Authorship of the Pentateuch

It is the object of the present Article to set forth some of the reasons which justify intelligent men in holding the firm belief that Moses, the great leader of Israel, was the author of the Pentateuch.

In maintaining this proposition, it is not asserted, (1) that the present text is free from all errors of transcription; nor (2) that the volume has never received any minor modification, made by inspired, and therefore competent, men; nor. (3) that Moses incorporated into his work no pre - existing materials, handed down by valid tradition or written record; nor (4 ) that the account of Moses ' s own death and character (Deut, xxxiv.) was written by himself.

There are reasons, both general and special, for admitting that the text of the Pentateuch, though preserved with extraordinary care, yet contains some minor blemishes. It is, moreover, so far from being intrinsically probable that the oldest portion of the scriptures should have passed, for a thousand years through the hands of inspired men without any explanatory modification whatever, that a few surface marks of revision would not offer the slightest objection to evidence, otherwise conclusive, of the early origin of the volume as a whole. It does not require a tradition that the prophet Ezra revised the earlier scriptures, to render plausible a procedure which now yearly takes place in some form in the editing of old books. That Moses may have used, with or without change, other oral or written narratives, at the same time endorsing them, is no more incompatible with his proper authorship, than a similar course invariably pursued by modern historians is inconsistent with their claims as authors. We may, in due time, have occasion to allude to the indications that such was the fact. And furthermore, the annexation of a sketch of his death and character directly to the end of his narrative, is only the simplest mode of doing what is constantly practised now in the prefixing of a biographical notice of an author to his works. Thus the closing portion of Macaulay's fifth volume of history (in the American edition), is a sketch of his life and writings; and that of Hugh Miller's last work (also in the American edition) is a memorial of his death and character' although in each of these instances the modern art of printing has transposed the order of composition, and placed first that which in a manuscript must have stood last.¹ The appended sketch of Moses's death and character, therefore, so far from impairing the proof of his authorship, is rather the testimony of early antiquity in its favor.

We need not add that we shall not concern ourselves with trivial questions as to the mode of composition, but hold ourselves to the fundamental position that Moses was the responsible author of the volume.

With these preliminary remarks, we proceed to the theme. The question is a question of evidence. It concerns a document, and is to be settled on such kinds of evidence as pertain to documents. And here it is important to bear in mind wherein that evidence must consist. Of course no living witness can be summoned to testify to his personal knowledge of a fact that took place three thousand years ago. A contemporary deposition, made under oath and cross-examination (were such a thing supposable), would be now but another ancient document, itself requiring to be vouched for. The evidence therefore that an ancient document was written by a specified individual, must be found in such particulars as the following: The statements of the document itself, especially if uncontradicted; the reception of it and action upon it by those who had the means of knowing, especially those whose interests and expectations were at stake upon it; universal consent, so far as ascertainable, from the date of its origin, and particularly its undisputed recognition by the chain of subsequent writers; its preservation and production by the natural and proper custodians, as the work of the alleged author; the judgment of genuine experts; the absence of all rival claimants, much more if there is even no plausible counter-hypothesis; traces of the time and circumstances of the alleged author ; together with the appearance of manifest motives, qualifications, and opportunities, on his part, to compose such a treatise.

When such evidences all meet around a document, and no counter testimony is produced, and no objections raised of which the known circumstances do not afford an admissible solution, the case is as strong as it well can be. It will be our endeavor to show, though not in this precise order or phraseology, that all these indications actually meet to prove that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. The evidence we believe to be remarkably conclusive.

We shall show that, I. The fact is rendered entirely admissible by the nature and circumstances of the case; II. It is sustained by positive evidence, varied, abundant, and uncontradicted; III. It is corroborated by various collateral indications and circumstantial evidence; IV. It is exposed to no decisive or even formidable objections.

I. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is rendered entirely admissible by the nature and circumstances of the case. All the requisite conditions were in existence:

1. The art of writing already existed, and was largely in use before the time of Moses. The objection was once boldly raised by von Bohlen and Vatke, was for a time received by Gesenius and De Wette, and was reiterated by Professor Norton in 1848, that there is no evidence that alphabetic writing existed in the time of Moses; or at least that it could have been known to the Hebrews² This objection has long been exploded. Sir H. Rawlinson regards the oldest inscribed bricks found at Babylon as dating back probably to about b. c. 2200.³ And so far from there being any doubt as to the existence of writing then in Egypt, the present tendency is to assign it even an extravagant antiquity. Bunsen declares that the art of writing " was invented ages before the time of Moses."⁴ Lepsius affirms that " we see on the monuments, between three and four thousand years before Christ, a perfectly-formed system of writing [the hieroglyphic] and a universal habit of writing, of which the signs, when rapidly used, sometimes approached the hieratical short-hand";⁵ and he declares that there can be "no doubt concerning the remarkable statement of Diodorus (I. 49) on good authority, that king Osmandyas (i. e. Ramses Miamun) built a library in his temple at Thebes, as early as the fourteenth century before Christ."⁶ A soberer authority, Seyffarth, who has handled more than ten thousand Egyptian papyrus-rolls, affirms that at least two thousand years before Christ, that is in patriarchal times, writing was done on papyrus in Egypt.⁷ And the cautious Wilkinson regards the hieratic character as having come into use as early as about b. c. 2240.⁸ We are at liberty to regard any or all of these figures as but rude approximations to the actual dates; still they all concur in referring the use of writing to a period long anterior to Moses, earlier even than the date commonly assigned to Abraham.

This art was practised, and most abundantly, in the very nation among whom the Hebrews dwelt for some hundreds of years. The ancient Egyptians were a race of indefatigable writers. They inscribed or marked everything that admitted of it, from a temple, an obelisk, a pyramid, or a tomb, to a brick, a sarcophagus, a bracelet, or a seal-ring. Everything was done in writing. In all pictorial representations the scribe was ubiquitous. In levying soldiers, scribes write down the names; they count, in the king's presence, the severed hands of the slain; they present to him the amount of weapons, horses, and other booty.⁹ The scribe notes down weights, in the markets and the jeweller's shop alike;¹⁰ he records, for the steward, all the products of the farm, — sheep, goats, asses, oxen, cows, geese, goslings, and even eggs.¹¹ No bargain of consequence, says Wilkinson, was made without a written voucher.¹² If we may trust such Egyptologers as Birch, Cottrell, and Bunsen, the "Book of the Dead" was already becoming antiquated in style two thousand years before Christ. There is a collection of Egyptian proverbs dating back to 2200 b. c, and a tale, " the Two Brothers," written as early as b. c. 1308.¹³

In the midst of this universal habit of writing, extending from the public monuments of the empire down to the very bricks of which the government monopolized the manufacture, had the Hebrews lived.¹⁴ That they thoroughly imbibed the influence, appears alike in the formal registers and records, which certainly abound in the sacred volume, and more clearly, because still more unconsciously, in the language itself. Thus the earliest "officers" of the Hebrews in Egypt, in the desert, and in the conquest and government of Canaan, bear in Hebrew the significant name of שֹׁטִרים (writers).¹⁵ And it is an equally significant circumstance, indicative of fresh contact with Egypt, that this term occurs more than twice as many times in the Pentateuch and Joshua as in all the rest of the Old Testaments.¹⁶

2. The occasion and urgent motive for such a composition, were also in existence.

The exodus of Israel and the journey to Canaan under the guidance and control of Moses, must, as we have shown, on the very lowest historic platform be accepted as a fact. In that fact a nation had sprung into independent life. They had found a great leader, had wrought a great national achievement, had received laws and institutions. The nation had, as it were, been born and grown to manhood in a day. Here was quite as powerful an impulse as that which stimulated Thotmes III. to depict the scenes of his conquest on the great temple at Karnac and elsewhere in Egypt, b. c. 1460;¹⁷ or Sardanapalus to carve his achievements in the north-west palace at Nimroud, b. c. 950;¹⁸ or Xerxes to engrave his exploits on the rocks at Wan: or Xenophon to write the Anabasis; or. to speak of something more kindred in character, an occasion and impulse as powerful as that which, for the last fifty years, has in this country multiplied histories of the United States, lives of Washington, and histories of New England.

To all this, however, in the case of the Israelites, was added the sense of religious duty and gratitude. Not only had a nation sprung into life, and found its independence and its institutions; it had also found its God. Jehovah had taken that nation, as they verily believed, into his covenant and care. Here was a grand epoch that solemnly called for memorials and records, and for an historic review of the way in which their God had led them. The highest of all motives combined to elicit such a document. And the actual influence of such motives is stamped on the whole volume.

3. The aim and method of the Pentateuch spring from, and are in perfect harmony with, the occasion. The book is the legitimate outgrowth of that occasion, and of the views which the nation can be shown to have entertained concerning it, from the earliest glimpses of their national life. Whoever wrote it, the volume has a unity of plan and method, and bears strictly upon its appropriate end. It is the history of the theocracy, from the inception to the full establishment. The central fact was the giving of the fundamental law by Moses on Sinai, in the first year after the exodus. This is followed by the further legislation which prescribed the religious observances of the people in their covenant relation to Jehovah, and regulated their entire ecclesiastical and civil polity, both during their sojourn in the wilderness and their permanent home in the land of promise. It is combined with a record of the events and difficulties amidst which this arrangement was established, extending through the life-time of the lawgiver; of the judgments of God on foes within and without, whereby its ascendancy was maintained, and of the solemn reiteration of the law before the legislator's death. Prefixed to this central fact, inseparably connected with it, and indispensable to its right appreciation, is the narrative of the previous exigencies and preliminary measures through which the Creator of the world proceeded to establish this intimate relation with the chosen people. The whole narrative of Genesis is as strictly related to the four subsequent books of the Pentateuch, as those introductions which modern historians invariably prefix to their narratives of some given period, are integral portions of the treatises. In the admirable words of Delitzsch, " Genesis describes not only the beginning of the world, but also the beginning of God's manifestation as Jehovah, the beginning of redemption, the beginning of the law, the beginning of the people of God, and the beginning of the possession of the promised land. To fix upon one only of the many lines of this beginning, Genesis indicates the earlier divine or consecrated institutions, which the later lawgiving took up and further developed: the origin of the Sabbath, sacrifices, the distinction of clean and unclean in the animal world, the prohibition of blood-eating, the death- penalty for murder, circumcision. To the people of God have reference alike the genealogies and the patriarchal history."¹⁹ The narrative closely follows its fixed law through the narrowing lines of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the goal in view.²⁰ The definite purpose appears as clearly in what is omitted as in what is retained; in the dropping of Jacob's family in Canaan to follow Joseph into Egypt, in the passing over of those hundreds of torpid years in Egypt, in the entire silence concerning thirty-seven of the years passed in the wilderness. The transactions and the legislation of the last four books are at every point interwoven with the statements of the previous narrative, and constantly presuppose them. And, as Kurtz truly says, while the giving of the law is the real heart of the Pentateuch, the narratives which precede and accompany, furnish its necessary historical basis and explanation.²¹ Delitzsch affirms that the composition has " a systematic unity which, be it the work of one author or of many, is undeniable."²² Tuch also admits this general unity, and draws out in detail the "manifest object of Genesis in its relation to the other books of the Pentateuch."²³ Knobel says that " Genesis is the portico to the temple of the theocracy, the erection of which is exhibited in the succeeding books "; and he proceeds minutely to trace the plan and relation.²⁴ Dr. Davidson is obliged to admit this actual unity of the Pentateuch, though protesting that it is not a valid proof of an original unity.²⁵ Such being the fact, it cannot be denied that the Pentateuch as a whole is the legitimate offspring of the occasion.

