernacle is represented as having been finished a month sooner, and the silver used in its construction as having been obtained by a poll-tax of half a shekel on occasion of the census being taken. In this there is nothing very puzzling; for it is evident that before the formal and exact census, in the course of which all the names were written down, there was a preliminary enumeration of the people, by which a close approximation was made to their number; and if the payment of the poll-tax did not take place earlier or was not superseded as unnecessary on account of the superabundance of voluntary offerings, which the people needed to be restrained from bringing, there could be no difficulty in finding those who would advance the money in the certainty of speedy repayment.
(c.) The other chronological difficulty, that such a multitude of events are crowded into the short space between the death of Aaron on the first day of the fifth month of the last year of the wandering and the delivery of the prophetic message in Deuteronomy on the first day of the eleventh month. A calm examination, however, will show that they are not so crowded as has been supposed. Yet no doubt there was a marvelous concentration of interest and hastening of the course of Providence during those six months of grace and power manifested on behalf of the young faithful generation of Israelites who were to enjoy the blessings of their redemption from the house of bondage and to take possession of the Land of Promise. In like manner our Lord hints that events may be crowded and carried forward with marvelous rapidity when the glory of the latter day is to be ushered in, and when he is to come again (Mt 24:22).
(d.) The difficulties connected with the extent to which the sacrifices and other Levitical institutions were set up and kept up ill the wilderness. But the very letter of the law many a time shows that these institutions were not meant to be set up till the people entered the Land of Promise; and at other times the intention is at least doubtful. The difficulties are unspeakably diminished When we take into account the sin of the people in refusing to go forward after the report of the unbelieving spies, and the semi-excommunication or suspension from Church privileges for the rest of the forty years under which in consequence they were laid (comp. Jos 5:4-9).
(e.) The blank in the narrative for the thirty-eight years during which that unbelieving generation were dying out; so that the suspicion has been expressed that this space of time is fabulous, and that either vastly less than forty years elapsed between the Exodus and the conquest of Ganaan, or else that the most of that period was spent, not in the desert properly so called, but on the eastern side of the Jordan, in a protracted struggle with the kingdoms of Sihon and Og. Without giving attention to this fancy, we confine ourselves to the blank of thirty-eight years in the history, which we regard without any of the surprise and suspicion which the critics have exhibited. Had the Pentateuch been an ordinary history, it might have had much to tell of these thirty-eight years, and of the manner in which the Israelites contrived to spend the time and to support themselves; but since it is a theocratic history, an account of the progress in the kingdom of God and in the manifestation of his way of mercy to his people, a blank occurs, because there was little or nothing to tell during these years of suspended privileges. Such periods of protracted silence occur also in the history of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and remarkably in the four hundred and thirty years of the sojourn in Egypt. If we go beyond the Pentateuch, we believe that the same explanation is to be given of the silence in reference to the period after the end of Joshua's administration, the long periods between those critical times in which the Lord raised up judges to save his people, the seventy years of captivity in Babylon, the eighty years or thereabouts between Zerubbabel and Ezra, and the four hundred years between the Old-Testament Scriptures and the New.
(f.) The assumed difficulties of supporting so large a multitude in the desert, and of their setting out so suddenly and moving so rapidly, the impossibility of their entire mass assembling at the Tabernacle-door (as is incorrectly alleged to be the meaning of numerous passages), and kindred arithmetical objections, we here pass over, as they have been repeatedly and amply refuted, and many of them are noticed elsewhere in this Cyclopaedia.
(3.) There is one striking fact lying on the face of the record-the only important fact, as we believe, to which advocates for the disintegration of the Pentateuch can point as seeming to favor their views of a plurality of authors; and that is the fact, above referred to, which Astruc noticed so clearly — the use of two names for the Divine Being, ELOHIM and JEHOVAH, in the Authorized Version usually "God" and "LORD." Astruc's theory of composition was very coarse and mechanical, that there were two documents, known by the barbarous titles of the Elohistic and the Jehovistic documents respectively, by two writers who confined themselves each to one of these names; and that from these two narratives and ten documents of small comparative importance the book of Genesis was strung together by Moses. Enormous labor, great stores of learning, and unbridled fancy have altered Astruc's theory over and over again, in order to elaborate some satisfactory hypothesis by which to account for the existence of our present Pentateuch; but no fact of essential importance has been added; and no proof has been furnished of the truth of his assumption that the use of these two names of God is due to the existence of two different authors. The only circumstance that can even appear to be a proof of this assumption is a text, of which, accordingly, abundant use has been made in this controversy (Ex 6:2-3):, "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I [am] Jehovah: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by [the name of] God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them." The opinion is of some antiquity, though it first obtained prominence and currency through the labors of these critics, that according to this statement the very vocable Jehovah was unknown until the revelation made of it to Moses; and the older interpreters who held this opinion supposed further that, whenever the name Jehovah had been used in earlier passages, this was done merely by anticipation — a supposition which may be unnecessary, yet which is by no means very strange or unnatural. But the explanation given for near a century by one class of writers is that this text comes from the pen of the Elohist, and expresses his belief; and that where the name occurs in earlier passages, these have not been written by him, but by another author, who did not notice or did not recognize this distinction in the divine names. This explanation, however unsupported by evidence, is at least perfectly intelligible, if we adopt the exploded hypothesis of independent historians, each with his own document, and perhaps each ignorant of the document composed by the other; but it raises some curious questions in relation to the final editor who could patch together such incongruous materials, questions all the more troublesome according to the fashionable hypothesis of supplementers. Bishop Colenso, indeed, like some others, speaks very candidly of the Jehovist writing as he did, "without perceiving, or at least without FEELING VERY STRONGLY [his own capitals] the contradiction thereby imported into the narrative; "of which procedure he gives two parallel instances in the Jehovistic additions the Elohistic accounts of the creation and of the flood. But in these two cases the contradiction has not been perceived to this hour by many who have examined the matter as carefully as they could (and this with the advantage of having the alleged discovery pointed out to them), and whose capacities for judging are as fair as those of their neighbors, and whose conviction it is that no contradiction exists except in the imagination of these critics; whereas, in the case of the habitual use of the name Jehovah, in the age of the patriarchs, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the assertion that this name was kept a secret till that age was over, the man who combined these two things in one narrative, without seeing the flat contradiction which he introduced into it, must have been destitute of reason and commonsense. On other occasions these critics are ready enough to affirm that the later writer (or writers) suppressed and altered portions of the original document, in order the better to fit his own story into it; and they allege that his operation has been achieved so neatly that most people have never suspected it, nor can detect it for themselves even after the sagacity of the critics has discovered it and pointed it out. But in this particular instance these critics insist on so interpreting a text, which is especially prominent and important as giving the account of the revelation of this name Jehovah from God and its introduction into use among men, that it shall be a contradiction in terms to a multitude of passages which the editor or supplementer had indulged himself by inserting amid the comparatively