((/.) The quotation from '■^ the book of the wars of the Lord''' (Numb, xxi, 14, 15), and others apparently of a similar kind in the same chapter, are thovght to he in- credible in a confemporarij history, though natural enough in a writing of a later age, when these snatches of song might become valuable as the testimony of eye-witness- es. But there is no evidence of the assumption that it was the historian's object to secure corroboration of his statements. While there is no obligation h'ing on us to assign the reason why these snatches of hymns ap- pear where they do, the supposition is natural enough that iMoscs incorporated them in his history as speci- mens of the new spiritual life which had been wakened in the young generation of Israelites, and as evidences that God had indeed visited them with his grace, and was fitting them to take up the mission which had fall- en from the unworthy hands of those who, in Exod. xv, " sang his praise," but " soon forgat his works" (Psa. cvi, 12, 13: comp. the anticipations, Exod. xv, 14-lC, with the fulfilments. Numb, xxi, 21-35; xxii, 2-4, etc.).
(e.) It is scarcely icorth while to dwell upon certain incidental expressions which have been said to betray the hand of a later icriter. Such are, that " the Canaanite was then (TX) in the land" (Gen. xii, G ; comp. xiii, 7) ; and Joseph's words, " I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews" (Gen. xl, 15). We select one case on account of its seeming greater strength. In Lev. xviii, 28 the Israelites are warned to avoid the practices by which the land of Canaan had already been polluted, "that the land spue not you out? also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you ;" from which it is inferred that this was not written till after the Canaanites had been exterminated. But in truth the Hebrew language is very poorly furnished with tenses. Had this speech been in Latin, and had the future perfect been used — " that the land may not spue you out, in _your defiling it, as it shall have spued o\it the nations that were before you" — a translation of it into Hebrew could not have been better expressed than
in the present words of the Hebrew Bible. This really future meaning we take to be the meaning of the pas- sage. Yet if the literal past time is insisted on by any one, there arc two explanations, either of which is easy enough : either the sentence received its present form of expression as Moses revised his work, after the people of Sihon and Og liad been destroyed ; or else the very repulsiveness of the metaphorical language was meant to teach that the strength of the Canaanites was only apparent, that the land had already vomited them forth, and that they lay upon its surface as a loathsome in- cumbrance which must now be removed by Israel.
(7.) Scientific Objections. — Many who are able to ex- plain to their satisfaction most of "the above difficulties, are still troubled by others of a different class resting on alleged contradictions between the language of the Mo- saic books and the facts of science. For instance, the Adamic creation is declared to contradict the conclu- sions of geology, inasmuch as the period required for bringing the crust of the earth into its existing condi- tion must have included countless centuries, and not a brief period of six days. In the same way it is first ar- gued that the scriptural narrative involves a universal deluge, and then, this meaning being assumed, that such a deluge, with all its accompanying circumstances, as recorded in Genesis, cannot have taken place with- out a miracle wholly stupendous. A third objection is grounded on the chronology of the Bible, and on the asserted fact that the duration of man upon the earth has extended to a period at least exceeding four or five times the 6000 years allotted to him in the Penta- teuch. A fourth objection is directed against the de- scent of all mankind from a single pair, and their pri- mary migrations as recorded by Moses. It assumes that the physical peculiarities distinguishing the various races of the world are the results of a difference in spe- cies, not of a variety caused by the infiucnce of climatic, phj-sical, and social circumstances. There are many other minor objections of a more frivolous character, such as that which insists on fixing upon the word "firmament," in Gen. i, 6, the sense of a permanent solid vault, and then pointing out the opposition in Avhich such an idea stands to astronomical science ; or such as the objection against the language of Joshua (x, 12), which is sufficiently ans^vered by reference to tlie lan- guage of any modern almanac, and b}' the observation that if the ancient Scriptures had been written in the terminology of science, they would have been simply un- intelligible to the generation to which they were first given. But these captious difficulties are of little weight compared to the four objections mentioned above, all of which touch questions of the gravest importance. In addition to those general elements of error which we shall proceed to point out as belonging in common to all the modern objections urged against the Pentateuch, there arc some considerations bearing specially upon this scientific class of difficulties to which it is necessary briefly to call attention.