4. It is not an incredible supposition that Moses himself should have met the demands of the occasion and com- posed the work. Quite the contrary. He had motive, opportunity, qualifications. Estimated by whatever standard and testimony, the man who delivered and organized Israel, and stamped his memory and influence on the nation forever, must have been intellectually and morally a remark able man. He was pre-eminently the man to appreciate the occasion, to feel the impulse, to use the facilities.

We feel ourselves now at liberty to assume as unquestionable the main facts, that Moses delivered the nation from Egypt, and on the way to Palestine gave them laws and religious institutions — facts sustained by heathen testimony, overwhelmingly proved by Jewish institutions and history, and unquestioned by really intelligent scholars and investigators of whatever school. "Did the event known as the giving of the law," says Kurtz, "really take place? and if so, did it occur at the time, in the manner, at the place, and through the person mentioned in the Pentateuch? Even the most incredulous critics are obliged to answer the question in the affirmative."²⁶ Let us take the admissions of one such writer as a specimen. Knobel, who is the latest, is also one of the very ablest and most scholarly, as well as most incredulous of the Rationalists. He deals in the freest manner with the sacred narrative and all its contents. Yet Knobel specifies as things that "must be received," the facts that at the time of the exodus great calamities had fallen up on the Egyptians, and that Moses availed himself of them to deliver his people from the Egyptian yoke, and to lead them forth; that he did not take the shortest way to Pales tine, but led directly eastward to reach free Arabia; that being checked on the way, he was forced to push, at ebb tide, through the gulf of Heroopolis, in which their pursuers perished; that he then chose Sinai as the nearest goal, because it was the ancient sacred region, and had water and a growth of vegetation; that he remained there some time, to give his people organization and laws. So also must we accept as certain that he taught the Israelites to know the paternal God as " Jehovah," and as their Lord and King; founded the Jehovah-religion and the theocracy; in accordance with the theocratic idea established a sanctuary in the tabernacle of the covenant; appointed a priest hood in Aaron and his family; introduced a sacrificial service; established religious festivals, and gave other laws (e. g. the Decalogue) wherein he sanctioned much that he found existing, and created other portions anew. And Knobel sums up by saying, that " Moses must be viewed as the liberator and founder of his nation and as author of the peculiar Israelitish religion, government, and law, at least in their basis and essence."²⁷

Given, then, a man of the commanding character here described by Knobel, brought up in a land where writing was so constant and so universal that the very bricks which his countrymen were compelled to make, must have been stamped with the government mark and registered in writ ten accounts; and which is the incredible thing, that he he should, or that he should not, have committed his laws and institutions to writing? Aside from all testimony, which is the violent supposition, — that such a man, so trained, when he came to give perpetual laws and permanent institutions to the Jewish people, should have used the familiar and obvious practice of recording them, or in defiance of the commonest usage, should have left everything floating loose, through his long life and at the time of his death? It is a question for rationalism to meet and answer.

Abiding institutions, especially when so complicated as the Jewish, call for written documents. Permanent laws require to be recorded. To suppose that a man wise enough to found such institutions was also foolish enough to dispense with the simplest method of embodying them, is a large draft on human credulity. Had he been but an ambitious secular leafier, the reason for a permanent record would have been sufficiently strong. But as a true religious guide, laying the foundations of the nation's spiritual welfare for all time, the motive was imperative. Kurtz well says: " From the nature and design of legislation, it would be so imperatively necessary that the law should be immediately committed to writing, that any postponement of it would only be comprehensible, or even conceivable, on the supposition that the means and necessary conditions were wanting; such, for example, as the requisite acquaintance with the art of writing, the possession of writing material?, or sufficient time and leisure. But no one will venture to maintain that any one of these conditions was wanting when the Israelites were in the desert."²⁸ But who so competent to secure the record of his own laws as the legislator himself? Who so well fitted to write the memorial of the great deliverance, as the only man who stood at the centre of the whole transaction from the beginning to the end, who shared the sufferings of Egypt, led every movement for deliverance, accompanied every event to the journey's end, and stood faithful in all? Who so well qualified by position, education, character? Who more likely to erect the monument?

And since those laws and that narrative presuppose at every point the earlier history of God's dealings", when was there a period or who the man in the whole history of the Jewish nation, at which and by whom it is more credible that the whole narrative from Genesis to Deuteronomy should be completed? The time had come; the man was there.

Nor is there anything in the general qualities of the composition incompatible with "the Mosaic authorship. It is simply idle to allege, as De Wette has done, the high literary qualities of the Pentateuch as incompatible with the origination by one man; constituting, as he says, "the perfection of the epico-historical, the rhetorical, and the poetic style" in Hebrew literature. Omitting all other replies, it is enough to say that the allegation is untrue in point of fact. There is nothing of elaborate culture and high art about the Pentateuch. Its chief characteristics are directness and simplicity. If the narrative ever becomes pathetic or sublime, it is by means of these qualities alone. The marks of high literary culture are far more evident in the later productions of David, Solomon, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Nahum. The language of the Pentateuch is singularly free from all that is abstract; the phraseology and idioms of speech are al the most popular kind, the allusions often such as belong only to the most inartificial state of society, and the narratives not free from those anticipations²⁹ and repetitions³⁰ which high art excludes.

There is, then, nothing in the nature and circumstances of the case to break the force of the positive evidence of Mosaic authorship; but, on the contrary, much to make it easy of belief.

II. The position that Moses was the responsible author of the Pentateuch, is sustained by positive evidence, varied, abundant, uncontradicted. The nature and amount of this evidence is studiously disregarded and disparaged by opponents. Some of them argue precisely as though no such testimony were in existence.

1. The Pentateuch expressly declares of Moses, and of Moses only, that he was engaged in its composition. In this respect it affords us a peculiar vantage-ground. Few ancient books expressly declare their authorship. Even when the fact is indisputable, we usually learn it by common fame. This is the case with the principal writings of Virgil, Caesar, Tacitus, Plato, Aristotle. Now whatever declarations of authorship are found in the Pentateuch, are of great weight, not only on the ground that any such witness is to be believed till proved worthless, and that the record itself is professedly historic, but especially in view of the fact that the declarations were made and continued in the presence of the nation, under circumstances which would seem to render imposition out of the question.

(1) That Moses composed certain considerable portions of the Pentateuch is the admitted testimony of the volume itself.

The book of Deuteronomy as a whole (as far as ch. xxxi. 24) is certainly declared to have been written by Moses, and " this book of the law" solemnly committed by him to the charge of the Levites (Deut. xxxi. 9, 10, 24 - 26).³¹ The song of Moses, contained in ch. xxxii, is also declared to have been written by him (xxxi. 19, 22). That these statements include so much at least is admitted, we believe, on all hands. Rosenmiiller, Hengstenberg, Keil, Hävernick, and others hold that they comprise more; while Delitzsch, Kurtz, and even Davidson, De Wette, and Knobel, admit that they include Deuteronomy as a whole.³² Thus De Wette writes: "the author of Deuteronomy, as it appears, would have us regard his whole book as the work of Moses; " though he dismisses the subject with the dictatorial remark: " but the obscurity and unfitness of these claims deprive them of all value as proofs." It cannot be denied that testimony is given, even though it be ruled out.

Portions of Exodus and Numbers also, it is not denied, expressly claim to have been committed to writing by Moses. It is asserted (Ex. xxiv. 7) that " Moses wrote all the words of the Lord" which he had just heard on Sinai and communicated to the people. The communications thus alleged to have been written, include, by admission of the same writers,³³ the four chapters extending from the twentieth through the twenty-third. The declaration is made (Ex. xxxiv. 27, 28) that, by God's command, Moses wrote down the legal section contained in the same chapter. It is also stated (Ex. xvii. 14) that, after the extermination of Amalek, Moses was directed by Jehovah to " write this for a memorial in the book"; not a book, as it reads in the English version. We are also told in Num. xxxiii. 1-3, that "these are the journeys of the children of Israel," and " Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of the Lord"; a statement which includes the list of stations occupying most of the chapter.

The Pentateuch then, even when its testimony is cut down to the minimum, certainly ascribes to the pen of Moses portions of three of its books, comprising a fifth part of the whole. So much is settled.

(2) The testimony of the volume to the agency of Moses in its production, cannot be fairly restricted to those portions thus indicated.

a. It is a weighty fact that the books of the Pentateuch nowhere contain the slightest allusion to any other author ship than that of Moses. He is repeatedly mentioned as a writer engaged in the composition, and there is absolute silence concerning any other writer.

b. It is entirely unwarrantable to infer that the definite ascription of certain portions of the narrative to him, is or implies a denial in regard to the remainder. When the evangelist John relates, in regard to two special incidents (John xix. 35; xxi. 20-24), that being a personal witness of them, he also made the record, no man presumes, for that reason, to deny or question either his personal knowledge of other events recorded, or his authorship of that whole gospel. For special reasons he mentioned his personal relation to those transactions, without disparagement of the remainder.

In like manner the mention of Moses's writing, in the passages where it occurs, seems to be elicited by special reasons. The first instance (Ex. xvii. 14) occurred in the second month after leaving Egypt, on the first great deliverance in battle; and is mentioned as done, upon God's command, " for a memorial." The second and third in stances, in the order of time (Ex. xxiv. 4; xxxiv. 27), took place immediately after, and in connection with the giving of the law on Sinai. A manifest reason for these special statements at that time, was to show that from the beginning of God's revelations to his covenant people, it was his choice to make both his wonderful doings and his sacred law matters of permanent record. The remaining statements (Num. xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 10, 19-22, 24-26) are made concerning what was done at the end of the wanderings and of Moses's life. It was in the fortieth year that by God's command he wrote the journeyings of the Israelites; and it was in the eleventh month of that year, just before his death, that he "made an end of writing" the law, and solemnly delivered the book to the Levites, and wrote a "song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel." Thus the first and the last events, as well as the earliest and the latest promulgations of the law — so reads the record — were written down by Moses, and it was done by command of God. The legitimate inference, were we left to inferences, would be, not that nothing else, but that all between was, in like manner, recorded for a memorial. The statement is, that the record was begun and that it was completed by Moses.

c. The reasons for making a record in these instances was equally operative throughout. The conflict with the Amalekites was no more remarkable than that with the Moabites; and neither of these more striking than many other divine interpositions on the way. The reasons for writing the first four chapters of laws were just as imperative for recording the subsequent thirty or more chapters, civil, ritual, and religious; indeed, the ordinances for the tabernacle, the priesthood, and the sacrificial service, which, as Knobel admits, came from Moses, are contained in those subsequent chapters. That such a man, having actually begun to write his laws, should have suspended the process, and left the more minute and complicated unwritten, would seem to require a special declaration to make it credible. And again, what was the conceivable value of a mere register of halting-places, in comparison with the events which took place at those stations? Would this author (whoever he may have been) gravely inform us that of all the incidents attending the journey from Egypt to Palestine, the great leader wrote down only a barren list of encampments, and an account, in six sentences, of one battle? Does a construction that brings us to this result carry an air of probability?

d. Accordingly we find very distinct indications that the passages under consideration were but parts of a larger whole, composed by Moses.

(i.) This is true of the very first mention of writing found in the Pentateuch, Ex. xvii. 14: " And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in the book (בַּסֵּכָּר, not a book). Here is a manifest reference to a well-known book, in which the event was to be recorded.

To escape the force of this troublesome passage, two principal methods have been adopted: Dr. Davidson assumes that the book referred to was " a monograph on the wars of the Amalekites," in which was to be written simply the prophecy of Amalek's utter overthrow, contained in the latter part of verse 14th.³⁴ The supposition of such a mono graph is. of course, baseless; there is no hint of it here or elsewhere. It is the more inexcusable in a critic who is insisting on the most rigid restriction of biblical statements, thus to advance a groundless and needless hypothesis to escape the force of testimony. "The book" must be some well-known book, either in process of writing, or to be written.