brief original details. The truth is given in the common old interpretation of Ex 6:2-3, that not the syllables, but the signification of the name JEHOVAH SEE JEHOVAH (q.v.), as the independent, unchangeable fulfiller of his promises to the patriarchs, was revealed to Moses at the bush. It is true that these merely natural perfections would fail to inspire right feelings towards God, if they were to be contemplated as in a state of separation from moral perfections. But the two classes of attributes are inseparable in actual reality, and probably were never even conceived of by the, Hebrew mind as separable, if we judge from the line of argument in the closing chapters of Job. Certainly Ex 34:6-7 makes an express claim for the inclusion of moral perfection, as well as omnipotence and unchangeableness, in the signification of the name Jehovah — "Jehovah, Jehovah El, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear [the guilty]; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth [generation]." The concluding words of this proclamation of the name Jehovah, by him to whom it belongs, make the truth apparent that the name Jehovah could not come out in its full and true meaning except through many successive generations, and therefore could not be properly known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but became known to their descendants as they observed the unchanging course of his special providence towards Israel. Once more, it must never be forgotten that God Almighty and Jehovah are not names sharply opposed to one another, much less diametrically so, as is necessarily assumed in the interpretation of Ex 6:3 which we have been controverting; on the contrary, so far as it goes, God Almighty is identical with or included under Jehovah, giving the meaning of it incompletely, as the Almighty God, yet failing to bring into view that he is unchangeable besides. Nevertheless, it is only by its incompleteness that El Shaddai differs from Jehovah; there is no antagonism between them, there is a mere difference of degree. The children of Israel were now to think of their God as Jehovah, almighty, and also unchangeable, as he was manifesting himself to be; whereas it was his almightiness alone of which their fathers had had experience. In the age of those patriarchs, therefore, and considering the imperfect view which they could have of him, so far from El Shaddai and Jehovah being opposing titles, they were practically one and the same; precisely as a cube appears to be merely a square when we take notice of its length and breadth, but cannot observe its thickness. To bring this out is to lay bare the real source of many critical misconceptions about the text which has been so greatly misused, and about the patriarchal history. Accordingly the identity of these two names in the patriarchal times is explicitly enough asserted in Ge 17:1, "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Jehovah appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am El Shaddai, walk before me, and be thou perfect." The critics concede that this text belongs to the fundamental document, as they call it; and since it makes their interpretation of Ex 6:3 impossible, and in fact dashes to pieces their hypothesis of a distinction of writers according to the use of the one divine name or the other, they have been driven to make a purely conjectural alteration of the text, and to read Elohim instead of Jehovah. This is a desperate expedient, which involves the confession that the facts of the case are fatal to their hypotheses, and that the editor or supplementer must be supposed to have made an intentional change of the divine name, which they detect and correct, as they restore the original word Elohim. How desperate the resource is may be understood the better when we recollect that they make the Jehovist or the editor such a simpleton as to be unaware that Ex 6:3 pours contempt upon all his previous interpolations; and yet they imagine him so wary or cunning here as to strike out the original word Elohim in order to make the better piece of patchwork by substituting his favorite title Jehovah. The text, as it stands, is conclusive evidence that in the days of Abraham El Shaddai was identical with Jehovah so far as the signification of this latter word had then been unfolded; that is, there was then no difference in the subjective apprehension of the meaning of the two names.: But the objective significance of Jehovah was always deeper and fuller; and at the time of the mission of Moses they came to be distinguished in the apprehension of the church, for the element of unchangeableness was seen to be involved in the name Jehovah. From the time of the worship of the golden calf, and of the gracious pardon granted to the people at the intercession of Moses, to whom a new revelation of the name and character of the covenant God was vouchsafed, the moral characteristics of the name Jehovah came out more prominently still, as in Ex 34:6-7, already quoted. Yet it is only in the times of the New Testament that its full .meaning has been unfolded (that is, as fully as it can be in this world), in connection with the person and work of him who is Jehovah Tsidkenu, "the LORD our Righteousness;" who said of himself, "Before Abraham was, I am;" and who in the epistle to the Hebrew Christians has this nane applied to him and explained of him, that he is Jehovah, who in the beginning laid the foundation of heaven and earth, and who shall continue the same when they shall be folded together like a garment, the Savior who has offered one sacrifice for sins forever, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and to-day and forever.
Undoubtedly, as we have intimated above, there are questions more easily asked than answered in relation to the use of these two names, Jehovah and Elohim, in the history previous to the time of Moses. Possibly those who uphold the common belief that Moses wrote the whole of it have passed over these difficulties too lightly, or have spoken too confidently of having fully explained them; if so, their fault has really been that they have attempted more than they were under any obligation to attempt. Elohim and Jehovah have their differences, yet vastly more numerous and important are their points of agreement; and it may be too much to assert that, whenever they were used, there was retained a consideration of their distinctive meanings. This much, however, we may affirm with perfect confidence-and in doing so we go beyond any requirement which can fairly be made by those who differ from us in this discussion — to a considerable extent it is very easy to show in Genesis, as well as in the later books of Scripture, that these two divine names are employed with an intentional discrimination — Elohim expressing more generally the Deity, and Jehovah expressing God in covenant with Israel, possessed of every perfection, and using it for the good of his people, as his character is manifested in their history. If so, the use of the one or the other name is no proof at all of a difference of authorship. We may moreover assert that the hypothesis of the modern critics entirely breaks down as to this text (Ex 6:3), the solitary passage in which they can even profess to find countenance given to their views; and owing to the importance which they cannot but attach to it, we have examined it at considerable length, in order to show that it is in fact opposed to them as soon as it is rightly interpreted. Moreover, when they press this argument in favor of different writers in the Pentateuch, on account of the different names for the Divine Being, they will find that they need to account for a great deal more than the use of the two words Jehovah and Elohim. There is also El, which Knobel, commenting on this text, reckons an intermediate title; and there is the occasional use of Elohim with a plural verb, as to which Gesenius and others have coarsely suggested that it may be an indication of polytheism left in the syntax of the language; there is also the variation of the presence or the absence of the article with Ei'ohimn; and there is the use of another divine title, Adonai. He who reads the history of Balaam, and observes the use of the three names Elohim, El, and Jehovah, will find difficulty in believing that these are not intentionally varied by the same writer; as indeed the critics in general do not hesitate to ascribe the entire section to the Jehovist. He who notices how Jacob and Israel are used in the closing chapters of Genesis to denote the same individual will probably hesitate to assert that a difference of names for a person, be he man or God, ought to be accounted for by the difference of authorship. This has certainly been affirmed to some extent by Colenso; but his statement will perhaps not meet with more support from those who agree with him in his leading principles than his other statement that Jehovah was a name invented about the age of Samuel and David. We have already noticed that the interpretation of Ex 6:3, to which the critical school are committed, assumes that the word Jehovah was till then unknown; whereas there is varied evidence for its earlier existence. Vaihinger indeed makes the further concession that in the original document, "as is confessed by almost all," the name Jehovah is employed by Jacob a few times (Ge 28:21; Ge 32:10; Ge 49:18). SEE GOD.
