4. Confirmation of the Mosaic Authorshii). — Of this
PENTATEUCH
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PENTATEUCH
confirmatory evidence we offer the following specimens, in addition to the considerations urged above to prove the iiniti/ of the entire iive books.
(1.) Jiiternal indications occur that the Pentateuch does belong to the age of Moses.— («.) References to matters soinvirhat earlier than his own time, which he might well have opiiortuiiities of knowing, and which might be cxjiected to attract the interest of the genera- tion of Israelites who came out of Egypt and entered Canaan, while they would less probably have been in- corporated into his history by a writer of a much later period. Such are the details in Cien. xiv of the wars between the four kings of the East and the five kings of Sodom, etc.; the peculiar list of nations in Canaan during the earlier part of Abraham's sojourn (Gen. xv, 19-21), differing very considerably from the ordinary list of these nations in the age of Moses, several cen- turies later ; the designation of Abraham's original home as " Ur of the Chaldees" (Gen. xi, 31), though real- ly in Mesopotamia (Acts vii, 2), in the mountains of which country it seems that the Chaldees were settled at a remote period, whereas later Jewish history repre- sents them as settled much farther south, in the plains «)f Babylonia ; the curious notices scattered throughout Dent, ii of the old nations in and around Canaan, who had been dispossessed by the Philistines, the Edomites, the Moabites, and the Ammonites — notices well fitted, and we believe intended, to encourage Israel in rooting out their enemies the Canaanites with the promised special help of (iod, although the higher criticism has induced its votaries to pronoimce them ill-judged inter- polations.
(b.) The record of particulars respeciinrj the orir/in of the people that hare every token of verisimilitude, at once from the simplicity with which they are related, and from the absence of features which characterize the fabulous accounts of early things by the Greeks and others.
(c.) The j)rominence given to many events, and the mi- nuteness and vividness of the descriptions, such as are common in the narratives of eye-witnesses and men per- sonally enyaijed in the transactio7is ; with which may be associated the evidence of intimate (yet not obtruded) acquaintance with both Egypt and the wilderness.
((/.) Confirmatory evidence may he found in many of the laws which were applicable to the Israelites only while in motion throui/h the ivildei-ness, or ivhile gathered close together in the camp ; as indeed " the camp" is very frequently mentioned in the course of these laws, for instance in Lev. xiii, 46; xiv, 8; xvi, 26; xvii, 3; Numb, v, 3. So also the commands are many a time laid, not upon the priests as a body, but upon Aaron personally, or upon '• Aaron and his sons." To this may be added what has already been said of certain slight modifications of laws in Deuteronomy, which were nat- ural with the progress of events during the forty j'ears; compare also Deut. xiv and Lev. xi, Leviticus alone mentioning the permission to eat the locusts, which would be common in the wilderness, etc.
(e.) Add to iliis the antique finns of words and ex- pressions whir/t are generally conceded to occur through- out the Pentateuch. This is no doubt a kind of argu- ment which must be handled with care and moderation ; and it has been employed very frequently, and been pushed to a most extravagant length, by many Conti- nental scholars in support of views \vhich they have really adopted on otlier grounds. liut three things may be asserted very conlidcntly, and tlie\- are sufil- ciently plain to 1)0 appreciated by the mere English read- er, although he is not in circumstances to verify them. First, that there are many traces of very early simple language in the Pentateuch, as the habitual use of XIH for " he" and " she," "il'J for " young man" and " young woman," without the distinction of gender invariably found in the rest of the Old Testament. Secondly, that the differences of the Elohistic and the Jehovistic and
the Deuteronomic vocabulary (to use the barbarous words descriptive of peculiar notions which have been introduced into this controversy) are reduced to ex- tremely narrow limits by such a competent scholar as Delitzsch, whose peculiar theory leads him to occupy an intirm^diate or neutral jjlace in these discussions. Thirdly, lliat a difference is at once plainly discernible when wc pass from the vocabulary of the Pentateuch to that of tlie books generally reckoned nearest to it in point of age — namely, Joshua and Judges.
(2.) If we deny thai Moses teas the author of this book, it is impossible to fix with satisfaction on any later age for the date of composition. — This will be evident on a slight examination of the various dates proposed.
(rt.) The inclination is very strong to fix the date of the composition of Deuteronomy, as well as the final arrangement of the other four books, somewhere per- haps in the reign of Ilezekiah— the character of whose administration, however, is inconsistent with the ad- mission of religious novelties (emphatically in the rule of faith), since he was bent upon removing all the abuses which had crept into the institutions of jMoses; or in the reign of his prolligate son Manasseh, although the heathenish party in Judali were at the time so com- pletely in the ascendant that their opponents were at their mercy, and they are thought to have sulyected the prophets of Jehovah to bloody persecution; or per- haps in the reign of Josiah, when the corruption was still deeper and more widespread, and when so distin- guished a prophet as Jeremiah was impotent to stem the tide of evil. It may be asserted very confidently that no one of these reigns was more favorable for in- terpolating or annexing a new section of the law of Moses than the age of the Reformation would have been for adding another epistle to the New Testament. Any of these dates is ridiculously ill-suited for the com- position in Deuteronomy of those consecutive chapters (vi, vii, viii) which are filled with warnings against worldliness in consequence of peacefully possessing the land, and an improper toleration of the doomed nations of Canaan, and pride in victories achieved and wealth enjoyed.