Knobel, on the other hand, would practically disregard the article, and understand the direction as only equivalent to " commit to writing" (schriftlich machen). But neither he nor De Wette nor Gesenius ventures to translate other wise than " the book." He disregards, in interpretation, the distinction between the definite and indefinite article.³⁵ But this course (1) repudiates a distinction which the Hebrew of the Pentateuch well knew how to make, and which it did make in this very phrase. It could say "write in a book" (אֶל־סֵכֶּר Deut. xxxi. 24; עַל־סֵכֶּר Deut. xvii. 18); or it could say "in the book" (בַּסֵּכֶּר Deut. xxviii. 58; xxix. 26).³⁶ In various other passages of the Old Testament the latter phrase occurs, clearly meaning "the book"; e. g. Jer. xxxvi. 8, 10, 13; Dan. xii. 1; Neh. viii. 8. An instructive case is found 2 Sam. xi. 14, 15, where the difference between the expressions is exhibited in two successive verses: in the first sentence we have the general statement, " David wrote a letter, or writing (סֵכֶּר); in the second sentence, "and David wrote in the letter (בַּסֵּכֶּר) saying." Hebrew prose maintains the force of the definite article as decidedly as Greek prose, and much in the same way.³⁷ (2) This at tempt fails to sustain itself by any exceptional cases in the use of this phrase. Knobel cites five instances to justify his interpretation: Esther ix. 25; Jer. xxxii. 10; Job xix. 23; 1 Sam. x. 25; Num. x. 23. The expression בַּסֵּכֶּר or הַסֵּכֶּר occurs in each of these passages, but in none of them can it be shown to have any other meaning than " the book," or the document. In the first instance it means, not "letters" in general (as in our version), but "the letters" or written official documents (Esther viii. 8, 9), which had previously been written in the king's name, sealed with the royal seal, and sent through all the provinces. In Jer. xxxii. 10 it is still the writing ("evidence," Eng. version), namely the necessary, or customary, or well-known writing, employed in such bargains; as we speak of buying land and taking " the deed." In Job xix. 23 it is also " the book," namely the book implied in the first member of the same verse, in the word " written "; the speaker wishes for a lasting record of his words — that they were now written, and not only written, but that they were "deeply cut (יַהָקוּ) in the book" alluded to; and the wish succeeding is for a rock-record even. In 1 Sam. x. 25, the case is equally clear: Samuel wrote "in the book," that is, the sacred record, for it is added "and laid it up before the Lord." The remaining instance (Num. x. 23) equally fails to sustain the interpretation. There is no necessity in that case for forcing the language out of its legitimate meaning, "the book," i. e. the requisite or customary document, or possibly even the book kept for record in such cases, especially as the offering prescribed for the occasion is termed a "memorial offering" (vs. 15, 18). De Wette translates, as in duty bound, " the book."

These attempts to evade the legitimate meaning of Ex. xvii. 14, are more worthy of a partisan than a scholar. We may conclude, in the words of Kalisch, that " it is clear almost to a certainty, that here 'the book of Moses' is understood."³⁸

(ii.) Again, in Deut. xvii. 18, 19, it is commanded in reference to the future king, that " he shall write him a copy of this in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites; and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God. to keep all the words of this law and these statutes to do them." Here a copy of the law is spoken of as being " before the priests." And further, in Deut. xxxi. 9 - 11, mention is made of the completion " of this law "; it is stated, " Moses wrote this law and delivered it unto the priests," commanding that it be publicly read, every seven years, at the feast of tabernacles; and (vs. 24) "when he had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book till they were ended, 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 the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, that it may be for a witness against thee." In various intermediate passages, also, mention is made of a written book of the law, as something already existing. Moses declares to the people (Deut. xxviii.) that if they did not observe " to do all the words of this law that are writ ten in this book (vs. 58), God would bring upon them, besides other specified diseases, " every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this law " (vs. 61). He announces (xxix. 20) that the defiant sinner shall experience " all the curses that are written in this book." Similar expressions occur in verses 21st and 27th of the same chapter, and in chapter xxx. 10.

Of these passages in Deuteronomy, the following are some of the obvious considerations which indicate that the reference is not to Deuteronomy alone, but to a larger composition of which it formed a part: (1) These expressions were all oral communications; yet they all speak of what is " written in this book." There was then a book written, or partly written, when these utterances were mad?; and these declarations — the repetitions of the law in Deuteronomy — were but part of a larger whole. To reply, as does Davidson,³⁹ that these expressions were not in the oral utterance, but were added when the declarations were after wards put in writing, is simply to cut the knot by an arbitrary assertion. (2) The supposition that these utterances involve the recognition of a larger whole, already committed in part to writing, is confirmed by manifest references in Deuteronomy to the preceding laws of the Pentateuch. Thus the direction in Deut. xviii. 2 clearly and directly refers to Num. xviii. 20; and Deut. xxiv. 8, 9 as clearly to Lev. xiii. xiv. The passing allusion to the various offerings, ch. xii. 6, 11, presupposes the fuller directions of the earlier books to make it intelligible. The laws of the feasts in ch. xvi. are not given completely; the festivals are but briefly mentioned in order to specify the place where they are to be observed, viz. " in the place which the Lord shall choose, to put his name there." A reference to the promises of Gen. xv. 5 and of Ex. iii. 8, 17 occurs in ch. vi. 3; and to Num. xxxiii. 52, 53, in ch. vi. 19. It will be shown, in another connection, how indeed the book of Deuteronomy is filled with brief references to transactions fully described in previous books. Now to reply to this and similar considerations, with Dr. Davidson,⁴⁰ " that they must be dismissed with the single remark of their weakness," is more summary than satisfactory. (3) Thus to limit the statements in Deut. xxxi. concerning the completion and solemn commitment of this book of the law to the Levites, is to destroy all reference to any such deposit of the remainder of Moses's alleged writings, even those communications on Sinai written down by him at the commandment of God (Ex. xxiv. 3, 7). For there is no other record of their being so deposited. Whereas the statement has every aspect of a final completion and solemn deposit of the lawgiver's whole writings. (4) The common meaning of " the book of the law," in the Old Testament, is the Pentateuch. Davidson fully admits that this and similar expressions throughout Ezra and Nehemiah, " allude to the Pentateuch as it now exists"; also that "from the time when the books of Chronicles were written, we have little hesitation in affirming that the Pentateuch is the most likely sense of the book of the law."⁴¹ But we ask: where is there any indication of a change in the meaning of the phrase?" Kurtz, as we understand him, even concedes that the expression סִכֶּר חֵתּוֹרָח is always employed to denote the en tire Pentateuch in the books succeeding Deuteronomy, e.g. in Josh. i. 8; viii. 31, 34; xxiv. 26; 2 Kings xiv. 6, etc.⁴² Then why not so in Deuteronomy? Kurtz finds one fatal objection — the use of the word " this," in the passages of Deuteronomy, which, as he thinks, compels us to limit the statement to the thorale of Deuteronomy. Delitzsch advances the same argument. Kurtz even says that this is "the point on which the whole question depends." If so, his position is a failure; for how else could or would a writer naturally designate a work in the composition of which he was engaged, and known to be engaged, and in which his words now uttered were to be recorded, than " this book of the law"? Does not the designation more naturally and properly describe a book in process of writing and soon to be finished, than something not yet written at all.

It may be admitted that the phrase "this law" is in some instances limited by some restricting clause, as in the expression (Deut. i. 5; iv. 8, 44) "this law which I command you this day." The limitation, however, lies, not in the word " this," but in the attendant specification. "This law" denotes primarily the one code revealed from God.

(iii.) A still further and highly satisfactory class of evidence that the contents of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers claim to have been written by Moses, has been wholly over looked by these writers. It is the implication abundantly contained in the books themselves. While not saying in so many words that they were throughout committed to writing by him, they are pervaded from end to end by indications to that effect, incompatible with any other supposition.

On the one hand, God is represented as giving special instructions to Moses to deposit his future communications (written, of course) in the ark. The statement is found in Ex. xxv. 16, 21, 22. It occurs after the declaration that Moses wrote down the first portions of the divine legislation, — the passage extending from Ex. xx. 22 to xxiii. 33. God says, twice over: " thou shalt put into the ark the testimony that I shall give thee"; adding in the same connection (vs. 22): "I will commune with thee . . . . . . . of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel." Here there is an unrestricted direction to deposit all the remainder of the divine communications in the ark of the testimony. Those communications occupy much of the remaining portion of Exodus, all of Leviticus, and most of Numbers — some fifty chapters. There is here no question in regard to the translation. Our version corresponds to that of De Wette; and Knobel specifically defends it. It respects God's further communications without limitation. Here, then, was the arrangement for sacredly preserving an exact record of all God's utterances.

On the other hand, answering to this direction is the additional fact that the books claim throughout, and in a vast number of passages, to be an exact record of God's utterances to Moses in the minutest detail. We have not only such general announcements as the closing verse of Leviticus (xxvii. 34): " These are the commandments which the Lord commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Sinai"; and the closing verse of Numbers: "These are the commandments and the judgments which the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses unto the children of Israel in the plains of Moab, by Jordan near Jericho." Similar assertions are scattered through the books. Thus the single statement, "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying," or, "The Lord said unto Moses," occurs in connection with various groups of commandments in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, more than one hundred times; besides other forms, e. g., the declarations of Moses: " These are the words which the Lord bath commanded" (Ex. xxxv. 1), "This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded" (Nam. xxx. 1), or, "and Moses told the children of Israel according to all that the Lord commanded Moses" (Num. xxix. 40). And again, in asserting the compliance with many of these commandments, we are informed some fifty times in these books, that it took place " as the Lord commanded Moses, or, " according to the commandment of the Lord by the hand of Moses."

Let it be remembered, now, not only how voluminous were these instructions, — some fifty chapters, — but how minute and complicated; the directions for the ark and tabernacle, for example, containing some thirty different measurements, besides abundant other details equally "difficult of retention in the memory, and a similar minuteness of specification extending through much of the legislation. When, therefore, we lay these constant claims to be an exact statement of God's utterances to Moses by the side of the alleged command to deposit in the ark the testimony which God should give him, it is impossible to under stand these assertions to be less than a reiterated and emphatic claim of all these passages to have been put on record by Moses. It is virtually the clearest testimony of all, inasmuch as it so pervades the record. It thus falls in with the declaration (Ex. xxiv. 4) that the first installment of the law was written down by Moses, and with the closing statement (Deut. xxxi. 24 - 26), that "when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, 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 the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God"; and just fills up the completeness of the claim.⁴³

e. Furthermore, the particular portions of the Pentateuch which are admitted, by Davidson and others, to claim Mosaic authorship, include and fully endorse the main portions of the whole Pentateuch. Little, therefore, is gained in the attempt to restrict the authorship to particular portions of the volume. Moses makes himself responsible for the bulk of the previous narrative in detail, and particularly from the times of Abraham.

Let us now confine our attention to these restricted portions, viz. Deuteronomy, as far as ch. xxxi. 24, and the song of Moses, ch. xxxii; Exodus, ch. xx. 22-xxiii. 33, and xvii. 8-16; Numbers xxxiii.⁴⁴ From these portions we can construct a somewhat circumstantial narrative corresponding to and vouching for the main history contained in the previous books of the Pentateuch. Some of the statements are many times reiterated, and they are, for the most part, reaffirmed in the manner of references to transactions well known and more fully described elsewhere. Still they are complete as far as they extend.