(4.) Yet the admission that the name Jehovah was not unknown before the age of Moses, and the consequent impossibility of making the different divine names a proof of diversity of authorship. and of drawing confirmation of this opinion from Ex 6:3, are not felt by the critical school at the present day to be so damaging as they would have been felt by their predecessors, or as they will generally be felt by those who take an impartial view of the arguments. For the tendency now is to rest more upon an alleged difference of style and thought, which is discovered by comparing the fundamental document uith the additions. This line of reasoning necessitates a considerable amount of acquaintance with the language, and also of patient drudgery, even to understand its meaning, and to estimate its value, however roughly; it is therefore impossible to discuss it within our limits here. We have no hesitation, however, in expressing our opinion that it is excessively wearisome in the process, and so vague in the results that these are likely to be estimated very much in conformity with the previous inclinations of the investigator. One of the so- called critical commentaries may present long lists of words peculiar to the different authors; but the imposing array of evidence is collected by a vicious reasoning in a circle. The existence of different authors is inferred from the existence of different sets of words and phrases; but in order to arrive at the grouping of these words and phrases into different sets, the continuous narrative needs to be cut up in the most minute and fantastic manner among different authors. It is a mere assumption, and antecedently improbable in a high degree, that a chapter in Genesis or Exodus is a patchwork of authorship such as modern criticism pronounces it to be; but if we are to believe this on the evidence of the differences in the language and composition of the different parts, we need something more than the assertions of the critics to make us believe that these parts really are different; for all the time they appear to uninitiated readers to be one consecutive and homogeneous piece of writing. It is impossible for the critics to establish any clear usus loquendi without tearing the book often into shreds, and pronouncing passages, and single verses, and clauses of verses, and individual words to be interpolations or alterations; a process which insures its own condemnation. In fact, if there were no other difficulty, he who has attempted the humble task of following the statements of the critics on the subject must have been often brought to a stand-still by their disagreement as to the several writers to whom their respective gifts of sagacity lead them to ascribe the individual passages. On the other hand, there is abundant evidence of diversity of language in passages which they are pretty well agreed in ascribing to the same author, as well as of remarkable similarity of language in writings which they generally attribute to different authors.
In this argument from style in general, as in the previous one from the use of the divine names in particular, we have no object to gain by pressing our reply to the uttermost, and, as some might think, unduly. We might grant that there are traces of a difference of style, and yet deny that this fact is any evidence whatever of difference of authorship; and we should be supported in our denial by the common experience and opinion of men respecting parallel cases in literature, where no theological bias comes in to warp their judgment. The language of Deuteronomy furnishes by far the best case for the critics, although in it (as above detailed) we see many traces of the author of the rest of the Pentateuch; but there are certain peculiarities which we have no difficulty ill attributing to the oratorical character of the book. If anything of the same kind call be established as to certain classes of passages in the first four books, in their genealogical and legislative portions respectively, or in passages involving prophetic announcements, etc., no allegation is simpler or fairer than that the style is intentionally varied with the change of subject; in fact, many of the words paraded in lists of differences of style are naturally or even unavoidably connected with the subjects treated in only a few places. If there were evidence from some other quarter that these passages proceeded from certain different authors, modern criticism could then make use of the peculiar language with propriety in confirmation of its disintegrating hypotheses; but to do so at present is to indulge in the vicious reasoning in a circle of which we have already spoken, or to fall into another great logical vice, by begging the question, in affirming that difference of subject- matter is evidence of difference of authorship. In short, we call admit the existence of differences of style and language only within limits so narrow that they appear as nothing in comparison with the exaggerated estimate that is often given of them. In so far as comparatively trifling differences do exist, while we are ready to suggest reasons in the subject-matter (or even in external circumstances as the use of "Sinai" or "Horeb") which may often explain them, we feel and acknowledge no incumbent duty to do so. For we hold it to be the indefeasible right of every author to change his style and language under the influence of motives which may be inappreciable to his readers; and we hold that this right is exercised by every author in proportion to the strength and freshness of his own individual mind, or of the mind of the age and nation to which he belongs, the variety and compass of the work with which he is engaged, the wealth of the language which he uses, or the culture he has received, and the demand of the human spirit that occasionally changes shall occur, for no other reason than to give it rest from the monotony of a mechanical uniformity.
Before leaving the consideration of this argument, it may be right to notice how it combines in itself so many great fallacies; for it involves also a mistake as to the point which is to be proved. The critics profess to prove that Moses is not the writer of the Pentateuch; and, on their own showing, the evidence of this fact is that there are in it traces of different authors. But this is nothing to the purpose, unless they also prove that these authors were subsequent to the time of Moses. So learned and cautious and orthodox a theologian as Vitringa long ago gave expression to the opinion that Moses may probably have made use of written documents prepared by the patriarchs and safely handed down among the Israelites, till he arose to collect and arrange and supplement them; but if we shrink from asserting that written instruction was given to the patriarchal Church, we must all the more exalt the strength and value of primeval tradition-tradition upon the very subjects which are handled in the book of Genesis. There is, then, no difficulty whatever in maintaining that, before the time of Moses, there existed a body of instruction as to the dealings of God with men, which was known and preserved ill the family that had been called to the knowledge of his grace; and the language of that instruction must have assumed a certain fixity of form, whether we affirm or deny that it was written out and laid up in the repositories of the patriarchs. When Moses began to write the Pentateuch, there was already, therefore, a religious and historical phraseology. Grant everything that the critics imagine they have established, and their original document might be nothing more than the pre-Mosaic writing or tradition; while the editor or supplementer might be Moses himself: or if there be traces of several hands and several styles, nevertheless, as Astruc himself believed, these may be no more than traces of the different (but not contradictory or untrustworthy) rills of patriarchal tradition, which he was guided to collect into one channel, and send down to posterity in the clear, continuous, consistent stream of the narrative in Genesis. The influence of these varieties of style might tell upon him still as he continued his labors in the composition of the other books. This is all a supposition; but it is a supposition vastly more modest and credible than that of the modern disintegrating criticism; and it admits everything which that criticism can even profess to have established by the most microscopic study of the language, and the most merciless vivisection of the subject of its experiments.
(5.) An objection to the unity of the authorship has been drawn from the repetitions which occur in the book; for it is said that these are a sure mark of at least two authors, whose accounts have been thrown into one. This objection presented a more formidable aspect as long as the hypothesis was in favor according to which there were two independent and continuous histories, the Elohistic and the Jehovistic, afterwards combined: the occurrence of double narratives gives an air of plausibility to this supposition. But as soon as we recollect that this hypothesis has been generally abandoned for another, according to which there is only one original continuous history, subsequently interpolated, the objection loses any prima facie verisimilitude that it ever possessed: for why should an editor burden and disfigure the clear narrative as it lay before him, by interpolating accounts which had the look of repetitions, unless the events did really occur a second time? The attempt to assign one of these double accounts to the Elohist and the other to the Jehovist breaks down from time to time by the confession of the critics themselves. Here we introduce a remark in explanation of one or two passages in which a repeated account is given of the same event: this repetition in fill, instead of a mere reference which we might prefer to make, is of a piece with the simple and uninvolved style of thought which characterizes the very structure of the Hebrew language. In cases where our Western languages would express a complex proposition by a compound sentence, in which the subordinate members are introduced and kept in their true pilce by means of relative pronouns and conjunctions, the Hebrew uses simple sentences, and unites his statements by his favorite conjunction "and," to which translators assign a great variety of meanings, according to the exigencies of the moment. By this method, however, his gain in simplicity is counterbalanced by a loss of terseness; since he has often to repeat at length what might have been noticed only incidentally and by an allusion. This mode of dealing with sentences is extended to paragraphs, and has given rise to the occurrence of titles prefixed to sections, and of repeated statements, which misled the earlier disintegrating critics into the belief that here they had evidence of fragments which were afterwards brought together with little care or judgment; whereas their successors have thrown aside the hypothesis of fragments, having become more wary by experience. The clearest case of such repetition is the Elohistic account of creation (Ge 1:1-2:3), and the Jehovistic account (Ge 2:4-25). But it is surely plain enough that the second is an incomplete account, implying that the general comprehensive narrative had gone before; and throwing in additional information of a particular kind in reference to the creation of man, the creature formed in God's image and placed under his moral government, as briefly stated in the first chapter, but now stated more fully in this introduction to the history of redemption, which throws the account of the creation of other beings more into the background.
