(6.) Or shall we assume an earlier date, the period of the first and best times of the kingdom, before the death of Jehoshaphat, which is generally regarded b}' the crit- ics as a time of prophetic activity in composing the early history of the nation ? The Pentateuch, however, can- not well have been composed later than the schism in religion, and the rise of two hostile kingdoms, after the death of Solomon ; for it uniformly supposes Israel to be in an undivided condition, both civilly and ecclesi- astically. There is never a hint of the existence of such a division ; nay, after that division had taken place many of tb.e laws must have met with impedi- ments in their execution. Again, had the book been composed later than the date of the schism, the ten tribes would have protested, and justly too, against such laws as bore hard upon them : while at the same time we are warranted in inferring from the strong lan- guage in the acknowledged writings of the jirojjhets, that, had they been the writers of the legislation, its language would have been found to be distinct and pointed against the schism. Similar remarks may be made upon the historical portions of the Pentateuch. A prophetic historian in the kingdom of Judah would have been likely to identify more distinctly than is done "the land of Moriah," where Abraham was ready to offer Isaac, with " Mount Moriah," where the Temjtle was built; and he woulil liave been likely to assign less religious prominence in the patriarchal and early na- tional history to Shechem, the scene of the revolt and the seat of Jeroboam's government. Nor could we ex- pect him to say nothing in praise of Levi, in Jacob's dying blessing; nor in the blessing of Moses, while mentioning Levi, to give so slight a blessing to Judah in comparison with that given to Ephraira and Manas- seh.
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(c.) Nor yet is the earlier age of David and Solomon satisfactory as tlie assumed date of this composition. If the Pentateuch had been a recent work, of the age of these kings, it would liave been wholly thrown aside by Jeroboam, who must have found inconvenience and positive danger from it ; and in casting it away he would have easily and naturally represented himself as a reformer of religion, delivering the people from one of the yokes of bondage which the house of David had been imposing on them, and restoring to them their primitive civil liberty and religious simplicity, accord- ing to the genuine institutions of Moses. Instead of this, it is evident that from the first Jeroboam was con- demned and resisted by the prophets and the priests and the Levites, and generally by multitudes of the peo- ple, whose hearts were reverent towards the acknowl- edged and established law of God. The entire law of the kingdom (Dent, xvii), which has been represented as furnishing evidence of late authorship, is on the con- trary a witness to a much earlier date of composition. In the days of David and Solomon there would have been no need to forbid the appointment of a foreigner to the throne, since it was established in this family of the tribe of Judah, and this with divine sanctions and promises of perpetuity; while the language in which the multiplication of horses and wives and silver and gold is prohibited would have needed to be very dif- ferent to suit that age. The oft-repeated command to extirpate the Canaanitcs, and not to let them dwell in the midst of Israel (so far from being a production of the age of David and Solomon), was no longer appli- cable, after it had been neglected for so many centuries : in their totally altered circumstances the remains of these nations appear to have become converts to the worship of Jehovah, and in some sense members of the congregation of Israel; and a fearful curse fell upon Saul and his bloody house on account of his zeal in exterminating the Gibeonites.
(rf.) If we are thus driven back to a period indefinitely anterior to the time of David, there is no other age than that of Moses himself at which we can rest with reason or satisfaction. There is no one whose name could be suggested as the author, with any degree of probability, during the disturbed period of the judges, in the course of which religion was rather retrograding, and the revi- vals of it were very far from favoring new legislation. See Judges. Samuel has indeed been named, and there is no doubt of the eminent position which he occupied at the crisis in which the Hebrew republic passed into a monarchy ; still there is no evidence that he was com- petent to write the Pentateuch. Besides there are two special objections : his closeness to the age of David and Solomon, than which the book seems much more an- cient; and the necessity of supposing a known and ac- knowledged law of God in Israel as the basis on which all his labors rested, and the rule of life and worship to which it was his aim to bring the people back.
(e.) There are not wanting traces which point to the patriarchal age as the time in which the writer of the Pentateuch lived. A writer subsequent to the time at which " the laws of Closes" (rightly or Avrongly so called) had taken bold of the national mind, would have been little likely to represent their ancestor Abraham as mar- rying his sister, half-sister though she might be; and Jacob as setting up his pillar and anointing it. The primitive age of the writer is evinced by his entire si- lence on the subject of temples for the worship of false gods, as well as of any house for Jehovah. It may be doubted, too, whether a later legislator would have spo- ken of priests iu Israel prior to the institution of Aaron's priesthood, and of young men of the children of Israel offering the sacriticcs, under the direction of Moses, at the establishment of the covenant in Sinai (Exod. xix, 24; xxiv, 5).