The following outline of the previous narrative is thus reaffirmed: the dispersion of the human race by the Creator, and the particular choice of Israel as the object of his favor (Deut. xxxii. 8, 9); the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (xxix. 23); the assignment of Moab to Lot and his descend ants (ii. 9) ; and of the region of Mount Seir to Esau and his descendants (ii. 5); Esau being the "brother" of the Israelites (xxiii. 7; ii. 4); the oath of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (ix. 5; xvi. 5; xxix. 13, etc.), promising them a vast increase, and possession of the land flowing with milk and honey (vi. 3, etc.); and promising also the subjugation of the resident nations of Canaan (vii. 2), who were rejected and to be cast out for their wickedness (ix. 4); the descent of the fathers of the Hebrew nation, seventy persons, into Egypt (x. 22), where they became a "nation, great and mighty and populous " (xxvi. 6; x. 22); the evil treatment and hard bondage in Egypt (xxvi. 6, 7; vi. 21, etc.); the cry of the people unto God, and his hearkening to the cry (xxvi, 7); the deliverance by God " with a mighty hand and with a stretched-out arm, and with great terribleness , and with signs and wonders " (xxvi. 8); his chastisement inflicted both upon the land and its king (xi. 2, 3), and upon the king ' s household (vi . 22); " the evil diseases of Egypt " (vir. 15); the destruction of the first-born (Num. xxxiii. 4); the departure from Egypt in haste (Deut. xvi. 3) on the fifteenth day of the month Abib (xvi. 1), on the day after the passover (Num. xxxiii. 3); the passage of the Israelites through the sea (Num. xxxiii. 8); the pursuit by Pharaoh, with horses and chariots, and his destruction in the waters of the Red sea (Deut. xi. 4); the journey of forty years in the wilderness (xxix. 5, etc.); the halting places on the journey (Num. xxxiii); the palm - trees and fountains which they found at Elim (xxxiii. 9); the want of water at Rephidim (xxxiii. 14); the feeding with manna (Deut. viii. 3); the circumstances of the law - giving on Sinai, amidst fire and cloud, and attended with great fear on the part of the Israelites (v. 5, 22 - 27); the two tables of stone written by the finger of God (ix. 10); the forty days spent by Moses fasting on the mountain (ix. 9); his hasty descent (vs. 12); the golden calf (vs. 16 ); the broken tables of the law (vs. · 17); God's anger with Aaron (vs. 20); the destruction of the image (vs. 21); the successful intercession of Moses for the people and for Aaron (vs. 19, 20); the renewal of the tables , construction of the ark, and deposit of the tables in the ark (x. 1 - 5); the selection of the tribe of Levi for sacred services (x. 8, 9); the leprosy of Miriam (xxiv. 8, 9); the appointment of officers to aid Moses ( i. 9 - 17); the sending of twelve spies from Kadesh - Barnea (i. 21); their report (vs. 24, 25); the rebellion of the people (ix. 23; i. 27) from fear of the Anakims (ix. 2; i. 28); and the sentence of God to exclude that generation, except Joshua and Caleb, from the promised land (i. 35, 36); the destruction of Dathan and Abiram with their households and effects, by the opening of the earth (xi. 6); the opposition of Moab, the hiring of Balaam, and the conversion of Balaam's attempted curse into a blessing (xxiii. 3 -5); the battles with Sihon and Og, and the assignment of their territory to the tribes of Reuben, Ephraim, and the half-tribe of Manasseh (xxix.7, 8); the death of Aaron on Mount Hor at the age of a hundred and twenty years, in the fortieth year of the journey (Num. xxxiii. 38, 39); the announcement to Moses that he should not go over the Jordan but should die on Pisgah (xxxi. 2; iii. 23 - 27) ; his expectation of a speedy death at the age of a hundred and twenty years (xxxi. 2), and his appointment of Joshua as his successor in authority (xxxi. 3).

These things constitute the main outline of the whole narrative of the Pentateuch, from the time of the dispersion of the nations, including many of the supernatural events. Moreover the leading features of the whole law contained in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, including the three great national festivals and the whole civil and ecclesiastical polity of the nation, are repeated and endorsed in Deuteronomy. It is done, too, largely by way of allusion to those fuller narratives, and therefore presupposes them.

Thus, then, after all possible paring down of the testimony of the volume, we can still stand on the platform yielded us by the objectors, and find Moses, according to the testimony of the volume, making himself responsible for the main contents of the Pentateuch. Even these portions of the volume thus fully accord with the other proofs that Moses was the author of the whole.

The variations of the history and modifications of the laws which are found in Deuteronomy, instead of being an objection to the unity of authorship, are an argument in favor of it; being made with such entire freedom of manner, yet such close adhesion of fact and thorough unity of aim and plan, as the author alone would exhibit. In all these respects we see the working of the one authoritative mind.

The hortatory manner of Deuteronomy, which has some times been urged as a proof of a different origin, simply shows the natural, almost unavoidable influence of his present position, — addressing for the last time, within a few weeks of his decease, the people whom he had led for forty years. The mind which would find ground for cavil here, might as well deny the genuineness of Washington's Inaugural and Annual Messages, because his Farewell Address was so diverse from them.

We shall then continue to hold that the Pentateuch itself — be its testimony better or worse — most distinctly claims Moses as the author of the chief part of it, and, by strong implication, of the whole. And the man who denies the validity of this testimony we shall hold bound to show powerful reasons for treating the volume in a manner so entirely peculiar; and furthermore to show very clearly and very specifically how such claims could have been set up and continued for hundreds of years in the presence of the nation whose history they include, without one breath of opposition or questioning ever having been awakened.⁴⁵

2. The later books of the Old Testament refer the Pentateuch to Moses.

This point may be briefly presented. Various attempts have been made to confute and divert this testimony, but the following proposition we think no one will venture to deny: the Pentateuch, either in whole or in part, is repeatedly referred to in the remaining books of the Old Testament; when so referred to, it is often ascribed to Moses, and is never, either in whole or in part, directly or by implication, ascribed to any other author.

The phrases "the book of the law," "the book of Moses," "the law of Moses," "the book of the law of Moses," "the law which Moses commanded," occur in various passages, and in the same general sense.⁴⁶ They refer to the Pentateuch, or something contained in it. In very many of these instances the reference contains a quotation from some portion of the Pentateuch, or alludes to some act prescribed in it, and thus identifies it with the book or law of Moses. Thus in Josh. viii. 31 we are informed that Moses did as it is written in the law of Moses; and the transaction so performed was one which was prescribed in Deut. xxvii. So 1 Kings ii 3, in referring to what is written in the law of Moses, contains a quotation from Deut. xxix. 9.

Here we meet with an evasion. A considerable proportion of the references, though by no means all, are naturally made to the later solemn warnings and final admonitions of the great lawgiver. Dr. Davidson would deny that the phrases in question commonly mean the whole Pentateuch; affirming that most of them do not bear that sense; or, at least, " it is matter of doubtful disputation whether they do or not."⁴⁷ The expression, he suggests, may have received a gradual extension of meaning, as new writings were added. He does not undertake to show by historic evidence that this was so; but he advances it some what as if it were not incumbent on him to prove, but on us to disprove. Meanwhile he is obliged to admit that in some instances the phrase does signify the Pentateuch; but he would apparently maintain that for the most part it designates no more than the one book of Deuteronomy.

All the strength of his objection lies in the fact that, from the nature of the case, a citation is not a whole volume, but is made from some definite part of the volume. And the argument is, apparently, that where a book is named and one part of it cited, the name of the book covers only the one section of the book cited, notwithstanding that the name is elsewhere used as the general name of the volume.

Now we say in reply to this captious criticism, that the phrases in question, from their frequent occurrence and formulary aspect, bear every mark of being a settled appellation, as much so as in the New Testament. The man who claims that they were used with a fluctuating signification, is bound to bring evidence of it; he cannot be permitted to assume it unproved, in order to carry a point.

On the other hand, we maintain, (1) that there is no evidence that the phrases were used to designate a book or section of the Pentateuch to the exclusion of the remainder. The only passage which can be cited as offering any appearance of positive proof to that effect, is found in the eighth chapter of Joshua, where Joshua wrote upon the plastered stones " a copy (מִשְׁיֶה) of the law of Moses." It is said to be entirely out of the question that the whole Pentateuch should have been so inscribed. We reply, first, it is almost equally improbable that the whole of Deuteronomy was so inscribed; indeed Kurtz, who strongly urges the objection, scarcely ventures to suppose it. He insists only on " the legal portions of that book."⁴⁸ Furthermore, it is apparent from the method employed — writing in plaster — that the object in view was not to make a permanent record of the whole contents of the law, so much as the performance of a symbolic transaction connected with the ' blessing and the cursing. The immediate purpose was answered, as Maurer, Hengstenberg, and Keil have maintained, when the act itself was performed; it related to posterity only so far as the record of the transaction would be handed down in the book of Joshua. The external inscription was a symbol of the internal.⁴⁹ For the evident purpose in view, all that was required to be written was the law representatively, rather than in detail. Accordingly in view of the whole aspect of the transaction, commentators almost with one consent have understood it to designate rather the essential features of the law, in some form, than either its whole contents or any principal section of it entire — the law representatively. Michaelis supposes everything in the books of Moses that has the character of law; Knobel, "the Mosaic law generally, but only the commandments proper"; Keil, the bare commandments of Deuteronomy; Maurer, Rosenmüller, and many others, the blessings and curses of Deut. xxvii. In our judgment quite as probable as any other is the supposition of Gerlach, Kennicott, Grotius, and Henry, that the copy of the law, or if any one insist upon it, "the words of this law" which were to be so written, were " the ten words," the Decalogue (הדְּכָרִים עֲשֶׂרֶת, Deut. iv. 13; x. 4; Ex. xxxiv. 28), as the essence or abridgment of the whole law.⁵⁰ By general consent, then, the phrase in Joshua does not designate a section of the Pentateuch, such as one entire book of it. It denotes not a fragment, but the substance of it — the law in miniature. It cannot, therefore, be quoted as conflicting with the view here advocated. It refers to the law in its entireness of substance, much as in the remark of the Saviour: " This is the law and the prophets" (Matt. vii. 12).

On the other hand, (2) there is positive evidence that the phrases in question were employed to include other books of the Pentateuch equally with Deuteronomy. Perfectly decisive is Neh. viii. 1, 3, 8, 14; the ceremonials of the least of tabernacles therein mentioned (vs. 16) as written in " the book of the law of Moses," are found only in Lev. xxiii. 40. The command to "dwell in booths," which is also refer red to as written in the law, is contained only in the same chapter of Leviticus (vs. 42). Other references in the same narrative connect either with Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy; some of them perhaps more naturally with the latter, e.g. verses 10, 12, 17 with Deut. xvi. 14. David son is constrained to admit the reference to the Pentateuch as a whole.⁵¹ In Neh. x. 29, 34,36, "the law" of Moses refers unmistakably to Exodus, Numbers, and Leviticus, as well as Deuteronomy; the seventh year of verse 31st being prescribed in Ex. xxiii. and Lev. xxv.; the show- bread of verse 33 only in Lev. xxiv. 5, 6 and Ex. xxv. 30; the " tithe of tithes," in verse 38, only in Num. xviii. 26. So, the law of " burnt offering, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God " (Ez. iii.), is found in full Lev. i. and Num. xxvii; in Deuteronomy it is barely alluded to without description (xii. 5). In 1 Chron. xvi. 40 the reference to " what is in the law of the Lord" concerning the morning and evening sacrifice, is satisfied only by Ex. xxix. 38 and Num. xxviii. 3, 4. Again, in 2 Chron. xxx. 16 it is recorded that the priests kept the passover " according to the law of Moses the man of God "; but we find (vs. 3) that the time was deferred from the first to the second month, according to a special provision of the law which is found only in Num. ix. 10, 11.