Besides, it is an entirely erroneous philosophy which prompts men to find fault with the unity or truthfulness of a history because it contains narratives bearing a resemblance to one another. Such repetitions (if this be the correct designation of these narratives) are recorded in all histories of individuals and communities; indeed otherwise experience would not be the great means of disciplining and training mankind. To take no wider range, instances of such repetition, certainly not less remarkable than anything in the books of Moses, occur in other parts of the Bible, including the life of our Lord; and they cannot be escaped, unless by a universally destructive criticism.
Occasionally the charge is put differently in this way: instead of the allegation that there are two varying reports of one transaction, which have been erroneously understood of two different events, it is alleged that two accounts occur of what is confessedly the same matter, and that these accounts are varying or even contradictory; and the explanation given of these alleged contradictions is that they proceed from two different authors. The instances are obtained sometimes by comparing the first four books of Moses among themselves, and sometimes by comparing them with Deuteronomy.
(a.) Those of the former class, contradictions within the compass of the first four books, are of little importance, and demand no lengthened consideration in this condensed statement. Such are the two accounts of creation, to which we have had occasion to refer as illustrating the different aspects of a narrative according as logical connection or the chronological principle of arrangement predominates; the names of Esau's wives. SEE AHOLIBAMAH. A favorite instance is the account in Ex 33:7-11 of the tabernacle of the congregation which Moses was to pitch "without the camp, afar off from the camp," whereas the ordinary accounts place the tabernacle inside the camp, at its very center. But there really is no serious difficulty in the way of accepting the common explanation that this was a preliminary tabernacle, used till the regular tabernacle was constructed, and placed outside the camp at the time when the people were saved by the special intercession of Moses, when on the point of being destroyed for the sin of the golden calf: an opinion which has been slightly modified by those who think it was the private tent of Moses which received this honor at the time when he had declined the Lord's offer to make of him a great nation n the ruin of apostate Israel. Yet the simplest view would be to take ver. 5- 11 as one speech of the Lord to Moses, the whole being in the Hebrew in the future or unfinished tense; except that ver. 6 parenthetically relates, in the perfect tense, how the people humbled themselves according to the opening part of the Lord's directions, whereas the rest of these directions may never have been carried out after the intercession of Moses was completed.
(b.) Passing to the other class of alleged contradictions, in which the four earlier books are placed on the one side and Deuteronomy on the other, as if it belonged to a later age than the latest of them, and betrayed certain differences of belief and sentiment, it deserves to be noticed that a great deal used to be said of the historical contradictions; whereas the wisest of the destructive critics now concede that nothing can be made of these, especially when the oratorical nature of Deuteronomy is considered, and weight is assigned to the form which narratives would assume in a discourse whose object was exhortation. The only cases which require consideration are those in which the laws as laid down in Deuteronomy are said to be different from some in the three preceding books. We admit willingly that there are modifications, within certain comparatively narrow limits, and easily enough explained by recollecting that forty years elapsed between the covenanting in Horeb and that in the land of Moab (De 29:1 [28:69 in Hebrew]); the latter also taking into consideration the new circumstances of the people when they should be settled in their own land. The chief instance of this is the permission to the people to eat flesh anywhere throughout the land of Canaan, if only they took care to pour out the blood upon the earth (De 12:15-16,20-25), for the previous law upon the subject in Leviticus 17 became physically impracticable as soon as the people ceased to live together in the camp. In connection with this there is the account of the priests' share of the sacrifices (De 18:3), which differs from the account in Leviticus and Numbers of the parts of sacrifices which were assigned to the priests. But this statement of "the priests' dues from the people," is in addition to "the offerings of the Lord made by fire," which have already been mentioned at ver. 1; it is a plausible conjecture that these additional dues were assigned to them on purpose to indemnify them for losses sustained by the repeal of the law in Leviticus 17, and in fact there seems to be a reference to this particular statute in Deuteronomy in the account of the evil conduct of Eli's sons in 1Sa 2:13-16. There is also another class of cases in which the alleged contradiction is probably the result of our ignorance, and can be at least hypothetically met and removed. A good example of this is the difficulty alleged to exist in De 15:19-20, as if it gave to the people at large the right to eat the firstlings of their flocks and herds in holy feasts, whereas the earlier legislation had given these firstlings to the priests (Nu 18:15-18); for it is plain that the author of Deuteronomy did not contemplate any contradiction of the divine lot in this arrangement, to which he had made repeated allusion already (De 12:6,17; De 14:22-23). But, in point of fact, nothing is simpler than to understand the law in Deuteronomy as addressed to the collective Israelites as if they were a single individual, in "thou shalt sanctify . . thou shalt eat," etc., leaving the priests and the rest of the people to adjust their respective duties and privileges by the well-known directions of the law in Numbers; and along with this to remember that the earlier law naturally suggests that the priests should make a sacred feast of the first-born animals given to them, at which feast none could more reasonably be expected to be guests than the persons to whom these animals had belonged.
The most important allegation of contradiction between the legislation in the middle books and that in Deuteronomy has reference to the three great orders in the theocracy — the prophetic, the priestly, and the kingly. The first and last must be passed over almost in silence. It is enough to say that the law of the kingdom in Deuteronomy 17 need not surprise any one who observes that the king is represented as the mere viceroy of Jehovah, himself the true and everlasting King of Israel, according to Ex 15:18; Nu 23:21; and who recollects the promises that kings should spring from the loins of the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob (Ge 17:16; Ge 35:11), and along with this the notice that kings had not yet arisen in Israel although they did exist in Edom (Ge 36:31). But certain passages, already considered in so far as they refer to the privileges of the priests, are brought into connection with others in such a way as to suggest the inference that a vast revolution had taken place in the position of the priests and Levites before the time when the author of Deuteronomy published his work, in which his object was to prop up the tottering institutions of his country. The two orders of priests and Levites had come to be confused, the Levites having been all admitted to priestly functions; and the tithes having been seldom paid, they had sunk into poverty, and the scheme of this writer was to compound the matter by securing to them a certain share in these tithes, which were henceforth to be spent in religious feasts at the Temple, where the Levites should have a place along with the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. This representation must be characterized as a mass of unsupported suppositions. That the Levites might often be poor is probable enough, but there is no appearance of general starvation, such as would have been their condition if their chief support had been this share in the sacred feasts. There is no need to puzzle ourselves about the tithe which was spent at these feasts (De 12:6-7,11,17-19, and especially 14:22-29 and 26:12-15), which plainly was quite distinct from the other tithe given to the tribe of Levi as a compensation for having no share in the territorial allotment of Canaan (Nu 18:322). This is rightly expressed in the apocryphal book of Tobit (Tobit 1:6, 7), though in the original it is still more distinct than in our A.V.: "But I alone went often to Jerusalem at the feasts, as it was ordained to all the people of Israel by an everlasting decree, having the first-fruits and tenths of increase, with that which was first shorn; and them gave I at the altar to the priests the children of Aaron. The first tenth part of all increase I gave to the sons of Aaron, who ministered at Jerusalem; another tenth part I sold away, and went and spent it every year at Jerusalem." This hypothesis of a radical change in the position of the priests and Levites, at that late age to which the composition of Deuteronomy is assigned, has been supposed to be supported by two expressions — "the priests the Levites" (De 18:1), or "the priests the sons of Levi" (De 21:5), as if it established the conclusion that all the Levites were represented in this book as performing priestly functions. But; "the priests the Levites" would be a proof of this only if it meant "the priestly Levites," which it does not; its only fair interpretation is "the Levitical priests." Yet it is true that the offices of the Levites and of the priests did come very close to one another, the ministry of the altar being the sole exclusive prerogative of the latter. Hence it is no wonder that in Deuteronomy, which is, comparatively speaking, the people's book of the law, it is the points of agreement which are noted rather than the points of difference; especially since none of the regulations as to sacrifices are given anywhere in the book. The close connection of the priests and the rest of the Levites is taken for granted throughout the whole law, as in the first dedication of the entire tribe, on occasion of the worship of the golden calf (Ex 32:25-29), and this representation of them in united privileges or duties continues through the book of Joshua (in which the critics are forced to imagine absurdly that the same confusion of the two orders appears, see Jos 3:3) down to the arguments in Mal 2:1-9 and in Hebrews 7. Where, as in the earlier books of the law "the sons of Aaron" are mentioned very naturally, while he was living and they were literally his sons; after his death, and as a new generation of priests was growing up, it was equally natural to alter the expression into in "the priests the sons of Levi," or "the Levitical priests." This name was peculiarly appropriate after the revolt of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram: it reminded the Levites of their high honor as God's servants, although the service of the altar was restricted to a single family among them (see Nu 16:7-10; Nu 17:3-9 [ver. 18-24, Hebrews]); and it summoned the whole congregation of Israel to give honor in spiritual things to this tribe which had so few political advantages, and whose fortunes had undergone a marvelous revolution since the time when Jacob pronounced a curse upon them. SEE LEVI and SEE LEVITE.