In this manner do the later books of the Old Testament ascribe the authorship of the Pentateuch without limitation to Moses, specially citing four of the five books in their statements, and nowhere even hinting at any other author ship of any portion of the volume. To all appearance the phrase bears precisely the same meaning in the books of the Old Testament as in the New; and this " book of the law " is everywhere ascribed to Moses.

3. It was the undisputed testimony of the Jewish nation, at and before the time of Christ, that the Pentateuch as a whole was written by Moses.

On this point we have testimony both from Jerusalem and from Alexandria. Philo, who represents the Alexandrian Jews, in his life of Moses, after bestowing abundant praises on him as a lawgiver, and distinctly ascribing the Jewish laws to him, proceeds thus: " But there is another high praise contained in these most holy books, and to them we must now turn to exhibit the virtue of him who com posed them. Of these books, then, the first part is the historical part; and the second is occupied with commands and prohibitions. . . . . . . Of the historical part, one portion relates to the creation of the world, another is genealogical; and the genealogical portion is subdivided into accounts of the punishment of the wicked and of the reward of the righteous. We must explain why he began his law-giving from this starting-point and placed the commands and prohibitions second in order. For he was not like an ordinary compiler of history, intent on leaving records of ancient deeds for the idle amusement of posterity, but he traced back the most ancient events to their origin, beginning with the creation of the universe in order to make known two most necessary principles: first, that the same father and creator of the world was also the lawgiver of the truth,"⁵² etc Again, in his treatise on Rewards and Punishments, he says: "It appears, then, that in the oracles delivered by the prophet Moses, there are three species: one concerning the creation of the world; the second, historical; the third, legislative. Now the creation of the world is related throughout with exceeding beauty and a manner worthy of God, beginning with the creation of heaven and ending with the formation of man. . . . . . . . The historical part is a record of the lives of wicked and of good men, and of the penalties and prerogatives determined for each class in each generation. Of the legislative portion, one part contains the comprehensive basis; the other, prescriptions of particular usages. The general heads are ten."⁵³

This testimony of Philo broadly covers the whole Pentateuch. Equally clear is the testimony of Joseph us. We have not only the well-known assertion that " of these [twenty-two books], five are the books of Moses, which contain the laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years."⁵⁴ He speaks of the various portions in detail, ascribing all indiscriminately to Moses. The several portions of the law are what "Moses forbade," "Moses prescribed," "precepts which Moses gave," "a constitution of laws which Moses learned of God and delivered in writing to the Hebrews";⁵⁵ and the legislation as a whole, existing in the time of Josephus, was "the writings left by Moses."⁵⁶ He also uses the phrase "books of the law" apparently as synonymous with "the writings of our legislator";⁵⁷ describes how Moses prepared the way for his legislation among his countrymen "by raising their minds upward to regard God and the creation of the world";⁵⁸ and repeatedly pronounces the account of creation and the garden of Eden, in its several portions, to be the work of Moses.⁵⁹

These explicit testimonies of representative men are fully sustained by the references of the New Testament, which, whatever further force may be conceded or denied, are valid proof of the current view when they ascribe a passage from the narrative of Exodus (Luke xx. 37), from Leviticus (Rom. x. 5), or from Deuteronomy (Matt. xix. 7), alike to Moses; when they declare both that Moses gave the law (John vii. 19), and that he wrote it (John i. 45); when they speak of tracing downward all the scripture declarations concerning Christ, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets" (Luke xxiv. 27); and when they recognize the well-known three fold Jewish division of the scriptures into " the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms (hagiographa, Luke xxiv. 44).⁶⁰ The fact that such was the undivided testimony of the Jews at and before the time of Christ, is conceded. Thus Dr. Davidson remarks: "The Jews have uniformly ascribed the Pentateuch to Moses, and from them the tradition passed over to Christians and became universal consent till the time of historical criticism.⁶¹

Now this undivided testimony in such a case is of the weightiest description. It is the unanimous, unhesitating testimony of a nation concerning the relation of the man who certainly founded their institutions to the documents in which those institutions were certainly embodied. It must not be undervalued by calling it a tradition. It is the kind of evidence on which the genuineness of other ancient documents rests — the same in kind, though here uncommonly strong in degree. In speaking of the principles of municipal law in their relations to a similar case, viz. the writings of the New Testament, Professor Greenleaf of the Cambridge Law School declares: " the genuineness of these writings really admits of as little doubt, and is susceptible of as ready proof as that of any ancient writings whatever. . . . . . . The first inquiry, when an ancient document is offered in evidence in our courts, is, whether it comes from the proper repository; that is, whether it is found in the place where, and under the care of the person with whom, such writings might naturally and reasonably be expected to be found; for it is this custody which gives authenticity to documents found within it," He concludes that, for the Christian scriptures the natural costodians were the Christian churches, and that the writings " challenge our reception of them as genuine writings. precisely as the Domesday Book, the ancient statutes of Wales, or any other of the ancient documents which have recently been published under the British Record Commission are received. He also says: "If it is objected that the originals are lost, and that copies alone are now produced, the principles of the municipal law here also afford a satisfactory answer. The multiplication of copies was a public fact, in which the faithfulness of all the Christian com munity had an interest. . . . . . . The persons who multiplied these copies may be regarded, in some manner, as the agents of the Christian public, for whose use and benefit the copies were made; and on the ground of the credit due to such agents, and of the public nature of the facts them selves, the copies thus made are entitled to an extraordinary degree of confidence; and as in the case of official registers and other public books, it is not necessary that they should be confirmed and sanctioned by the ordinary tests of truth. If any ancient document concerning our public rights were lost, copies which had been as universally received and acted upon as the four Gospels have been, would have been received in evidence in any of our courts of justice without the slightest testation."⁶²

These principles apply quite as strongly to the Pentateuch. The Jewish nation were the proper custodians of their own fundamental laws, civil and religious. They produce at the time of Christ copies of a volume containing those laws, that had been handed down with most sacred reverence; that was copied with a superstitious care, was read every Sabbath day in all their synagogues, and was appealed to as the final authority in all cases that could be connected with it ; and side by side with this venerated volume comes down the firm declaration, uttered with one voice, that it was written by their equally venerated lawgiver himself — and upon this very belief rests their veneration for the book. Now what amount of infinitessimal "criticism" shall over turn such testimony as this? — especially if all the questions raised by that criticism are solvable without such a resort.

Most productions of the Greek and Latin writers are received unquestioned, chiefly on evidence of this kind, vastly weaker in degree. In many cases the work itself puts forth no statement of authorship. Nor is it endorsed by the concurrent consent of multitudes of men whose lives are moulded by its statements. It was originally known to a limited circle as matter of literary curiosity alone; it has been quoted occasionally in the lapse of centuries, and has passed through other centuries without an allusion. And yet, though coming down with this vague endorsement, in the entire absence of opposing testimony and of insuperable internal difficulties, it is rightly and unhesitatingly received as genuine.

Nearly the same length of time has now elapsed from the date of the Koran as it was from Moses to the Christian era. Now the Koran nowhere (so far as we can find) claims in so many words to have been written by Mohammed. His name, even (if we mistake not), is not to be found in it.⁶³ The enemies of the false prophet from the beginning raised questions about his sole authorship.⁶⁴ The exact relation of Abu Bekr to the manuscript after the decease of Mohammed, is a matter of question.65 And yet that the false prophet was really the responsible author of the Koran as a whole, is not a matter of the slightest doubt, whatever assistance he may have received, and notwithstanding any editorial revisions which Abu Bekr may have seen fit to make. If we were to omit all the other evidence in regard to the Pentateuch, and consider only this portion in which it runs parallel with the Koran, even here it has greatly the advantage, inasmuch as it came down without a shade of doubt or dispute.

4. Christ and the writers of the New Testament endorse the ascription of the Pentateuch to Moses. The testimony of inspired men is really the judgment of the only genuine experts in such a case. The Pentateuch as a whole, and its books and its contents, are by them constantly referred to him. The law as such is the law of Moses (John vii. 23; Acts xv. 5; Heb. x. 28), or it is simply Moses (Acts xxi. 21). Moses is declared to have given the law (John i. 17; vii. 19). The position of lawgiver is Moses's seat (Matt. xxiii. 2). The statements of individual books of the Pentateuch are mentioned as the statements made by Moses: thu3 Exodus, Lukexx.37; Leviticus, Rom. x. 5; Deuteronomy, Acts iii. 22; Matt. xix. 8. The total utterances concerning the priesthood, contained in four books of the Pentateuch, are what " Moses spake concerning the priesthood" (Heb. vii. 14). That Moses "wrote," and left " writings" which were extant in the time of Christ, is the Saviour's positive declaration (John v. 46, 47). That these writings constituted the beginning of the Old Testament is fully implied in Luke xxiv. 27, where, when Christ expounded " in all the scriptures the things concerning himself," it was by "beginning at Moses and all the prophets "; i. e. (as De Wette, Winer, and Meyer explain) he began with Moses and proceeded to the prophets. The prophetic declarations of the Pentateuch generally are " what Moses did say should come" (Acts xxvi. 22). Paul reasoned concerning the kingdom of God " both out of the law of Moses and out of the prophets" (Acts xxviii. 23). The Sabbath reading of the Pentateuch in the synagogues was the reading of " Moses" (Acts xv. 21; 2 Cor. iii. 15). The Saviour twice in one conversation makes use of the same expression, when he declares the possession of Moses and the prophets to be sufficient light for the rich man's five brethren (Luke xvi. 29, 31).

It cannot well be denied that the New Testament writers spoke in full accordance with the universal view of the nation. To this fact De Wette deigns only the characteris tic answer, " that such a prejudice should have no weight at all in criticism.⁶⁶ Three more distinct replies have been made:

(1) It is said in substance that the Saviour and his apostles, though making the assertion, may have been mistaken — erred through ignorance. Such seems to be the substance of Colenso's final position.⁶⁷ To this we have here no answer to make. It is simply the infidel position of Theodore Parker, "I do not accept it on his authority."⁶⁸ We have for the present no common ground of argument with one holding such a position. With us Jesus Christ is a final authority, whenever he pronounces a distinct decision. We shall not pause here to vindicate his character.

(2) It is admitted by Davidson that the testimony would be decisive if it covered the case; but it reaches only the law proper, the centre and substance of the Pentateuch.⁶⁹ We have shown, however, that these references are explicitly made to all four books of the Pentateuch, including the narrative of Exodus (Luke xx. 37) and the prophecies of Deuteronomy (Acts iii. 22); to which may be added that some of the most important prophecies concerning himself which he must have expounded when he began " at Moses," must have been those of Genesis. Indeed we do not under stand any writer to deny that the expression employed, "the law of Moses," was used in the same sense in which the Jews employed it, viz. to designate the Pentateuch as a whole.