(6.) It is alleged that in the Pentateuch there are distinct traces of any age later than that of Moses; and certainly, if this can be established, it follows either that Moses did not write the book, or else that it has been interpolated.
(a.) There are certain geographical names, particularly Bethel and Hebron, which are supposed not to have been in use till the Israelites took possession of the land, and so displaced the ancient names Luz and Kirjatharba. But there is no real difficulty in such cases, nor in another, for which SEE HORMAH. The only truly difficult case is that of Dan (Ge 14:14, comp. Jg 18:29). Even of this several plausible solutions can be offered, and there is another mode of dealing with it to which we have adverted. SEE DAN.
(b.) There are sentences which are said to bear evidence that they were not written by Moses. There are but one or two of these that lend much plausibility to this argument; and deferring what may be said of them, if this be true, till we revert to the case of Dan just noticed, we reply at present that we see no serious difficulty in the way of attributing them to the pen of Moses. It is written (Ex 16:35), "And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited: they did eat manna until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan." There is no reason why Moses should not have written all this, except on the unwarrantable and erroneous assumption that we make the middle books of the Pentateuch a kind of journal written at the time when each event occurred, and not even remodeled before the work was finished. Just as little do we see difficulty in attributing to Moses himself the observation (Nu 12:3), "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." It is no more a difficulty than that David should plead his righteousness and integrity as he often does; or Paul speak of his not being a whit behind the very chiefest apostles, and of his laboring more abundantly than all of them; or that John should habitually name himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved," or "the beloved disciple." Such language is due to the fact that the "holy men of old," who "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," thought so little of themselves when they were writing, that they were equally ready to tell the defects of their own character and the graces bestowed on them by God, when it was fitting that such a statement should be made. In this particular case there was such a fitness, as well to show plainly how unreasonable the conduct of the brother and sister of Moses was, as to give point to the statement that Jehovah himself suddenly interposed to vindicate his faithful and honored servant, who might probably never have spoken in his own vindication.
(c.) A phrase has been thought to betray a more recent date than the age of Moses, when something is said to have occurred the results of which continue "unto this day." But this is a phrase which by no means necessarily indicates any great length of time; which indicates occasionally a pretty short time, so far as we can infer from the probabilities of the case; and which sometimes must be understood of a short time, as in Jos 6:25 (for it is frequent in Joshua as well as in the Pentateuch, and the same inference has been drawn in regard to both these books), "And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day." In fairness we mention one passage which may occasion serious difficulty to some minds, and we know of no other; it is De 3:14: "Jair the son of Manasseh took all the country of Argob unto the coasts of Geshuri and Maachathi, and called them after his own name, Bashan-havoth-jair, unto this day." Yet even in this case, referring to an interval of no more than a few months, we ought to recollect how difficult it is to change the name of an entire district; if Jair succeeded in this at first, securing for the first six months both his position in the land and his new name for it by way of a memorial of himself, there was less risk of the name being subsequently lost. In general, as well as in reference to this particular case, we ought to take into account the marvelous revolution — religious, social, and political — which was involved in the transition occurring at the end of the life and administration of Moses, from the patriarchal period of wandering to that of Israel settled in the Land of Promise; and though a few months might be all that separated two events in point of time, yet within that little period were compressed transactions more remarkable and important than are often witnessed in whole ages of common history. At such a turning- point in the history of the Church and people of Israel, it does not surprise us that Moses should use the expression that events occurred and changes were ushered in which continued "unto this day."
(d.) The quotation from "the book of the wars of the Lord" (Nu 21:14-15), and others apparently of a similar kind in the same chapter, are thought to be incredible in a contemporary history, though natural enough in a writing of a later age, when these snatches of song might become valuable as the testimony of eye-witnesses. But there is no evidence of the assumption that it was the historian's object to secure corroboration of his statements. While there is no obligation lying on us to assign the reason why these snatches of hymns appear where they do, the supposition is natural enough that Moses incorporated them in his history as specimens of the new spiritual life which had been wakened in the young generation of Israelites, and as evidences that God had indeed visited them with his grace, and was fitting them to take up the mission which had fallen from the unworthy hands of those who, in Exodus 15, "sang his praise," but "soon forgat his works" (Ps 106:12-13; comp. the anticipations, Ex 15:14-16, with the fulfillments, Nu 21:21-35; Nu 22:2-4, etc.).
(e.) It is scarcely worth while to dwell upon certain incidental expressions which have been said to betray the hand of a later writer. Such are, that "the Canaanite was then (אָז) in the land" (Ge 12:6; comp. 13:7); and Joseph's words, "I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews" (Ge 40:15). We select one case on account of its seeming greater strength. In Le 18:28 the Israelites are warned to avoid the practices by which the land of Canaan had already been polluted, "that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you;" from which it is inferred that this was not written till after the Canaanites had been exterminated. But in truth the Hebrew language is very poorly furnished with tenses. Had this speech been in Latin, and had the future perfect been used — "that the land may not spue you out, in your defiling it, as it shall have spued out the nations that were before you" — a translation of it into Hebrew could not have been better expressed than in the present words of the Hebrew Bible. This really future meaning we take to be the meaning of the passage. Yet if the literal past time is insisted on by any one, there are two explanations, either of which is easy enough: either the sentence received its present form of expression as Moses revised his work, after the people of Sihon and Og had been destroyed; or else the very repulsiveness of the metaphorical language was meant to teach that the strength of the Canaanites was only apparent, that the land had already vomited them forth, and that they lay upon its surface as a loathsome incumbrance which must now be removed by Israel.