(3) It is said that the New Testament writers simply accommodated themselves to the Jewish modes of speech, and by so doing expressed no opinion in the case; for "Christ and the apostles did not come into the world to teach the Jews lessons in criticism." This is the position of Kurtz and others, and is the most plausible reply. But we ask: does this really satisfy the conditions of the case? Does not their mode of freely and constantly ascribing these writings to Moses convey the strong impression that they shared that opinion? It will be remembered, too; that Christ does not confine himself to negative allusions. He advances the positive declaration: "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?" John v. 46, 47. It certainly is hard to escape the direct statement, " he wrote of me"; and equally hard to escape the obvious fact that the "writings" here referred to are what they must inevitably have been understood to mean — the Pentateuch. If we begin to accommodate such an utterance as that, where do we stop? Is the declared subject of these writings, as well as the authorship, an adaptation to Jewish notions? Are we also to give up such utterances as when Christ declares of the 110th Psalm, that "David himself saith by the Holy Ghost"; and when Paul says of Isaiah vi. 9, "Well spake the Holy Ghost by the mouth of Esaias" (Acts xxviii. 25); and when Peter says in general (2 Pet. i. 21), that "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost"? The practice of yielding the declarations of the New Testament as accommodations to Jewish notions has proved to be a sufficiently bottomless pit; and Hupfeld still finds what he calls the obsolete dogma of inspiration to be a necessary sacrifice to the freedom of the higher criticisms.⁷⁰ Nothing will justify the surrender of so direct a statement as that of John v. 46, 47, but necessities which the higher criticism has not yet proved. We must for the present hold, with Alford, that here is an important testimony by the Lord to the subject of the Pentateuch, and to the fact of Moses having written those books which were then, and still are, known by his name.⁷¹

5. A consideration of most important bearing in this connection, is the fact that the positive testimony lies wholly on one side. There is no other claimant to the authorship of the Pentateuch, or of any principal portion of it. Here is a perfect unanimity of testimony found in the Jewish nation, the natural and legitimate custodians of the record, in all ages of their history, — so complete that even heathen nations caught the echo, and writers like Manetho, Hecataeus, Strabo, Tacitus, learned to refer the Jewish legislation and institutions to Moses alone.⁷² Meanwhile, not a hint can be found in any historic quarter that any person later than Moses composed either the volume or any integral part of it. A stronger case of testimony lying exclusively on one side cannot well be imagined. It surely would have been a marvellous skill that could achieve a forgery so complicated, so entwined with the entire life and customs of the nation, and gathered round its most public personage, and yet could do it so adroitly that every particle of evidence concerning the real authorship should be concealed from the world, and every suspicion precluded for three thousand years.

III. The positive testimony is corroborated by various collateral indications and circumstantial evidence:

1. The manner of the volume, especially of the last four books, accords with the testimony. These books consist almost wholly of transactions and utterances in which Moses was primarily concerned, and frequently of which he alone was personally cognizant. These things are every where delivered with the minuteness of a personal witness and participator. Exact utterances to Moses and by Moses constitute the chief portion of the writings, as a glance at any part of them will show. Now one of these suppositions must be admitted: either this minute exactness is un founded, or the facts were supernaturally revealed, or Moses personally describes what he alone so fully knew. The first supposition needlessly charges the books with more or less imposture. The second is a gratuitous introduction of supernatural aid in a case fully accounted for otherwise. The third is the natural and legitimate conclusion.

2. The existence of the Pentateuch can be traced almost up to the time of Moses, in the allusions and references of the subsequent books of the Old Testament. It was in existence earlier than the earliest of them. The details are too numerous to be mentioned in an Article like the present: nor can it be necessary to cite them.⁷³ They consist of quotations and allusions, and of transactions which show the existence and observance of the Mosaic law. They are found abundantly in the books of Joshua (which claims to have been written in the life-time of Rahab, Josh. vi. 25), and extend through Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, the Psalms, Obadiah, Amos, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, Nahum, Joel, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah. Tuch finds, in the prophets of Hosea's time, about eight hundred traces of the previous existence of the Pentateuch in its present form?⁷⁴ To this important fact Dr. Davidson makes several rejoinders. First he says that the number of allusions have been unnecessarily augmented. No matter. The force of the argument does not depend on the number, but on the reality, of the references; and this he does not presume to deny. Secondly he says that we must use due discrimination in separating these references; distinguishing traditional knowledge from allusions to written documents, and references to constituent parts of the volume from references to the book in its present form. We answer that many of these quotations prove, by the exactness of phraseology, that they are made from written documents; and that to "consider the Pentateuch in its present condition, apart from what it was before the editor finally adjusted and combined the parts," is simply to beg the question and to assume against the testimony what therefore he is first bound to prove — that it ever existed, since Joshua, in a fragmentary condition. Thirdly, we should remember the comparative ignorance of the people, who, " if they had generally known written record?, could not have derived more benefit from them than from oral tradition and teaching;" — a consideration, the force of which as evidence concerning the fact in question Dr. Davidson may perceive, but we do not. Fourthly, " attention should be given to the possible explanation of references to the Pentateuch in the books of Joshua, Judges, etc., viz. that the writer or compiler [of the latter], living long after the events described by him occurred has associated them with phenomena taken from records belonging to the interval between!" This, if we understand it, is simply an attempt to bring down the age of the Pentateuch by reducing the antiquity of the other historical books — sustaining one assumption by another of the same kind. Fifthly, though the allusions in the book of Joshua would " go far to prove " the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch on Keil's view of the time when the former was written, viz. by some of the elders who survived Joshua, they are "irrelevant on the assumption of its correct date." Here again we are met by another of these literary juggles. Instead of frankly admitting that ch. v. 1, 6 implies the personal participation of the writer of the book, and that ch. vi. 25 shows it to have been written during the life-time of Rahab, he finds in the book another of those literary conglomerates compounded by a late editor out of Jehovistic and Elohistic records, of which the Jehovist in turn had before him "written documents proceeding from eye-witnesses of the transactions "; and thus out of these documents at the third remove, together "with other?," the compiler put together his mosaic. Davidson well re marks:;' his interpolations and general method of procedure cannot now be detected"! If a man may resort to such methods of literary criticism, and thus piling assumption upon assumption, may call it argument, there is an end to all proof of authorship. There seems to us no good reason to place the date of Joshua later than does Keil; and its allusions are valid proof of the very early date of the Pentateuch.

3. The early origin of the Pentateuch is indicated by various archaisms which occur somewhat abundantly in its several books, and are wholly or in great measure wanting in the other books of the Bible. Gesenius, Ewald, De Wette, and Delitzsch agree in regard to this peculiarity of the volume, — the two latter distinctly admitting that in this respect it is separated even from the book of Joshua.⁷⁵ Thus the pro noun air. is used throughout the Pentateuch in the feminine gender, as well as in the masculine. It occurs here as a feminine one hundred and ninety-five times (thirty-six of which are in Deuteronomy), and scarcely anywhere else in the Old Testament.⁷⁶ The later feminine תיא occurs but eleven times in the Pentateuch. The word נַעַר (young man), is also used for the feminine (young woman, and the later feminine נַעַרְה occurs only in Deut. xxxii. 19. Nowhere else is נִעַר used as a feminine.⁷⁷ The form of the demonstrative pronoun הָאֵר is found in the Pentateuch, and in only two other passages, one of them being in the Chaldee (1 Chr. xx. 8; Ez. v. 15). It is found alike in Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. In the future Kal the ending ןָ for נָה;  ( r3d per. fem. pl.) belongs to the Pentateuch; and the far greater predominance of the full future ending וּן. which is. found fifty-eight times in Deuteronomy alone. The ה local is far more abundant. Also, according to Delitzsch, the shortening of the Hiphil (לִַעִשֵׁר ,לַראׄת) and the construction of the passive with אֵת of the object. The form נַחְנוּ of the pronoun is met with four times in the Pentateuch, else where but twice. The abbreviated imperatives שְׁמַעַן  and קׅרִאֶן (occurring once each) are peculiar to this book. The infinitive construct of נְתַן here only has the original form נְתֹן twice. The form כֶּשֶׂב for כֶּבֶשׂ is found fifteen times in these books and nowhere else; זָכוּר for זָכָר only here. The words שָׂעִיר ,חָזֶה ,קבב ,גוֺזֶל ,שֶׁגֶר ,אָסוֹן ,יְקוּם ,אָביִב, and others, are met with only in the Pentateuch, though repeatedly found there. Other words, e. g. אַשִׁדּוֹת, occur only in the Pentateuch, and in the early book of Joshua; others still, like מְכִּים, dropped out of use after the five books of Moses, except in poetry. The word מִין is found twenty-nine times from Genesis to Deuteronomy inclusive; and elsewhere only once, in the book of Ezekiel, which largely copies the Pentateuch. The word עָמִית (neighbor) is found nine times in Leviticus and only in Zechariah once besides; נְכֵּבָה (female), twenty- one times in the Pentateuch, and only again Jer. xxxi."22, where there is a manifest reference to Numbers vi. 30- Still another mark of antiquity is the prevalence of the rough and harder consonants in certain classes of words which were afterwards softened by commutation: ָחק (to laugh) is a specimen, being found thirteen times in the Pentateuch, and twice only out of it (Judges xvi. 25; Ez. xxiii. 32), though the softer form שָׂחֵק is found some thirty- six times in the later books of the Bible. There are also several forms of phraseology (e. g. נֳָסַםִ אֶל־עַמּוֹ) which never are found out of the Pentateuch.

Such are some of the manifest archaisms that pervade the five books of Moses, indicating as well their unity of author ship as their distinction from, and priority to, other portions of the Old Testaments.⁷⁸

4. Another concurrent indication of the origin of these five books at the time alleged, is found in the Egyptian words and other traces of Egyptian residence which are found in them. We will not occupy our limited space with a citation of the numerous and minute references to Egyptian customs, many of which have been brought to light within half a century; but will refer to the pages of Hengstenberg and others who have gathered them up.

We would call attention to traces of Egyptian phraseology less commonly known. The three common words of measurement in dry, liquid, and long measure respectively, employed in the Pentateuch, are unquestionably (according to Gesenius and Rödiger) of Egyptian origin: אֵיכּה, Egyptian oipi, ephah; הִין. Egyptian hn, hno, hin; אָמָּהה, Egyptian mahi, cubit.⁷⁹ The word תֵּבֶה (ark, chest) has long been known to have its Egyptian synonyms tba (chest) and tbt (boat or hull). It is noticeable that the Egyptian markabuta (chariot), and ssm, mare (objects made familiar to the Israelites first in Egypt) are represented by the Mosaic מֶרְכָּבָה and סוּס (horse).⁸⁰ The רִאֵם (oriental buffalo) has its counterpart if not predecessor in the Egyptian ramah; אַיָל (deer), in the Egyptian ar (gazelle), one liquid giving way to another (Ethiopic תיל). The Hebrew זַיִת (olive) has its kindred Egyptian word tat; יָם (sea), iuma; בֵיִת (house), baita; מִיִם (water). muau. Bunsen, from whose glossary⁸¹ these examples are mostly derived, suggests other correspondences. Several of the cases given admit of no reasonable doubt, though exhibiting some of the ordinary phonetic changes; and some of them have this peculiar weight in the argument, that while they are terms belonging to such an advanced stage of civilization as that of the Egyptians, they were clearly incorporated into Hebrew usage from the origin of the national existence.

The case is further strengthened by the subsequent disappearance of some of these words. Thus the word הין, found twenty-one times in the Pentateuch, never occurs again except twice in Ezekiel, who, as has been already remarked, copies the language of the Pentateuch. The Egyptian word אַבְיֵךֽ which was cried by the heralds before Joseph's chariot (Gen. xli. 43), is never used elsewhere. The Mosaic name of the larger grain measure חמֶר, which also had Ethiopic and apparently Egyptian affinities,⁸² gradually went into disuse; though found some four times in the poetical writings, it was in later days replaced by the term כּר, denoting the same amount.

Such facts as these are among the strong indications (be cause so wholly incidental) both that the early life of the Jewish nation was spent in contact with Egyptian civilization, and that the books of Moses were written while fresh from under that influence.

4. Another consideration of weight confirming the alleged date of the composition consists in the traces of the wandering in the wilderness, which appear in these writings.