(7.) Scientific Objections. — Many who are able to explain to their satisfaction most of the above difficulties, are still troubled by others of a different class resting on alleged contradictions between the language of the Mosaic books and the facts of science. For instance, the Adamic creation is declared to contradict the conclusions of geology, inasmuch as the period required for bringing the crust of the earth into its existing condition must have included countless centuries, and not a brief period of six days. In the same way it is first argued that the scriptural narrative involves a universal deluge, and then, this meaning being assumed, that such a deluge, with all its accompanying circumstances, as recorded in Genesis, cannot have taken place without a miracle wholly stupendous. A third objection is grounded on the chronology of the Bible, and on the asserted fact that the duration of man upon the earth has extended to a period at least exceeding four or five times the 6000 years allotted to him in the Pentateuch. A fourth objection is directed against the descent of all mankind from a single pair, and their primary migrations as recorded by Moses. It assumes that the physical peculiarities distinguishing the various races of the world are the results of a difference in species, not of a variety caused by the influence of climatic, physical, and social circumstances. There are many other minor objections of a more frivolous character, such as that which insists on fixing upon the word "firmament," in Ge 1:6, the sense of a permanent solid vault, and then pointing out the opposition in which such an idea stands to astronomical science; or such as the objection against the language of Joshua (Jos 10:12), which is sufficiently answered by reference to the language of any modern almanac, and by the observation that if the ancient Scriptures had been written in the terminology of science, they would have been simply unintelligible to the generation to which they were first given. But these captious difficulties are of little weight compared to the four objections mentioned above, all of which touch questions of the gravest importance. In addition to those general elements of error which We shall proceed to point out as belonging in common to all the modern objections urged against the Pentateuch, there are some considerations bearing specially upon this scientific class of difficulties to which it is necessary briefly to call attention.
(a.) In regard to theories of the creation and the deluge, it is necessary to distinguish with the utmost possible precision between the language of Scripture and any private interpretations of it. When the question is propounded whether the six days of the Adamic creation were literal days of one revolution of the globe, or were successive periods of time; when it is asked whether the deluge was partial or universal, the particular opinion which each man may form must not be fastened on the scriptural language, as if it were its necessary and only admissible interpretation. It must be acknowledged that opinions on either side are equally consistent with a devout acceptance of the inspired Word. Experience teaches the necessity of this caution; for the lessons of geology have compelled us to separate between the creation and the beginning of Ge 1:1, and the Adamic creation of the later verses, and to allow the existence of untold periods between them. Now that we are accustomed to this, we find that the change of interpretation has not put any dishonor on the text, and we must feel that what has happened in regard to one verse may happen in regard to others. Modern science has undoubtedly proved the pre-existence of immense geological periods; but we are quite able to reconcile them with the scriptural narrative. SEE CREATION.
(b.) The same observation applies to the question of the deluge, and however these questions may be finally solved, the apologist for the Pentateuch must stand by the text of Scripture, and, whether he believes in a partial deluge or a universal deluge, must not confuse the infallible text with his own fallible interpretation of it. SEE DELUGE.
(c.) Lastly, the state of the controversy relative to the antiquity of man and the origin of races illustrates with peculiar force the crude and incomplete state of all scientific investigation on these subjects, and the consequent rashness of all conclusions drawn from them unfavorable to the authority of the Pentateuch. For the rationalistic attack is urged from two contrary directions, and is supported by arguments directly contradictory to each other. On the one side we are told that the distinctive physical peculiarities of different human races are so deep, so irremovable, that they must be considered to indicate diversity of species, and not simply varieties of one species; that no climatic and social influences call explain them; that consequently the races of men must have been created distinct, and the scriptural narrative which asserts the common descent of all mankind must be unworthy of credit. SEE PREADAMITES. On the other side, the very fact of an intelligent creation is called into question, on the ground that there are in the world no distinctions of fixed species, but only variations so mutable that all existing differences are the mere result of natural causes. The inevitable conclusion from such premises is that all forms of life whatever are self-developed out of one common primal form, and the idea of creation becomes superfluous, for the original monad can scarcely be considered as less self-developed than all the forms which have sprung from it. That such is the natural tendency of Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of species we have a most impartial witness. "This theory, when fully enunciated, founds the pedigree of living nature upon the most elementary form of vitalized matter. One step farther would carry us back, without greater violence to probability, to inorganic rudiments, and then we should be called upon to recognize in ourselves, and in the exquisite elaborations of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, the ultimate results of mere material forces, left free to follow their own unaided tendencies" (Sir W. Armstrong at the British Association at Newcastle, 1863). On the one side we are called to believe in the evidence of fixed species; and on the other side to believe in their non-existence. We are asked to believe that all living beings whatever, including man himself, have descended from original monads, and at the same time to believe that the races of mankind cannot have descended from a common parentage. The two arguments are totally irreconcilable and till something like congruity can be introduced into our scientific theories, it is premature even to suggest their possible contradiction to the inspired authority of the Pentateuch. SEE SPECIES, ORIGIN OF.
(8.) Alleged Moral Incongruities in the Pentateuch. This class of objections is so indefinite in its nature as to make explanation and refutation, in the brief space of an article, equally difficult. They are all founded on the sufficiency of the human consciousness to pass a verdict on the propriety or impropriety of certain acts ascribed to God in the Pentateuch. The form they take is, however, more subtle than this. Certain acts imputed to God are contrary to the ideal which the human mind frames of the Deity; therefore it is argued that God cannot have done them, and consequently the books which attribute them to him cannot declare the truth, cannot be divinely inspired. The ideal God in the human consciousness is made the standard whereby revelation is measured. For instance, it is argued that the destruction of the Canaanitish nations by the sword of Israel under express command was a cruel deed, at which the human mind revolts, and which it is impossible to believe that God could have done. Objections of the same kind are urged against the Mosaic law, both against its positive enactments, as in the case of slavery, and against the minute and apparently trivial character of many of its details; and then, in support of these allegations, a contrast is drawn between the spirit of the Mosaic code and the spirit of the Gospels and epistles. It will be enough for the present purpose to reply that these objections rest almost entirely, and derive any force they may appear to have, from a misapprehension of the facts of the case, and an erroneous estimate of the Mosaic code on the one side, and of the Christian dispensation upon the other. A candid examination of the whole narrative shows that the destruction of the Canaanitish nations was purely a judicial act, wherein God was the judge and the people of Israel the authorized and divinely appointed executioners. It will be found that the utmost care was taken to present the whole transaction in this specific aspect, and that this act of judicial severity stood in the sharpest possible contrast to the general tenor of the Mosaic law, which was tolerant, gentle, and singularly beneficent both in spirit and in. its positive provisions. Looking at the Pentateuch, we find in it the same law of love which we find in the Gospels; and looking at the Gospel, we find in God the same attribute of punitive justice which stands conspicuous in the law. The argument may be carried farther, for the analogy between God's character and dealings in providence and his dealings in grace, as contained in the book of revelation, is close and exact in the highest degree. On this whole question Bp. Butler's immortal Analogy may safely be referred to. SEE CANAANITE.
Into the details of these various objections — critical, historical, scientific, and moral — this article will not farther enter, partly from considerations of space, partly because many of them will be found treated in other articles of this Cyclopaedia. The student is referred, for their more formal refutation, to the almost voluminous literature which the controversy of the last few years has called into existence. With reference to the special form they have assumed in the Critical Examination of the Pentateuch, by Dr. Colenso, bishop of Natal, every information will be found in recent publications. The general questions of scholarship will be found ably handled in the Examination of Dr. Colenso's work, issued by the late lamented Dr. M'Caul. Reference may also be usefully made to Colenso's Defections Examined (Lond. 1863), by Dr. Benisch, a Jewish doctor. For the numerical calculations, the student should refer to the Exodus of Israel (Lond. 1863), by Rev. P. R. Birks, in which the are submitted to a searching examination. For questions of topography, a smaller work, entitled The Pentateuch and the Gospel (Lond. 1865), by Prof. Porter, of Belfast, the well-known author of Five Years in Damascus, Murray's Hand-book of Syria, etc., will be found full of valuable information.