We do not refer to the known conformity of the narrative of their march to the physical peculiarities of the region- We have in mind rather some of those rules and arrangements which imply that their institutions were formed while the nation was in a migratory condition. Here belong the continual references of, their legislation to tents and camps (Ex. xix. 17, etc.), and regulations for marching and halting (Num. ii. etc.); also the absence of all allusions to permanent dwellings, except prospectively in the promised land.

Here belong also the minute and elaborate directions for the construction and transportation of the tabernacle for the ark of the covenant. Such particulars as these must un questionably have been committed to writing at the time when the occasion called them forth; since no conceivable object existed for their being recorded at full length after the settlement in Canaan. The date of these instructions would carry with it the date of the written legislation and record, of which they form an integral part.

The wood of the tabernacle and of its furniture, the שִׁמִּים, was the product of the desert; while בְּרוֹשׁ (the cypress), the natural product of Palestine, never appears in the Pentateuch. Macdonald (after Eichhorn) errs in adding that the Pentateuch contains no mention whatever of the cedar (אֶרֶז), the product of Palestine and Syria.⁸³ It is mentioned, but in a manner more remarkable than the entire omission, — in such a mode as to be a joint reminiscence both of Egypt and of the wilderness. It is nowhere made a part of the structure of the tabernacle, or mentioned as employed for any building purpose; but only to be used in slight quantities on two occasions — in the cleansing of leprosy (Lev. xiv.), and in forming the water of purification for the unclean (Num. xix. 6). Now what are the facts in the case? Cedar was imported into Egypt from Syria, for furniture, small boxes, coffins, and various objects connected with the dead.⁸⁴ It was also used in Egypt, according to Pliny and Dioscorides, in ointments for elephantiasis, ulcers, and some other complaints.⁸⁵ In the uses designated we find a trace of Egypt; in the quantities implied, a trace of the wilderness, which admitted its transportation in such quantities and such only. It might have been with them in the form of small manufactured articles, or otherwise. In contrast with this mode of mention is the fact that the later books of the Bible abound in allusions to the cedar as the noblest of trees, and the choicest of building materials. It is mentioned about seventy times in the later books.

There are instances of regulations made for the wilderness, but subsequently relaxed or repealed at the close of the Mosaic legislation, to accommodate the changed circum stances about to exist in the dispersion over Palestine. The requisition (Lev. xvii. 3, 4) to bring animals that are to be slaughtered for food, to the door of the tabernacle, was abrogated (Deut. xii. 15, 20, 21) just before the entrance into Canaan, naturally on account of the inconvenience then attending.⁸⁶ The law concerning leprosy (Lev. xiv.) seems to contemplate both the present state of the people in the wilderness, and their future settled condition in Canaan. Other regulations, especially those concerning uncleanness, were evidently framed when the people were all in the vicinity of the tabernacle, as they require the personal coming of the individual to that place. Some of them were continued in later times (e. g. in the case of childbirth, Lev. xii. 6); and it has been well suggested that they would have been deemed oppressive in Palestine, but for the sanction of ancient usage.⁸⁷

In the distinction of clean and unclean animals, at least as to the form it assumed, Stanley traces, as he thinks, a clear connexion with the circumstances in the wilderness. Without pretending thus to account for the grounds of the distinction, he remarks that " the animals which they might freely eat, were those which belonged especially to their pastoral state — the ox, the sheep, the goat, to which were added the various classes of chamois and gazelle. As we read the detailed permission to eat of every class of what may be called the game of the wilderness — the wild goat, and the roe, and the red deer, and the ibex, and the ante lope, and the chamois, — a new aspect is suddenly presented to us of a large part of the life of the Israelites in the desert. It reveals them to us as a nation of hunters; it shows them to us, clambering over the smooth rocks, scaling the rugged pinnacles of Sinai, as the Arab hunters of the present day, with bows and arrows instead of guns. Such pursuits they could only in a limited degree have followed in their own country. The permission, the perplexity, could only have arisen in a place where the animals in question abounded. High up in the cliffs of Sinai the traveller still sees the herds of gazelles standing out against the sky; and no image was more constantly before the pilgrims, of whatsoever age they may be, who wrote the mysterious inscriptions in the wady Mukatteb and on the rock Herimat Haggag, than the long-horned ibex."⁸⁸

The same writer calls attention to the fact that the consecration of the whole tribe of Levi to the priestly work, sprang out of a transaction in the wilderness, where with fierce zeal they rallied round Moses at the time of the golden calf, and " slew every man his brother and his companion, and every man his neighbor." At no later period did the leading spirits of the nation come from that tribe; and their consecration is a special memorial of that early period, as the probable time of the legislation — viewed simply as a question of probability.⁸⁹

The provision for future cities of refuge from the avenger of blood strikingly reminds us of that nomadic life wherein the nation was enveloped, and perhaps penetrated, by the morals of the desert. It was a merciful restriction upon the law of blood-revenge to the fourth generation, which from the most ancient times has prevailed among the Bedouins of the desert, and undoubtedly then pressed upon the Israelites.⁹⁰ The cities of refuge are not alluded to in the Old Testament later than the book of Joshua.

Coincident with these things, and deserving at least of being mentioned, are the consistent explanations of various cases of supplementary legislation, furnished by events referred to the wilderness. The ordinance for the passover was first given with prospective reference to the residence in Palestine (Ex. xii. 25). Then came the rebellion during the first few months, and the doom of forty years' wandering. In the second year Jehovah specially commands the nation to keep the passover, though in the wilderness (Num. ix. 1 - 3). But meanwhile a law was made requiring the removal from the camp of persons defiled by a dead body (Num. v. 2). The question necessarily rose, how this would affect the universal observance of the passover. Accordingly this case is provided for (Num. ix. 3-11) by an arrangement permitting the passover in such cases to be kept on the following month Again, the law of inheritance at first provided only for the transmission of land to sons. The case of Zelophehad's daughters brought up the subject for additional legislation. So, too, the general laws against Sabbath-breaking and blasphemy were supplemented, on account of circumstances arising in the wilderness, by the assignment of special penalties (Lev. xxiv. 12 - 16; Num. xv. 32 - 36).

Such facts as these are among the not unimportant indications that the composition took place at the time and under the circumstances which the witnesses allege. And we close this section with the unanswerable question of Delitzsch: "How comes it that the post-Mosaic history presents no trace of what in other national histories is called the growth of law and legislation? . . . . . . In the history of Israel from the time of the Judges, we everywhere find an existing law, which without contradiction prescribes human conduct, and by which the divine retributions are deter mined."

6. To this may be added the remark of the same acute scholar, that there is no period in the post-Mosaic times out of whose characteristics the Thorah (or law) could have sprung. And we cannot do better here than to quote his language. "It could have originated in the times of the Judges, as little, perhaps, as the New Testament scriptures in the Middle Ages. That period is one of barbarism, of the disintegration of Israel into separate and alienated clans, and even of manifest mingling of Israelitish and heathen- Canaanitish customs. There were no considerable prophets; the priesthood lay prostrate, and the last of its incumbents knew how to wield the sword, but not the pen. Samuel alone at the end of that period, the founder of the prophets' schools, might possibly be thought of in connection with the origin of the Thorah; but the untenableness of the supposition appears in this, that Samuel, so far from adhering rigidly to the law which he had reduced to the documentary form, is on the contrary a personage exempting himself from the law in troublous times. [He was no priest, nor of the priestly tribe, yet statedly offered sacrifices no doubt with the divine sanction; the sacrifices were not offered at the altar of the tabernacle, but at Mizpeh, Gilgal, Bethlehem, and Ramah, the place of his residence. The anointing of kings was no part of the Mosaic prescription, and the monarchy itse.f an innovation.] The time of Saul does come into the question, since its only significance in the history 01 Israel's religion and literature lies in its being the time of David's birth. The times of David and Solomon, however, exhibit so lively an activity in organization and literature that the law of Moses might far sooner then have been recorded and set in its historic frame-work; and many glancings of the Thorah into the future of that golden royal era, offer to that hypothesis some foundation. But over precisely this period the fountains of history flow forth to us most richly, yet without affording anywhere, even in the Psalms, a ground for the supposition that the Thorah became then reduced to writing; and moreover the great deviation, in the structure of the temple from that of the Mosaic tabernacle, is on that assumption hard to explain. If we descend to the separation of Israel into two kingdoms, the hypothesis that the Thorah first received its documentary form after that separation, is improbable for this reason, that in the kingdom of Israel there never arose any opposition against the force of the law that bound Israel in the same manner as Judah. Had not the letter of the Thorah been already fixed, it is not easy to comprehend how there could have been that objective unity of the severed body, and the common ground of the prophetic function, and the con science of Israel ever breaking forth in all times of apostasy, and the ever uniform law of religious renovation in Israel after long secularization. Shall we then assume that the Pentateuch first originated in the exile, or that Ezra wrote it as it lies before us? How can it have originated in the exile, since the people on their return from the exile remind them selves of the Thorah as the divine basis of their common wealth, long destitute of practical effect, but now demanding a true realization? [See the whole strain of the prophets of the captivity and the restoration.] Were the Thorah a compilation of laws, like the Codex Justinianus, it might indeed be conceived of as the work of an exile. But it carries us into the midst of the historic process of the law giving. and is a pragmatic history of it; and how could such careful and definite recollections have remained in an oral, unrecorded state till that time? And as to Ezra, he is a Luther, who, in a time when the masses had sunk into heathenish barbarism and religious ignorance, as a scribe, brings back the written word to honor and efficiency; his activity in reference to national life and literature is throughout only restorative, for even the uncertain tradition goes no further than to ascribe to him the transfer of the scriptures from the Hebrew to the Assyrian text or the restoration of lost books from memory. [In other words, history and tradition fully concur to show that any assumption of his authorship in the case would be gratuitous and baseless.] So does the whole post-Mosaic history of Israel send us back to the Siniatic law-giving and a written record of the same."⁹¹

Here, too, rises another inquiry which, so far as we know, the objectors have never yet pretended distinctly to answer: How and when was it possible, at any time subsequent to the life-time of Moses, to reconstruct the whole social, civil, and religious life of the nation, and impose upon it so complicated a set of ordinances, many of them commemorative, in the name of Moses, crowning the imposture, too, with a set of writings also in the name of Moses, then first produced; and to do it so effectually that never a breath of denial arose, never a hint of the time of reconstruction came down, never a glimpse of the machinery and of the magician that effected it has come to light? This is a question which is not to be evaded; it must be met. We proceed to say that,

7. A corroborative circumstance of great weight is found in the inability of the deniers of the Mosaic authorship to suggest even a plausible substitute.

They certainly avail themselves of every advantage. It. is surely taking the largest liberty to decompose the Pentateuch into any number of parts, from two to ten or more, even cutting out at pleasure here and there a refractory verse or clause, as they all do; and to assign these fragments to any date or any writer they may see fit. With such an unrestricted range, such entire independence of all embarrassing restraint, it might be supposed that all the wants of " criticism " might be met. But it is of no avail. These theorists are good witnesses against each other. None of them, not even De Wette, Ewald, or Knobel, with all their acuteness, can devise a theory that commands the suffrage of their coadjutors. They can unite only in destruction. Some of them, like Ewald and De Wette, have been unable long to agree with themselves, and have widely changed their positions. We have a document hypothesis, a fragment hypothesis, a complement hypothesis, a crystallization hypothesis, so called, with several subdivisions. We have now an Elohist and a Jehovist; or an Elohist and two successive Jehovists; or three documents, Elohistic and Jehovistic, with an editor; or an Elohist, a Jehovist, a Deuteronomist, with a War-book and a Law book to draw upon; or an Elohist, one or more Jehovists, and a Deuteronomist; and so on up to the ten or twelve writers of Ewald, to each of whom he is able precisely to assign his portion; and the multitudinous fragments of Vater and of Hartmann.