V. Literature. — Some of this has been cited above; and much of the remainder is contained in general introductions or commentaries on the whole of the O.T., or on the several books of Moses. We mention here only the critical and exegetical works on the whole Pentateuch separately. De Bafiolas, פֵּרוּשׁ (Mantua, 1476-80, fol., and later); Aben-Ezra, סֵפֶר הִיָּשָׁר (Naples, 1488, fol., and often later in various formns and combinations); Fostat R. C.], Commentanus [includ. other books] (Hisp. 1491, etc., 4to); Sal. Jizchaki (Rashi), פֵּרוּשׁ הִתּוֹרָה (Salonica, 1515, fol., and very often since [last ed. Berlin, 1867]; in Latin, by Breithaupt, Gotha, 1713, 4to; in German, by Haymann, Bonn, 1833, 8vo; by Dukes, Prague, 1838, 8vo); Bechor-Schor, פֵּרוּשׁ (Constant. 1520, fol.); Aboab, פֵּרוּשׁ(ibid. 1525, 4to; Ven. 1548; Cracow, 1587; Wilmend. 1713, fol.);
D'Illescas, אַמרֵי נֹעִם (Constant. 1540, 4to, and since); Achai, סֵפֶר שׁאֶלתּוֹת (ed. Chaffi, Ven. 1546; ed. Berlin, Dyckerfurt, 1786, fol.); Jehudah ben-Isaac, עֶשׂרַים ואִרבִע (ed. Jechiel ben-Jekuthiel, Venice, 1547, 4to); Oleaster [R. C.], Commentarius (Olyssop. 1556, etc., fol.); Elijah of Mantua, אוֹר עֵינִים (Cremona, 1557, 8vo); Bresch, חוּמִשׁ (ibid. 1560, fol., and later); Ferus [R. C.], Enarrationes (Colon. 1572-4, 2 vols. 8vo); Abrabanel, פֵּרוּשׁ הִתּוֹרָה (Ven. 1579, 1604, fol.; ed. Van Bashuysen, Hanau, 1710, fol.; also Amst. 1768-71, 4 vols. 4to); Arvivo, תִּנחוּמוֹת אֵל(Salonica, 1583, fol.); Galesinus [R. C.], Commentarius (Romans 1587, 4to); Alscheich, תּוֹרִת משֶׁה (Constant. 159-, fol., and often later); Chytraeus, Narrationes (Vitemb. 1590, fol.; also in Opp. i); Capponus [R. C.], Commentarius (Ven. 1590, fol.); Junius, Explicationes (L. B. 1594, 1602; Genev. 1609, 5 vols. 4to); Marbach, Hypomnemata (Argent. 1597, 2 vols. 4to); Pelargus, Comnmentaria (Lips. 1598-1609, 5 vols. 4to); Aretius,-Commentarii (Bern 1602 8vo); Mos. Albelda, דָּרִשׁ משֶׁה (Ven. 1603, fol.); Abigdors, פֵּרוּשׁ (Cracow, 1604, 4to); Heerbrand, Commentarius (Tubing. 1609, fol.); Ainsworth, Annotations [includ. Psalm and Cant.] (Lond. 1612-23, 6 vols. 4to, and later; also in Dutch, Leoward. 1690, fol.); Leyser, בּאֵר מִיַם חִיַּים (Venice, 1614; Frankfort-on-the- Main, 1707, fol.); Schick, זרַיעִת יַצחָק (Prague, 1615, 4to); A Lapide, In Pentateuchum (Antw. 1616, 4to); Drusius, Commentarius [on difficult passages] (Franeck. 1617, 4to); Marius [R. C.], Comnmentarius (Colon. 1621, fol.); Bonfrere [R. C.], Commentarius (Antw. 1625, fol.); Cromm [R. C.], Illustrationes (Lovan. 1629, 1630, 2 vols. 4to); Alstedt, Adnotationes (Herb. 1631, 1640, 8vo); Jansenius [R. C.], Commentarius (Lovan. 1639, 1641, 1644; Par. 1649, 1661, 4to); Heilpron, אִחֲבִת צַיּוֹן (Loblin, 1639, fol.); Polno, אוֹר תּוֹרָה (ibid. 1642, 4to); Walther, Spongia Mosaica (Norib. 1642, 4to); Novarinus [R. C.], Notce (Veron. 1646, 2 vols. fol.); Amato, שֶׁמֶן הִטּוֹב (Venice, 1657, fol.); Varenius, Decades (Rost. 1659-75, 4 vols. 4to); Cregut, Revelator Arcanorum (Genev. 1666, 4to); Osiander, Commentarius (Tubing. 1676-8, 5 vols. fol.); Aboab [Israelite], Parafrasis (Amst. 1681, fol.); Ising, Exrercitationes (Regroin. 1683, 4to); Von der Hardt, Ephemerides Philologicce (Helmst. 1693, 8vo; 1696, 4to); Kidder, Commentary (Lond. 1694, 4to); Loria, פֵּרוּשׁ הִתּוֹרָה (Herbon, 1694, 8vo); Calvoer, Gloria Mosis (Gosl. 1696, 4to); Sterring, Animadversiones (Leovard. 1696; L. B. 1721, 4to); Athar, אוֹר הִחִיַּים(Venice, 17-, 4to, and often); Dupin, Notce (Par. 1702, 2 vols. 8vo); Frassen [R. C.], Disquisitiones (ibid. 1705, 4to); Meir (Rashbam), פֵּרוּשׁ על הִתּוֹרָה (Berl. 1705, 2 vols. 4to; Amst. 1760, 2 vols. 4to); Gensburg, נִפתָּלַי שׁבִע רָצוֹן (Hamb. 3708, fol.); Tomaschov, פֵּרוּשׁ (Venice, 1710, fol.); Chefez, מלֶאכֶת מִחֲשֶׁבֶת (ibid. 1710, fol.); Engelschall, Betracht. aus d.f. B. Mosis (Dresd. 1712, 2 vols. 8vo); Helvig [R. C.], Qucestiones (Colossians 1713, fol.); Marck, Analysis Exegetica (L. B. 1713, 4to); Zarfati, צוּŠ דּבִשׁ (Amst. 1718, fol.); Bender, Auslegung (F. ad M. 1721, 4to); Israel ben-Isaac, חֲכָמַים אֲסַיפִת (ed. Brod, Offenb. 1722, 8vo; ed. Spetz, ibid. 1802, 4to); Landsberger, שׁוֹמֵר אמֵוּנַים (Offenb. 1724, 4to); Abulefia, עֵוֹ חִיַּים (Smyrna, 1726, fol.) also יוֹסֵŠ לֶקִח (ibid. 1731, 4to); A. Cattenburgh [R. C.], Syntagma (Amst. 1737, 4to); Jameson, E: — position (Lond. 1748, fol.); Ostrob, בָּרוּך מַבָּנַים אָשֵׁר (Zolk.. 1749, fol.); Alexander-Susskind, מַצנֶפֶת בִּד (ibid. 1757, fol.); Tismenitz, בֵּית חַלֵּל (Fr. ad 0. 1760, 4to); Jacob ben-Pesach, זֶרִע יִעֲקוֹב (Fiirth, 1765, 4to); Robertson, Clavis (Edinb. 1770, 8vo); Bate, Notes [includ. other books] (Lond. 1773, 4to); Moldenhauer, Commentarius (Quedlinb. 1774-5, 2 vols. 4to); Nacho mani, זֶרִע שַׁמשׁוֹן (Mantua, 1778, fol.); Mendelssohn, Auslegung (Berl. 1780-3, 5 vols. 8vo); Dathe, Note (Hal, 1781, 1792, 8vo); Jehudah ben-Eliezer, יהוּדָה מַנחִת, also Nicola, פֵּרוּשׁ (ed. Nunez- Vaez, Leghorn, 1783, fol.); Di Trani, נַמּוּקֵי הִחוּמִשׁ (ed. Asulai, Leghorn, 1792, fol.); Marsh, Authenticity of Pentateuch (Lond. 1792, 8vo); Gaab, Erklar. (Tub. 1796, 8vo); Wittmann, Annotationes (Regensb. 