As to the probable dates and writers, the confusion is greater still. Lengerke places an Elohist in the time of Solomon, and a supplementer in the time of Hezekiah; Tuch, in the time of Saul and Solomon respectively; Bleek, in the time of Saul or the Judges, and the beginning of David's reign; Stahelin, in the time of the Judges and of Saul; Delitzsch, in the time of Moses and of Joshua; De Wette, after various fluctuations, in his fifth edition, refers the Elohist to the time of Samuel or Saul, the Jehovist to, the earlier part of Hezekiah's reign; the Deuteronomist perhaps to the exile. Knobel refers the Elohist to the time of Saul or David; the Jehovist, to the last of Hezekiah's reign; the law-book, compiled from various sources, to some period prior to Jeroboam; the war-book to the time of Jehoshaphat; and the Deuteronomist, to the time of Josiah. Ewald's marvellous patch-work stretches all the way from before the time of Samson till subsequent to that of Jeremiah, with a somewhat indefinite expansion each way. The bishop of Natal finds the Elohist in Samuel, " one or more writers " in the latter days of David and the early days of Solomon, and a Deuteronomist in the time of Josiah (perhaps Jeremiah), who wrote the book of Deuteronomy, and thrust his interpolations into all the previous books.

Behold chaos. These writers have it all their own way, yet each a different way. And behold the proof, if not that truth is one and error manifold, yet that in this case, testimony is clear, uniform, and coherent, and theory against testimony is multitudinous, conflicting, worthless. These diverse and clashing theories are a good reductio ad absurdum of the whole attempt to withdraw the Pentateuch from Moses. The objectors to Moses are in the same predicament with the witnesses against Christ: " their witness agreed not together."

Such is the nature of the evidence, positive and negative, direct and circumstantial, cumulative and convergent, that Moses is the responsible author of the Pentateuch; that the work was composed by him, or under his provision and direction, in some such mode that it is substantially his work. It is evidence of the strongest description, and of precisely the right character. Let the objector produce, if he can, any other ancient document (outside of the holy scriptures), in favor of which anything like this amount of evidence can be exhibited.

Against testimony so express lying wholly on one side, and concurrent evidence so various, no objections can stand but such as are insuperable, no difficulties can weigh unless they are absolutely insolvable. And that mental, not to say moral, obliquity which can spurn all such proofs, and spin its webs of theory just as though no such evidence existed, is an astounding phenomenon. It is a repudiation of the first principles of judicial investigation. All proof, except mathematical demonstration — which is but a building upon postulates involved in its definitions — admits of degrees, and is exposed to objections; but when the evidence is strong and the objections admit of ready solution, the latter count for nothing. The judge that should rule out such evidence as is here offered, or the jury who should avowedly disregard it, only to listen, not to counter testimony, but to objections that are not in themselves decisive, would be pronounced unworthy of their position.

Are there internal difficulties so thoroughly insuperable as to prevent us from admitting the varied and concurrent testimony that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch? We proceed, then. to show that

IV. The concurrent evidence that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch is exposed to no decisive or even formidable objection.

The examination of this part of the subject must be defer red to another Number of this Periodical.

Note. It is the writer's purpose to meet the chief objections that have been advanced against the authority of the Pentateuch, in such order as best comports with the plan of his discussion; and to pursue the discussion as rapidly as circumstances will permit. A few typographical errors, which crept into his criticism on Colenso in the July Number, affecting rather the style and the orthography of certain proper names and Hebrew words than the merits of the argument, are not thought to require special attention.

2) Norton's Genuineness of the Gospels, Vol. II., App. Note D, p. 100 seq.

3) Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I. pp. 349, 351.

4) Bunsen's Egypt, Vol. IV. p. 384.

5) Lepsius's Letters from Egypt (Bohn), p. 357.

6) Ibid., p. 381.

7) Delitzsch, Die Genesis, p. 26.

8) Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I. pp. 256, 293.

9) Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 93.

10) Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, Vol. II. pp. 137, 148.

11) Ibid. pp. 174 - 179.

12) Ibid. p. 176.

13) Bunsen's Egypt, Vol. IV. pp. 660, 666, 691.

14) Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, Vol. II. p. 195.

15) Ex. v. 6-9; Num. xi. 16; Dent. xx. 5, 8, 9; xxix. 9; xxxi. 28; Josh. i. 10; iii. 2, etc.

16) Seventeen times in the first six books; seven elsewhere.

17) So Sir G. W. Wilkinson, Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. II. p. 299.

18) So Rawlinson. Layard substantially concurs: "Babylon and Nineveh," p. 614.

19) Commentar über die Genesis, p. 18.

21) History of the Old Covenant, Vol. III. p. 502.

22) Delitzsch's Genesis, p. 16.

23) Tuch's Genesis, Vorrede, p 21.

24) Knobel's Genesis, Vorbemcrkungen, sec. 1 seq.

29) Thus Gen. xi. 32; xxv. 7-10; xxxv. 28, 29; Ex. xii. 41, 51, etc.

31) Compare Deut. iv. 44; v. 1, 24; viii. 1; xi. 18, 23; xii. 28; xv. 5; xvli. 8, xxix. 1; xxxi. 1.

34) Horne's Introduction, Vol. II. p. 613. In his later work Dr. Davidson ventures to change the pointing of the Hebrew.

35) So Vater and Bleck substantially, as we understand Hengstcnherg, Genuineness of the Pentateuch, Vol. II. p. 123.

36) Here with הַוֶּה, and strengthened to "this."

37) Geseuius's Hebrew Grammar, § 107.

39) Horne's Introduction, Vol. III. p. 616.

41) Horne's Introduction, Vol. III. p. 618.

43) It will be observed that the testimony in reference to the book of Genesis is less explicit, except as gathered up in this concluding statement and the general testimony in regard to the "book of the law." It is covered, however, by the remaining evidence which will be adduced, especially the direct testimony and the linguistic traits, which, as will be shown, segregate the Pentateuch and mark it as a distinct whole. The direct and essential connection of Genesis with the unity of the narrative, as previously exhibited, bears on this point.

44) De Weite, Davidson, Delitzsch, and Kurtz all speak of the whole of Deuteronomy, except the appendix. Knobel apparently would begin at ch. iv. 44. We quote the whole book to the appendix. The omission of the first four chapters would leave all the essential facts remaining.

45) It is due to Delitzsch and Kurtz to say that they both ascribe lo Moses the virtual responsibility for the whole Pentateuch. The former holds that he actually wrote Deuteronomy and the smaller sections referred to, and left the completion of the whole work to some of his contemporaries and assistants; that the Elohistic portion was written by some such man as Eleazer the son of Aaron, and the Jehovistic afterwards, by some such man as Joshua or one of the elders, and that the history was finished soon after entering the Holy Land. Kurtz adopts a similar view, viz. that the work was completed by the assistants of Moses; but he thinks that larger portions of the law must have been written at the time of reception, and sees no reason why the whole history, down to the departure from Sinai, may not have been written down at that time, and later events added as they occurred.

46) Instances of these several phrases are found in Josh. i. 7, 8; viii. 31 -35; xxiii. 6; xxiv. 26; 2 Kings xiv. 6; xxii. 8, 1 1; Neh. viii. 1, 3, 14; x. 34, 36; xiii. 1; 2 Chron. xvii. 9; xxv. 4; xxxiv. 14; xxxv. 12; Ez. iii. 2; vi. 18; 1 Kings ii. 3; 1 Chron xvi. 40; 2 Chron. xxiii. 18; xxxi. 4; Dan. ix. 11, 13.

47) Horne's Introduction, Vol. II. p. 615.

49) Hengstcnberg's Genuineness of the Pentateuch, Vol. I. p. 431, Eng. trans. Keil on Josh. riii. 33-35.

50) Hengstenberg and Vater almost alone speak of the section of Deuteronomy extending from iv. 44 to xxvi. 19. Some of the Rabbins supposed that the whole law was thus written: some even that it was written in seventy languages, to be read by all the nations of the earth. See Kiel on Joshua viii. 32, from whom several of the statements of the text are derived.

It will be observed that the sacred writer speaks only of a copy of the law as written on the stones: when he afterwards says that " he read all the words of , the law, the blessings and the curses," and " there was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not," he adds, "according to all that is written in the book of the law," not on the plastered stones. We see nothing un natural in the supposition that — the essence of the law, its representative expression, being thus set up in the presence of the people — Joshua then took the written volume and read the details. The narrative accords with this supposition.

52) Philonis Opera (Mangey's ed.), Vol. II. p. 141.

53) Ibid. Vol. II. p. 409.

54) Joseph. contra Apionem. I. 8, Bekkcr's ed.

55) Ibid. Antiq. III. ii. 5; III. xii., etc.

56) Ibid. III. xv. 3.

57) Ibid. Preface, § 3.

58) Ibid. § 4.

59) Joseph. Antiq. I. 1, 2, 3.

60) This division can be traced upward through the Talmud in the 5th or 6th century, where it is called ', the law, the prophets, and the Kethuvim," (See Stuart on the Canon p. 251); through Jerome (Prologus Galcatus), who speaks of the five books of Moses, the prophets and the hagiographa;" Josephus (contra Apion. i. 8), who divides into " the five books of Moses, the prophets and the remaining books, containing hymns to God, and precepts concerning the conduct of human life;" Philo. who speaks of " the laws and oracles uttered by the prophets, and the hymns and other writings "; to the translator and grandson of the son of Sirach, who, in his brief Preface of five sentences (written not later than B. C. 130), three times mentions this division, which he gives as "the Law, the Prophets, and the other books of the forefathers," — or "the rest of the books," — or, "the others that follow in accordance with them" (κατ ̀αὐτούς).

63) It is in repeated instances supplied in Sale's Translation.

64) Vide Koran, Chaps. xvi. and xiv.

65) Sale's Koran, Preliminary Discourse, p. 47.

66) Introduction, Parker's trans., Vol. II. p. 160.

67) Colenso on the Pentateuch, Part I. p. 32.

68) Parker's "Two Sermons," p. 14.

69) Horne's Introduction, Vol. II. p. 617.

70) Die Qnellen dcr Genesis, p. 12.

71) Alford's Greek Testament, in loco.

75) De Wetto's Introduction, sect. 157; Delitzsch on Genesis, p. 26; Gesenius's Grammar (Rodiger's) sect. 2, rem. 4; Ewald's Grammatik, sect. 2.

76) Mr. Theodore Parker in his translation of De Wette's Introduction, cites Job xxxi. 11; 1 Kings xvii. IS; and Is. xxx. 33. But the rationalists Hirzcl and J. Olshauscn deny that the first is an instance of the kind. In the second case both forms occur in the same verse, only apparently transposed. In the last case תיא is found in a great number 01 MSS and several printed editions, and according to Henderson was probably the original reading. Still as the verb and preceding participle having the same construction arc masculine, it may be a simple case of disregard of gender.

79) Gesenius's Thesaurus, sub vocibus, and Appendix, p. 90.

80 In the first of these two words one link of connection is wanting, inasmuch as the Hebrew מֶרְכָּבֶה is connected with רָכֵב to ride, in the Hebrew. The Egyptian verb corresponding is not known, so far as we are aware.

81) Bunsen's Egypt, Vol. I p. 453.

82) Gesenius's Thesaurus, Appendix, p 90.

84) Wilkinson's Anc. Egyptians, Vol. II. p. 38.

85) Knobel on Levit. xiv. 4.

87) Hävernick's Introduction to the Pentateuch, p. 296, Eng. Translation.

89) Stanley's Jewish Church, p. 188. It will be remembered that Knobel yields the point.

89) Stanley's Jewish Church, p. 188. It will be remembered that Knobel yields the point.