1796, 8vo); Jones, Authenticity of Pentateuch (Lond. 1797, 8vo); Zebi, חֶמֶד צבַי (Fiirth, 1798, 4to); Solestein, Erakl'r. (Berl. 1800, 8vo); Asulai, נִחִל קדוּמַים (Leghorn, 1800, 4to); Faber, Horce Mosaicce (Lond. 1801, 1818, 2 vols. 8vo); Vater, Commentar; Jacob ben-A , פֵּרוּשׁ (ed. liBr, Zolk. 1806, 4to; ed. Rosenthal, Hanov. 1838, 4to); Griesinger, Ueb. d. Pentateuch (Stuttg. 1806, 8vo); Schrenzel, נֹעֵם מגָדַים (Lemb. 1807, 1859, 4to); Morison, Introductory Key (Perth, 1810, 8vo); Meyer, Apologie d. Pentat. (Sulzb. 1811, 8vo); Kelle, Wurdigung d. Mos. Schrift. (Freib. 1811 sq., 3 vols. 8vo); also Anmerk. (ibid. 1817-21, 2 vols. 8vo); Neumann, Ansicht d. Pentat. (Bresl. 1812, 4to); Fritzsche, Aechtheit d. Pentat. (Leipz. 1814, 8vo); Aharon hal-Levi, חַדּוּשַׁים, etc. (Leghorn, 1815, fol.); Herbst, De Pentat. auctore et editore (Elvee, 1817, 8vo); Calvo, מַנחָה חֲדָשָׁה(Rodelh. 1818, 8vo); Heiden., heim, חוּמִשׁ מאוֹר עֵינִים (ibid. 1818-21, 8vo); Venusi, Uebersetz. (Prag. 1820, 4to); Aharon ben-Elia, פֶתֶר תּוֹרָה(ed. Kosegarten, Jena, 1824, 4to); Horwitz, פָּנַים רָפוֹת (Ostrob. 1824, 8vo); Pfister, Betracht. (Wurzb. 1828, 8vo); Hagel, Apologie d. Moses (Sulzb. 1828, 8vo); Schumann, Notce (vol. i, Lips. 1829, 8vo); Hartmann, Plan d. funf B. Mosis (Rost. 1831, 8vo); Heinemann [Israelite], Commentar (Berlin, 1831-3, 5 vols. 8vo); Blunt, Principles of the Mos. Writings (Lond. 1833, 8vo); Wittman, Pentat. Mosis (Lat. and Ger. Landsb. 1834, 8vo); Ranke, Unters. iib. d. Pentat. (Erlang. 1834-40, 2 vols. 8vo); Stahelin, Unters. ub. d. Pentat. (in the Stud. u. Krit. 1835, p. 461 sq.); Hengstenberg, Authentie d. Pent. (Berl. 1836-9, 2 vols. 8vo; tr. Edinb. 1847, 2 vols. 8vo); also Die Biicher Mosis (Berl. 1841, 8vo; tr. Edinb. 1845, 8vo); Thistlethwaite, Sermons (Lond. 1837-8, 4 vols. 12mo); Landauer. Form d. Pentat. (Stattg. 1838, 8vo); Meklenburg, Ctommeniarius (Lips. 1839, 8vo); Caunter, Poetry of the Pentat. (Lond. 1839, 2 vols. 8vo); Arnheim [Israelite], Anmerk. (Glogau, 1839-41, 5 vols.; ibid. 1842, 7 vols. 8vo); Bertheau, Die sieben Gruppen, etc. (Gott. 1840, 8vo); Herxheimer [Israelite], Erklar. (Berl. 1841,1850,1865, 8vo); Thiersch, De Pentat. versione Alex. (Berol. 1841, 8vo); Thornton, Lectures (Lond. 1843, 8vo); Kurtz, Einleit. in d. Pentat. (Leipz. 1844, 8vo); Baumgarten, Commentar (Kiel, 1844, 2 vols. 8vo); Von Gerlach, Commentary (from the Germ. Edinb. 1846, 8vo); Graves, Lectures (Lond. 1846, 8vo); Homberg, הִכּוֹרֵם (Vienna, 1846-9, 8vo); Havernick, Introduction (from the German, Edinb. 1850, 8vo); Weiss [Israelite], Investigation of the Pentat. (Dundee, 1850, 8vo); Hamilton, Defence of the Pentat. (Lond. 1851; N. Y. 1852, 8vo); Sorensen, Inhalt u. Alter d. Pentat. (pt. i, Kiel, 1851, 8vo); Sanguinetti, חֲדָשָׁה עיֹלָה (Leghorn, 1853, fol.); Riehm, Gesetzgebung Mosis (Leips. 1854. 8vo); Macdonald, Introduction to the Pent. (Edinb. 1861, 2 vols. 8vo); E. Wilna [IsraeliteJ, Commentarius (ed. Fischel, Berl. 1862, 8vo); Mosar, דִּע מָה (Berl. 1862, 8vo); Wogue, Traduction et Notes (Par. 1862 sq., 5 vols. 8vo); Bartlett, Character and Authorship of the Pentat. (in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Apr. and July, 1863, July and Oct. 1864); De Solla, Vocabulary of the Pent. (Lond. 1865, 8vo); Hirsch, Erlaut. (vol. i and ii, F. ad M. 1867 sq. 8vo); Smith (W. J. D.), Authorship, etc., of the Pentateuch (vol. i, Lond. 1868, 8vo); Norton, The Pentateuch in relation of Jewish and Christian Dispensations (Lond. 1870, 8vo); Margoliouth, Poetry ofthe Pentateuch (ibid. 1871, 8vo). See also Rawlinson's refutation (in Aids to Faith, a reply to the Essays and Reviews, repub. N. Y. 1852, Essay 6) of the rationalistic attacks upon the Pentateuch by Bunsen and others. Bishop Colenso's Pentateuch and Joshua Examined (Lond. 1852, 8vo) was answered by numerous books and reviews (see a list in Low's Publisher's Circular, Jan. 15, 1863). SEE COMMENTARY.
The Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature was edited by John McClintock and James Strong. It contains nearly 50,000 articles pertaining to Biblical and other religious literature, people, creeds, etc. It is a fantastic research tool for broad Christian study.
John McClintock was born October 27, 1814 in Philadelphia to Irish immigrants, John and Martha McClintock. He began as a clerk in his father's store, and then became a bookkeeper in the Methodist Book Concern in New York. Here he converted to Methodism and considered joining the ministry. McClintock entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1832 and graduated with high honors three years later. Subsequently, he was awarded a doctorate of divinity degree from the same institution in 1848.WikipediaRead More